The Big Read Celebrates Their Eyes Were Watching God

"Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things
enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom were in the branches."

February is Black History Month. It is also the month of an annual event called the African American Read In, a National Council of Teachers of English-sponsored festival promoting literacy, heritage and imagination. For years, the Decatur campus LTC has rallied campus participation in this event, and this year is no different.

Overlapping the African American Read-In is another major literary event called The Big Read, a National Endowment for the Arts initiative "designed to restore reading to the center of American culture [and] encourage reading for pleasure and enlightenment. " How it works is that a title is selected and everyone within a particular community agrees to read and discuss it.

This year's pick for Atlanta is Zora Neale Hurston's classic love story, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

The Atlanta History Center will be hosting its Big Read kick off on February 17 with a free Harlem Renaissance themed party, complete with music and a photographic exhibition titled Let Your Motto Be Resistance. AHC has also planned a host of festivities stretching throughout February and March.

Stay tuned as our Learning and Tutoring Center announces its own line up of events celebrating the African American Read In and Atlanta's Big Read.

Of course, be sure to check out Their Eyes from the campus or local library, buy it from a bookstore or order a copy online, and celebrate Black History Month by letting books like this one lift your imagination to greater heights!