Sonja and Vanessa play around with the odyssey concept and ask if the story 40-something Janie Crawford tells her BFF, Pheoby, in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God fits the definition of an Odyssey…and if maybe that’s even what Hurston had in mind in her legendary first two paragraphs? Can following an unfamiliar dirt road be like the winds of the Aegean Sea tossing one into the unknown? Is an odyssey about where you or what you ultimately learn about yourself? Can marriages be battles? And what if the hot odyssey-sex involved is not with an strange, immortal witch but with the person you love most in the world? Spoiler alerts! So if you want to read the novel first and then go on this journey with us, Sonja and Vanessa are waiting for you by the gate with idea-bags packed!

Works referenced:

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd

In the seventh episode of IWAW’s Odyssey series, Sonja and Vanessa circle back to Penelope–home base of The Odyssey in so many ways–by reading and discussing Margaret Atwood’s brief, poetic, witty take on how Penelope really feels about her absent husband. Plus, Atwood gives voice to “the maidens,” a multiple murder that can’t be left off Odysseus’s hero resume. Spoiler Alert for Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad!

The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson

Margaret Atwood's website

Can Odysseus even HAVE an Odyssey without female characters to help him, terrorize him, and sometimes both? Join Sonja and Vanessa as their guest, classics scholar Amy Meyers, dishes on Scylla, the Sirens, and the intimidating goddess, Athena. Like an arrow through a dozen axe holes lined up, Homer’s male hero shoots through the decidedly feminine architecture of his labyrinthian odyssey.

Sources mentioned:

The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson

The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles

The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer's Odyssey by Beth Cohen