Knowing that it was one of the books on our list to chose from for teaching our English 11 class, and having never read it before, I decided to read Zora Neale Hurston's classic American novel. I did not go into it with high expectations. Life of a black woman who is seeking love in the early 1900s? Yeah, that's not going to end well.
It didn't help that the opening was absolutely painful to read. The region dialect used for any of the dialogue required me to slow my reading down to a crawl as I had to sound out each individual word to make sense of what people were saying. Add in black, southern colloquialisms that are over a century old, and I'm still not certain what everyone said.
I was looking forward to finishing another American classic and, with the proper level of haughty ego that I possess, explain the reasons why I didn't like it.
... Except, despite all of misgivings and prejudices, I ended up liking the book by the time the hurricane hit (in the story. In actuality, Irma was already a mere low pressure front). I could not stop myself from liking Janie and Tea Cake no matter how ill-conceived their marriage was. Even knowing from the first few pages of the novel's frame story that Tea Cake was doomed to die, I found myself hoping against hope that he would make it through the challenges that they faced, only to be ultimately heartbroken by the tragic role that Janie had to play in his death.
I don't think that I can teach it. I had to get more than halfway through the book before I was able to truly get involved in what I was reading. For many of my students, I believe the dialect used will be too high of a wall to climb. Still, I'm at least glad that I took the opportunity to read it for myself.
It didn't help that the opening was absolutely painful to read. The region dialect used for any of the dialogue required me to slow my reading down to a crawl as I had to sound out each individual word to make sense of what people were saying. Add in black, southern colloquialisms that are over a century old, and I'm still not certain what everyone said.
I was looking forward to finishing another American classic and, with the proper level of haughty ego that I possess, explain the reasons why I didn't like it.
... Except, despite all of misgivings and prejudices, I ended up liking the book by the time the hurricane hit (in the story. In actuality, Irma was already a mere low pressure front). I could not stop myself from liking Janie and Tea Cake no matter how ill-conceived their marriage was. Even knowing from the first few pages of the novel's frame story that Tea Cake was doomed to die, I found myself hoping against hope that he would make it through the challenges that they faced, only to be ultimately heartbroken by the tragic role that Janie had to play in his death.
I don't think that I can teach it. I had to get more than halfway through the book before I was able to truly get involved in what I was reading. For many of my students, I believe the dialect used will be too high of a wall to climb. Still, I'm at least glad that I took the opportunity to read it for myself.
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