The Frame

This is Zora Neale Hurston’s best-known book, and the one with the most critical literature on it. I know this is true because I almost wrote about it myself but got bogged down in all the criticism I would’ve had to read first. *shudder* I did enjoy it, once I learned to read the dialect (actually, I started thinking in the dialect for a while), but I’m not sure I understand the attention it gets. Actually, I do. It’s a work written in the 1930s by a black woman writer. Add in a story which can be read as a feminist manifesto (it isn’t really, in my opinion), and you’ve got instant success among feminist and postcolonial critics. Anyway, the story follows Janie Crawford through her three marriages as she moves toward self-fulfilment; she’s a great character, and her tale is well worth reading, both for itself and for Hurston’s subtle yet innovative narrative techniques.
Well Above Average