First Summer Read

Their Eyes Were Watching God 

"Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone.  Dawn and doom was in the branches."

I finished my first book of the summer, on this first weekend of summer.  Goodness knows it doesn't feel much like summer though lately.  The city has been cloaked in fog and clouds and rain and humidity, and we really have been having a time of watching the skyline take on all types of different appearances with the fog sectioning off parts of skyscrapers and at times making them disappear altogether.

Summery or not, my summer reading list is off to a great start.  The first one on my list was "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston.  It's a modern classic of American Literature, published in 1937.  The book is known for being the "most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature" and also holds a significant place in women's literature.  While those accolades are true, it's not fussy and it's written in a particular African-American voice, much like "The Help," if you've read that book (one of my all-time favorites!).  It's a love story, as well as a story about a woman finding her voice, about community, and about brokenness and living and possibility and change.  I recommend it, certainly.

The very last paragraph in the book will stay with me forever, I'm pretty sure.  Some of my favorite lines I've ever read:

"She pulled in her horizon like a great fish net.  Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder.  So much of life in its meshes!  She called in her soul to come and see."