First time on /lit/ and all I see are dead white men. Can we discuss our favourite non-white authors?
I'm a massive fan of Chinua Achebe, Ben Okri and James Baldwin. Im about to start reading A brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James anyone here read it?
Also Female Authors.
I've recently learned that Samuel Delany is black, very surprising (and homosexual but that was no surprise). Nova was very meta and pretty OK, I still haven't understood Dhalgren. Is there anything besides Dhalgren one has to have read by Delany?
I didn't know that Octavia Butler was black either.
>>7626499
What I've realised is that Ive mostly only read dead white men, Im just wanting to see if anyone on /lit/ can recommend good literature that was written by others, The works of Achebe/Okri and Baldwin can't really be compared to what Ive read before.
>>7626485
Motherfucker, you are in the heartlands of DWEMs. Now SWTG or GTFO.
>>7626506
Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison
Read the Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads; the Romance of Seven Kingdoms and Journey to the West; The Analects and the Tao Te Ching.
>>7626485
'Non-white' is a crazily broad category. Having said that, Lu Xun and Salman Rushdie.
Non-whites?
Start with the Greeks.
>>7626626
That was before Greeks became a bunch of Turk rape babies though.
>>7626506
Read Mishima, faggot.
Ideology over aesthetics: the thread.
what has the race to do with this? it's about the idea, not the man behind the idea
>>7626719
>thinks aesthetics isn't a form of ideology of the most pleb degree
>>7626744
It isn't.
I think this notion of diversifying one's reading habits would be somewhat less pathetic if people focused on cultures rather than ethnicities. It's actually pretty racist to lump in Marlon James with Chinua Achebe just because they're both black.
That said, if you want to read another African writer, consider Thiong'o. If you like Okri then I think Wizard of the Crow would be your best bet to start with, although I feel A Grain of Wheat is the superior novel.
>>7626506
>What I've realised is that Ive mostly only read dead white men
Because most worthwhile authors have been white men who are now deceased.
>>7626506
Literature is a European art form. Do you go out of your way to listen to rap albums made by old white guys in order to "diversify your listening habits"?
>>7626826
That's poor bait.
>>7626488
Grendhal grendhal grendhal grendhal grendhal grendhal grendhal, and he's a half-caste and everything's halves and halves and interstitial, you get it now, you fucking racist?
>>7626836
It's hyperbole, but the essence makes for a fair argument: certain art-traditions will be local to certain cultural groups and ethnic groups.
>>7626485
>fell for the dead white men meme
It's not like when a white male dies everything they write becomes canon? Its remembered because of its quality.
>>7626485
does anyone know a black author who doesn't write about being black?
>>7626485
I like ink
>>7626485
Brief history was best of 2015, amazing work.
I don't give a fuck about skin color, I do like to read in different cultures.
>>7626855
Pushkin, Dumas
>>7626855
Ops pic. It's about the rise of a crime lord and has aspects of Jamaican nationality. It is not a book about race, except maybe to mock white cia agents at times, but they are really dirty Americans from the 50s
>>7626908
Er 70s
>>7626905
>counting quadroons
>>7626795
Is grain as long as crow
>>7626506
Lallani Moors Account
I am really looking forward to whatever literature comes out of the Arab spring / Iraq wars / Syrian / daesh wars.
>>7626935
You can look forward to some kraut writing the new Mein Kampf
identify politics SJW fags always say "i just want to be diverse and not only read dead white men," but if you recommend them asian authors they'll always find some excuse to not read them before going back to whining about a lack of black authors under the disguise of diversity.
fuck off. you don't want "others," you just want a different kind of homogeneity
>>7627003
*pedro paramo by Juan rulfo
>>7626968
>homogeneity
um could you please define it in this context, English is my second language
>>7626608
How is Rushdie non-white? He's paler than the average southern European.
>>7627023
uniformity/orthodoxy. i.e. they don't actually want to deconstruct power structures, merely to turn the existing one on its head
>>7627028
"white" and "black" are metonyms. race is more than skin hue
>>7627058
In that case surely the "dead white male" meme is completely false. They might have had the "white skin hue" but they were not "white".
>>7627078
Of course it is. Reading for the authors identity is intellectually bankrupt unless you are specifically researching historical Perspectives like Hannah bond or Frederick Douglas.
>>7626850
can my little senpai really be this Pleb?
I ignored this thread for a while because of the way OP worded his post, then a couple hours later came to see if there might have been actual serious replies.
Unsurprisingly my first hunch was mostly correct
>>7627393
There's been a few good replies. Like the Asian classics and the works by black authors.
We have a thread where we're sharing whole collections, for example, Pushkin Press and Twisted Spoon Press. They all cover fairly unknown eastern european authors (polish, ukranian, lithuanian, etc). Tons of women too. Of course, to actual racist pieces of shit like OP, it doesn't matter at all, they're still white, because they only give a fuck about skin colour. But what the fuck does a pole or a lithuanian have in common with a white american? Nothing. If you want diversity, go read authors from small european countries, not more fucking north-americans, be they white, black, yellow or green.
>>7627078
Valid point. Assuming 'white' and 'black' designate a kind of biologically-grounded identity that took off in the 19th century, or biologically+culturally grounded identities that were big in the 20th and 21st, it's clearly anachronistic to call Dante or Shakespeare 'white'.
>>7627436
Dante and Shakespeare may not have self-identified as "white" in the same way we do today, but they clearly fit all of the criteria.
>>7627458
and what does that matter?
>>7626485
Massive fan of Achebe? What are your favourite works?
I've only read Things Fall Apart and found it trite and mediocre. The entire father/son thing was a bore and a cliché, the struggle between conservatism and progression has been done a thousand times before. The only slightly redeeming aspect was the ending, which was, admittedly, quite great.
I really like Borges desu.
>>7627128
Holy shit, this dude is so new he came after the word filter.
>>7626853
Please don't put question marks at the end of statements. It turns mysubvocalizationinto valleyspeak.
>>7627463
They were white.
>>7627436
Well, the "biologically-grounded" "white" of the 19th century is nothing like the contemporary "white". It basically meant "northern Europeans", with the southern ones being the "Mediterranean race".
And if you go back another century, "white" == Anglo-Saxon. Here's Benjamin Franklin in 1751:
>Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.
>Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth.
As ridiculous as it is to call the Swedes dark-skinned, it seems to me no less ridiculous than saying Rushdie is not white. The (culture, skin hue) clustering has changed completely through time and in a completely arbitrary manner...why should we take the current iteration more seriously than any of the previous ones?
>Books that are only famous because their Author is black.
>>7627494
>tfw Brief History is still too new and written by a black author, so it isnt being consumed by /lit/ at even the same rate as Franzen, despite being 10x any of his books and probably the best contemporary fiction in the last 10 years.
>tfw it will be years before we can have brief history conversations that extend past "this book is only popular because the author is a queer nigger"
>>7627546
>implying we read franzen
>>7627547
There has been Franzen threads weekly here for months, and they dribble off after 20 posts.
>>7627546
ABHoSK has received just as much coverage on /lit/ as Purity did. In fact, I think it's on the verge of becoming overrated.
>>7627548
nah, maybe once a month. he's not very popular here and the tone of discourse tends to be dismissive when he does come up
>>7627468
>spanish author
>not white
>>7626720
*woman/trans/gender-fluid
ftfy, cis scum
>>7626719
But whites are uglier
Checkmate
>>7627052
i think you mean "homogeny"
>>7627727
Argentine pls go
>>7626485
Nonwhite authors do get discussed on /lit/. Ignoring your shitty fucking awful bait (god forbid you're serious), Murakami is by far my favourite non white author.
>>7627548
I just buy his books to piss off Jennifer Weiner. I don't actually read them.
>>7628652
I'm actually uruguayan
james joyce, since the irish were never considered white, and their ties to ancient egypt are probably true
I just finished Open City by Teju Cole. It was fine. The prose did all the heavy lifting and the characters and plotting seemed weak and somewhat forced. It felt like watching a one man show instead of a full play. All in all, since it was so short, it wasn't a terrible experience.
I started Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie yesterday. I'm only 30 pages in but they were an enjoyable 30 pages. It seems like it'll be a quick read, and I'm a sucker for love stories so hopefully it'll be a good read as well.
Next I'm gonna hopefully finish Americanah and get through A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara in the break I have next week, but that's probably unlikely. A Little Life sounds fantastic, though, and I'm hella excited for it.
Then I'll be taking a seminar in later British literary tradition, so it's back to dead whiteys for me. At least I got a little bit of a culture break.
>>7628767
That's a non sequitur
>>7627120
i think identity has value when pursuing authenticity though and you are using the phrase intellectually bankrupt wrong here. just keep an eye out for u senpai.
why was everyone so triggered by this thread? op just wanted to discuss non-white authors. what's the big deal?
Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison, that's the good shit...Toni Morrison is like a black American Hermann Hesse, and Ellison's shit is dank shizzle.
Brief History is p good, and u learned the jamaican patois grammar by the time u finished.
>>7628821
>irish were never considered white, and their ties to ancient egypt are probably true
ties to ancient egypt? the irish are aryan u fuckwit, the I sound in Irish is the same in Iran, derived from proto-indo-european word for noble, they were probably the far edge of the pre-historic aryan empire and diaspora, then def didn't have diddly to do with egypt tho
>>7629113
Uhhhhh I wouldn't compare Morrison and Hesse at all. Very distinct from one another. I do very much like Morrison, however.
>>7626485
I've read a few but fuck if I can remember them all. They're mostly Westernized though, so if they aren't talking about black culture in America, race doesn't usually come up (with exceptions, like Jhumpa Lahiri)
>>7626795
> if people focused on cultures rather than ethnicities.
Also this. Culture is the more impacting factor than mere race imo.
>>7628767
Chile was wrong to finger rape Cavani's ass.
Uruguay has my sympathy, anon.
>>7629143
But I can't use culture to fuel my ressentiment!
>>7626485
They are all hacks leave and never come back.
>>7628837
A Little Life is terrible. Could have been half as long, Yanagihara can't write realistic male characters, let alone homosexual ones. Most of the book is misery porn; it tries very, very hard to make you sad with little substance otherwise.
About a quarter way through Midnight's Children right now, it's so sprawling but great
>>7627477
So?
>>7627078
Flannery O'Connor once wrote something in one of her stories about a black man with a white face. It was pretty funny from what I can remember.
Thomas Sowell.
:)
>>7626488
Tales of Navaryon is one of the best fantasies I've ever read
got modern storytelling, but sentences that give you orgasms and doesn't fuck around with hiding "ideology" that lots of fantasy does
>>7627458
>they clearly fit all of the criteria
Not if you think self-identification is one of the criteria. And surely self-identification is a very big part of identity politics.
>>7626488
I dont think you need to understand "Dhalgren" to enjoy it.
