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2014 Group Reads
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November Group Reads Are....
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Be sure to get your holds, Inter Library Loans, purchases, etc. in time for these great reads!
Yay, can't wait to read Their Eyes Were Watching God!!!
I knew you would be happy Anastasia! :0)
Londa wrote: "I knew you would be happy Anastasia! :0)"I am! :D
Excited for both books. I have not read Their eyes were watching God in years. It will be nice to read it again
Black Coffee
Books mentioned in this topic
Isle of Canes (other topics)Their Eyes Were Watching God (other topics)
Authors mentioned in this topic
Elizabeth Shown Mills (other topics)Zora Neale Hurston (other topics)
Starting November 1
Isle of Canes by Elizabeth Shown Mills
Isle of Canes is the epic account of an African-American family in Louisiana that, over four generations and more than 150 years, rose from the chains of slavery to rule the Isle of Canes. Historically accurate and genealogically significant, this first novel by eminent genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills is a gripping tale of racial bias, human conflict, and economic ruin told against the backdrop of colonial Louisiana
Starting November 15
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Of Hurston's fiction, Their Eyes Were Watching God is arguably the best-known and perhaps the most controversial. The novel follows the fortunes of Janie Crawford, a woman living in the black town of Eaton, Florida. Hurston sets up her characters and her locale in the first chapter, which, along with the last, acts as a framing device for the story of Janie's life. Unlike Wright and Ralph Ellison, Hurston does not write explicitly about black people in the context of a white world--a fact that earned her scathing criticism from the social realists--but she doesn't ignore the impact of black-white relations either:
"It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road. It was the time to hear things and talk. These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgment."
One person the citizens of Eaton are inclined to judge is Janie Crawford, who has married three men and been tried for the murder of one of them. Janie feels no compulsion to justify herself to the town, but she does explain herself to her friend, Phoeby, with the implicit understanding that Phoeby can "tell 'em what Ah say if you wants to. Dat's just de same as me 'cause mah tongue is in mah friend's mouf."