Have you ever had such an intimate relationship with the written word, that you could literally feel a book calling out to you to be claimed, to be consumed and to be regurgitated into new revelations? I recently had such a moment. Zora Neale Hurston's book (first published in 1937), "Their Eyes Were Watching God" called to me while I was in the check-out line. I had never heard of it before, but it bore all kinds of accolades on its slim paper cover: Harper Perennial Modern Classic, P.S. insights, interviews and more (included) and a wonderful front cover accolade by Alice Walker, author of "The Color Purple", which reads: "There is no book more important to me than this one."
I found it fascinating that I had never heard of it. The 20- something Borders Clerk even told me at checkout that he had read the book for school and found it to be one of the best he had come across. So the words whisper to me to claim this slim volume above all of the other books and periodicals who have taken up residence in my house long before its arrival. I am simply hoping to be inspired and mired within that inspiration should be a desire to spin my own story. As Neale Hurston says in the book, "...there is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you."
I want to feel the agony and birth of my words and to revel in the afterglow of creation.
Copyright Michelle Beckham-Corbin
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