Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick

Another month, another book club post. As usual, the discussion was super enlightening and made me realize things about the book that I hadn't even considered when reading.

As a summary, this book is a collection of short stories written by iconic Zora Neale Hurston (author of Their Eyes Were Watching God). The book technically centers the Harlem Renaissance, although not all of the stories take place during this time period.

I found that a number of these stories were really well written and stuck with me in memory (lots of iconic girl-boss wives who get revenge on unfaithful husbands). Some stories, however, were definitely not my cup of tea and just didn't really capture my attention.

The biggest reason I would recommend this book to aspiring writers and critical readers, which is something I only realized after our Book Club discussion, is that this book really highlights Hurston's GROWTH in writing ability. It was incredible to see how some of the classic Hurston writing techniques (transition between more “rural” / localized language to more “technically advanced” writing) developed over time. I used quotes because I'm not sure how else to describe that our use of “proper” English is inherently classist and doesn't reflect the nuance or beauty found in the English language. Additionally, seeing how the same character names came up in different stories really revealed a lot about Hurston's process — a must read for people learning to develop these writing skills!