MCC Participates in “Common Read” for Third Year with Novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Manchester, Conn. (September 21, 2016) – Manchester Community College is kicking off its participation in the annual “Common Read” program. After a great success with last year’s book, The Beach, by Alex Garland, MCC faculty, students and the surrounding community will switch focus to another exceptional book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston. The first book discussion group will meet Friday, September 23, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in the MCC library. For more detail and the full schedule of discussion groups, visit http://libguides.manchestercc.edu/theireyes.

In addition, “Common Read” will focus on the art of the Harlem Renaissance. Professor Olivia Chang, co-chair of the MCC Visual Fine Arts department, will deliver a lecture about the era on October 4 from 1 to 2 p.m. in the SBM Charitable Foundation Auditorium. Through the lecture, readers will be able to better understand the time period in which Zora lived, studied, worked and wrote.

The “Common Read” is a very popular program implemented across the country within schools and communities. It is because this program, and ones like it, that the number of people who read a book in America went from 16 percent in 2014 to 23 percent in 2015. The program invites all participants to read and engage in one single text that explores controversial topics such as racism, ethics and poverty.

“It is a wonderful way to enrich the campus and bring the whole community together,” according to Rosalyn Wormack, MCC’s “Common Read” coordinator. “The program brings up so many important topics that ignite conversations from so many diverse groups. It brings together people of all ages, cultures and backgrounds.”

Their Eyes Were Watching God has an immediate and personal connection with MCC. Alumna and Professor Lucy Hurston ’93, Chair of the Sociology Department, is the author’s niece.

Professor Hurston kicked off the “Common Read” with a lecture about the author, her aunt, Zora Neale Hurston.

Professor Hurston recently introduced this year’s novel with a keynote talk about her aunt and her book at an assembly earlier this month. Zora Neale Hurston grew up in the 1800s in a small town in the south and faced many hardships as a young female African American writer in the 1930s. In her speech, Hurston explained how Zora was only one generation out of slavery and how she loved living in her small friendly town of Eatonville, Fla. She was one of eight children, and all eight of them went on to college and successful careers.

“This was almost unheard of at the time,” Professor Hurston said. “It wasn’t until she left Eatonville, due to the death of her mother and remarriage of her father, that she faced racism and hatred for the first time.”

Based on this experience and her extensive training as a Cultural Anthropologist, Zora was determined to write about the truths regarding equality of different races and cultures. She immersed herself into her stories by traveling and living the lives of those she wrote about, and she tried to live as close as possible to the culture she was writing about so that she could experience first-hand what their lives were like.

“She also broke almost all of the traditional gender roles for her time,” Professor Hurston noted. “She wore pants, smoke and drank regularly, and traveled alone. She was wise beyond her years and time period. She simply wanted to integrate different cultures and races into the schools and into people’s lives.”

Professor Hurston added, “My aunt once said, ‘We are all the same. We are just different in our sameness”.”

To learn more or to get the schedule for the book discussions, contact Rosalyn Wormack, at 860.512.2618 or email her at rwormack@manchestercc.edu.