February Group Read: Their Eyes Were Watching God

This thread is for everyone who would like to join in the February group read of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, in honor of Black History month. Their Eyes Were Watching God was published in 1937, and is considered a seminal work of African-American literature and women's literature. Please let us know if you will be writing and post your thoughts on the book.

I'll be joining in the read - I've intended to read this book for years, so it's time I finally got around to it. Thanks for organizing!

I'm planning to try and fit this one in/

I've read this book several times, but it's been a few years, so I'll read it again.

ETA: For those who are reading it for the first time, the dialect can be really off-putting at first. Just try reading the sentence aloud and you can usually figure out what it means.

This fits with my Virago Modern Classic category and I have been meaning to read it for awhile - this is a good push.

>4 BookLizard: I started this today and found out exactly that. I have to read it out loud and then I get it!

>5 LisaMorr: I chuckled to myself when I read your post. As I was reading the introduction to the book, on my Kindle, this afternoon, I thought to my self, it would make sense if this was published by Virago and low and behold, it was! Thanks for pointing that out to me!! it will fit with my VMC challenge and also with the Virago Modern Classics Group Read:
Seven Ages of Woman: Marriage and Relationships.

I also find it much more understandable to read it aloud. Thanks for the suggestion, BookLizard. I had started reading the book for the Big Read several years ago but did not get very far into it. Now I'm reading it both for an OLLI adult education class and for this group read and am enjoying it.

>7 ccookie: You're welcome! Always nice when a book helps to meet more than one purpose.

I'm racing through Gone Girl for the Feb RandomCat and will start this next - good to know that reading aloud will help, if necessary.

I started this last night. So far, I'm enjoying the lush natural imagery. The dialect is not bothering me. I'm not reading aloud, but instead of reading it word for word, I'm just trying to get the sense of it as a whole. Dialect is difficult to reproduce on the page, because although you can write it phonetically, it's tough to replicate the rhythms of the speech, which words are drawn out and which ones are barely sounded. Hurston's writing has such a poetry to it.

I just finished, and I haven't yet gathered my thoughts about this book yet, but I absolutely loved it. My first 5-star read of the year. I found it empowering, sensual, beautiful, tragic and yet uplifting.

Some thoughts for further discussion:
* natural imagery is so prevalent -- flowers, bees, water, dirt, seeds, the hurricane -- connecting the natural world to Janie's core nature
* there are some interesting allusions to voodoo, which as an anthropologist, Hurston studied
* this is such a feminist novel -- I found it interesting how Tea Cake turns Janie's life experiences around, as a girl she lived as an old woman and only when she was older did she live as a girl
* this was a very sexy book

I really enjoyed this as well - her imagery was so rich. I didn't have too much of a problem with the dialect, although I did have to resort to saying "I god" out loud to understand the context!

Her grandmother wanted what she thought would be best for her - stability and land, and it took Janie 3 marriages to be happy with her life, even for such a relatively short time. I wonder if she had followed her desires from the beginning, how her life would have turned out.

I'm a bit late in adding my comments here, but I loved this book as well. The writing is so beautiful and vibrant. This was a reread for me, and I'm sure I'll be reading it again at a future time. I think I will seek out an audiobook version next time. Apart from making the dialect easier to follow, I believe that the gorgeous language deserves to be read out loud.