Get Lit!
If you’re in a book club or looking for reading ideas, join us as we read great books.
Each month, our Atlanta Burning Book Club will select and author who will soon visit the Literary Center at the Margaret Mitchell House.
Why should your book club register with us?
- Early updates on authors visiting The Lit Center.
- Exclusive opportunities to engage with select authors.
- Networking opportunities with other book clubs.
- Bring six or more members from your book club to a Lit Center event and pay just $5 per person (regular admission is $10 for nonmembers). Pre-payment is required: 404.814.2063.
To register, email us your book club name, number of members, and a contact name with email address.
February 2010 Selection
Zora Neale Hurston
Their Eyes Were Watching God
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 Synopsis
The epic tale of Janie Crawford, whose quest for identity takes her on a journey during which she learns what love is, experiences life's joys and sorrows, and comes home to herself in peace. When first published in 1937, this novel about a proud, independent black woman was generally dismissed by male reviewers. Out of print for almost thirty years, but reissued in paperback by the University of Illinois Press in 1978, Their Eyes Were Watching God has become the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature.
With haunting sympathy and piercing immediacy, Their Eyes Were Watching God tells the story of Janie Crawford's evolving selfhood through three marriages. Light-skinned, long-haired, dreamy as a child, Janie grows up expecting better treatment than she gets until she meets Tea Cake, a younger man who engages her heart and spirit in equal measure and gives her the chance to enjoy life without being a man's mule or adornment. Though Jaine's story does not end happily, it does draw to a satisfying conclusion. Janie is one black woman who doesn't have to live lost in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or foolish romantic dreams, instead Janie proclaims that she has done "two things everbody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves."
Reviews
"There is no book more important to me than this one." -- Alice Walker
"THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD belongs in the same category with [the works of] William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway, that of enduring American literature.”--Saturday Review
"[A] brilliant novel about a woman's search for her authentic self and for real love." -- Edwidge Danticat
The Big Read • Reader's Guide • Radio Show • Zora's Web site
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