MountainMornings

It’s Book Club time again. Tonight we’ll be discussing Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston. In our club, the woman who hosts that night at her house gets to pick the book, and I’m excited to discuss this 1930’s African American coming of age novel. Born in 1891, Ms Hurston grew up in the country’s first incorporated Black township in Eatonville, Florida. By the time she died in 1960, penniless and working as a maid, this Harlem Renaissance author had published several short stories, screenplays, eight novels and four childrens’ books.

I had trouble digging into this book simply because of the language. Her dialogue is pure early, Black Southern vernacular. “Speakin’ of winds, he’s de wind and we’se de grass,…he’s got uh throne in de seat of his pants,” is a good example of how grammar is exchanged for metaphor which I finally loved to read slowly and savor. Because I could identify with Janie, who was in some ways Hurston herself. Her grandmother wanted her to marry well and sit up high on the porch, listening to the stories of others and never giving voice to her own.

It was wonderful to see on CNN this morning our Black Congresswomen coming to the aide of a white Florida delegate, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, after a Black male delegate, R- Allen West called her out in an email to shut her mouth and start acting like a lady! Are we still talking semantics or is there something more sinister here? The numbers of women in our Capital building are dwindling partially because of this patently absurd culture.

My first post-college job in 1973 was at the Fremont Street Head Start Pre-School in Jersey City, NJ. My four year olds were precious, and their parents wanted only the best possible education for them, not unlike any other Caucasian parents. But we had to deal with drug users and sellers in the alleys, broken glass on the cement playground where the equipment had to be hauled inside every night, and burnt out buildings in the neighborhood instead of parks. My eyes were opened as I began to understand their dialect, and the multi-generational language of poverty.

We’re having a heat wave right now on both sides of the mountains. Tonight will bring some cooler heads to this porch of smart Southern women.