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NEA’s Big Read Focuses on Classic
Novel
by Zora Neale Hurston ’28
updated 09.26.07
The National Endowment for the Arts has selected Their Eyes Were Watching God, the renowned novel by Zora Neale Hurston ’28, as a focus of this year’s Big Read initiative. To date, more than 100 communities have joined The Big Read, in which groups across the country read and discuss the same literary masterpiece. The national initiative’s stated goal is “to restore reading to the center of American culture.” Communities reading Hurston's book include Detroit, Charleston, Jacksonville, and Berkeley.
According to the NEA, Hurston’s “vibrant and achingly human novel,” first published in 1937, is a work that “breathes and bleeds a whole life’s worth of urgent experience,” and, like all great books, “awakens our imagination and enlarges our humanity.” More information on The Big Read, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and other books included on the NEA’s recommended reading list this year is featured on The Big Read website.
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