The Big Read at The Loft
Here at the Loft, all eyes have been busy lately reading Zora Neale Hurston’s classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. The Loft is one of ten sites selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for the inaugural year of The Big Read, a national initiative to encourage literary reading by asking communities to come together to read and discuss one book.
Unlike many of my younger colleagues, I did not read Their Eyes Were Watching God as a required text for a college course. But I did read the novel in college, not for a class but for the joy of discovering Hurston’s voice. As a literature major in Washington, DC, I had designed an independent study project on African-American women poets. Few of those voices were being taught in my courses, and I was hungry for what I was not being fed. More than twenty years later, I still remember riding the Metro one Saturday morning to the Eastern Market stop and spending most of the afternoon in Lamma’s, DC’s lesbian/feminist book store. The only man in the store, I was eyed somewhat suspiciously by other customers and staff. One of the clerks brusquely asked if I needed help finding anything. As I explained my project to her, I could see her body relax. She led me to the poetry section and started handing me titles she said I needed to have.
Among the volumes she handed me was Alice Walker’s Revolutionary Petunias. I was hooked and started looking up every Alice Walker title I could find. The Color Purple was not yet published, but there were plenty of other titles, including I Love Myself When I Am Laughing…And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader. Like so many others, I was introduced to Hurston through Alice Walker. I spent the summer reading as many of Hurston’s books as I could find. When The Color Purple came out that year, I saw Zora in every description of Shug Avery.
Those books have been packed and unpacked so many times over the last few decades. The titles I want to reread compete with the titles I have yet to read, which are in competition with all the other things that need to be done in a day. So it is an absolute joy to pick up my old edition – a 1978 edition from the University of Illinois, free of “now a made-for-television-movie” stickers – and to read again the life of Janie Mae Crawford. It is like finally visiting an old friend I haven’t seen in years, but have thought of often.
Maybe Their Eyes Are Watching God is an old friend of yours as well. Perhaps it is a book you haven’t yet read. All of us involved in The Big Read look forward to reuniting you with, or introducing you to, that friend.
There are great events planned throughout May and June for The Big Read. There will be a Big Read edition of Talking Volumes, our partnership with Minnesota Public Radio and the Minneapolis Star Tribune, featuring Edwidge Danticat, author of several works of fiction including Breath, Eyes, Memory, the June selection of Oprah’s Book Club. A native of Haiti, Ms. Danticat wrote the foreword to the most recent edition of Their Eyes Were Watching God, which Zora Neale Hurston wrote in seven weeks while on a Guggenheim Fellowship to Haiti. Dramatic readings from Their Eyes Were Watching God by T. Mychael Rambo and Sonja Parks and singing by Regina Williams will be featured, along with a conversation between MPR’s Kerri Miller and Edwidge Danticat about Hurston’s work and influence on generations of writers.
Other planned events include a lecture on the women of the Harlem Renaissance by Dr. Michelle Wright, in partnership with the Givens Collection of African-American Literature at the University of Minnesota; a special Big Read edition of “Raking Through Books,” our monthly happy hour book club at Kieran’s Irish Pub cosponsored by Rake magazine; an evening with Zora Neale Hurston’s niece, Lucy Anne Hurston, author of Speak, So That You May Speak Again: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston; family storytelling events; Big Read displays in the May Day Parade and in the Hennepin County Government Center; and much, much more. You can find more information about these activities in the events section of this site.
We are working with a wide range of community partners on The Big Read. Most importantly, we’ll be working with you. If you belong to a book club and would like to include Their Eyes Were Watching God in your spring reading list, we would love to hear from you. Call 612-215-2592 to register your book club and we will send you The Big Read packet, which includes reading guides, bookmarks, buttons, and information on the Loft’s Big Read events. If you aren’t a member of a book club but would like to join one, we will have several starting at the Loft. If you’d like to form your own book club at your workplace, with your alumni association, in your place of worship, or with a group of friends, and would like to know how to start, we can help.
