Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

As I read this book, I spent a lot of time thinking about the role of Okonkwo. While he has a number of flaws (his temper, for example), he definitely fills the role of a tragic hero for me. This book, like Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God definitely has an anthropological bent--but here that bent turns metafictional as the narrator reflects on masculine and feminine stories. Finally the book's critique of colonialism is both scathing and heart-rending.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

When I re-read this book, I particularly enjoyed tracing the anthropological strain (manifested in the author's use of folk tales) throughout the book. I wondered a little about Janie's development: she always defines herself as a romantic self (that is, she ends her childhood when she is attracted to a young man, and she becomes a woman when her illusions about the romance of marriage are crushed, for example). It was frustrating to me that there seemed to be little interest in Janie's development of herself for herself.