All eyes on Zora

Harlem Renaissance writer's signature work the centerpiece of Lowcountry reading project

Harlem Renaissance writer's signature work the centerpiece of Lowcountry reading project

Charleston County Library
Provided

Zora Neale Hurston spent time in Beaufort studying African American folkways. Provided by Charleston County Library.

You won't need a library card to check this book out.

Zora Neale Hurston's novel, "Their Eyes Were Watching God," is the centerpiece of a National Endowment for the Arts literacy program, The Big Read, being brought to the Lowcountry by the Charleston County Public Library and its partners and sponsors.

The program starts today and runs through Oct. 14 with dozens of events planned at the county's 16 libraries and other venues.

At 2 p.m. today on the steps of Gaillard Municipal Auditorium, Ann Caldwell and the Magnolia Singers will perform Gullah and gospel songs to set the tone for the monthlong series of events. From 4 to 6 p.m. at the College of Charleston's Simons Center for the Arts, Hurston's niece, Lucy Anne Hurston, will discuss her aunt's much-scrutinized life, her work and her literary legacy.

Other activities include musical offerings, writing contests, poetry readings, story-telling, art and photo exhibitions, a one-woman show on Hurston, readings, films and book discussions.

"The library has been interested in doing a communitywide project for several years, and this was a wonderful opportunity," said Cynthia Bledsoe, Main Library manager. "It had a national level of recognition that would help us sell it to the community. So we started and submitted the grant in April. ... This is the kind of thing you could easily spend a year planning."

Bledsoe found out at the end of May that the library got the grant and would be one of 117 sites around the country doing The Big Read.

The grant is for $20,000. Applicants were given a request range of $5,000 to $20,000. "We got the max, so we're thrilled," Bledsoe said.

The NEA gave applicants eight to 10 books to choose from, Bledsoe said, and the Charleston County Library picked Hurston's highly acclaimed signature work.

She continued, "We felt this was the perfect one for our community. It's a compelling story and it stands on its own. We also thought it would give us a real opportunity to acknowledge the contributions of African-Americans to Charleston. ... There are people who are so thrilled by the book and people who have never even heard of it, and that in and of itself makes it a good conversation starter. We had to do a little bit of education since Charleston has never had a one-book community event."

Famed Gullah artist Jonathan Green donated use of his art piece, "The Mather School," as the Charleston County Big Read's official image. Green said he partnered with the project for a couple of reasons. "It (The Big Read) offers all of us an opportunity to seek," he said. "Zora, in my opinion, is our archivist for the African-American diaspora. Without what she did, we would not have the substantive understanding we do of our culture. She was a genius."

Hurston (1891-1960), born in Notasulga, Ala., was a controversial anthropologist, folklorist and author prominent during the Harlem Renaissance, a flowering of African-American arts in the first third of the 20th century. She smoked cigarettes in public, wore pants and drove cars. She studied and did field research on black culture, including a 1940 stint in Beaufort, where she looked at Gullah church practices, among other things.

"Their Eyes Were Watching God" is the story of a young African-American woman's multilevel journey for personal fulfillment.

Phyllis McEwen of Tampa, Fla., also thinks the world of Hurston. So much so, she's been doing performance art on Hurston's life and work since 1990. She will be staging "Zora Alive!" twice on Oct. 2: 4 p.m. at the Mount Pleasant Regional Library and 7 p.m. at the St. Andrews Regional Library. She does stories and songs in character.

Bledsoe thinks the literacy project is needed here. "We're struggling," she said of Charleston County. "We have a long way to go for people to see that literacy is important not just for its own sake, but that it allows those who are literate to use it in their lives and bring something to their community.

"The NEA says people who read are more active in their communities. People who read are seen sometimes as recluses, but those who read are more likely to vote, do volunteer work, all sorts of things. It (literacy) makes for a healthy community."

The Post and Courier has reported that South Carolina has the lowest on-time high school graduation rate in the nation, with only 54 percent of its students receiving a diploma in four years, according to a recent study. The Charleston County School District's rate was the worst in the Lowcountry, with only 45.3 percent of students earning a diploma, according to 2003-04 data that the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center used in this study.