November 22, 2016 - 23:06
Moving forward for our English class, I would like to read Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. It is a book that has been on my mind for a long time, even though I don't know anything about it really. I've also been thinking about Zora Neale Hurston from our conversations with Monique about anthropology since Hurston herself was an anthropologist. As I was talking about my choice with some classmates today, Creighton offered to lend me her copy and told me about how much this book meant to her. She handed me a beautiful edition of this book, witha quote from one of my favorite authors Alice Walker on the front: "There is no book more important to me than this one." I don't exactly know what I'll be focusing on yet, but I think that will become much clearer as I read.
Comments
Looking for Zora
Submitted by Anne Dalke on November 27, 2016 - 11:50 Permalink
Abby--
I like this direction for your independent project. One reason I'd selected Americanah as our (erstwhile) last text was the anthropological quality it brought to questions of U.S. race relations. When Hurston studied anthropology w/ Franz Boaz @ Columbia, he really urged her to collect folklore from the environment in Florida where she'd grown up; these interviews were published in a collection called Mules and Men. You may also find really interesting intersections in her novel with the critique of anthropology that you've gotten in Monique's class; the book is also filled with lots of spiritual searching, which I think will speak to you, too.
You might also want to check out Hurston's short essay, "How It Feels to be a Colored Me,"
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma01/grand-jean/hurston/chapters/how.html
as well as Alice Walker's reflection on "Looking for Zora," which will re-enact some haunting, for sure!
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=c3R1ZGVudC5iY3Nkbnkub3JnfG1yLWFsYmFuby1ob21lcGFnZXxneDo2MmNhNTJhNGM4OWI0YTY3
Looking forward to exploring this with you further, as your thoughts emerge,
A.