/lit/ - Literature

>>10073634
>not reading ethnic literature

>be me
>study trans Latinx postmodern discourse
>write dissertation on "The Dialectics of the Racemic Race-Myth of African/Europ[oor/ean] Symbol-Literature"
>get tenure track professorship at Harvard University
>teach class on African Literatures: The Narrative of Colonialism
>draft syllabus
>Complete Works of Shakespeare

comfy feel lads

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/10/young-adult-fiction-doesnt-need-to-be-a-gateway-to-the-classics/381959/#article-comments

>I'm sure that comparing Riordan to Hemingway is going to cause a certain amount of wailing and denunciation. But that's the thing about aesthetics; there isn't a single standard, or a single agreed-upon rubric for what is "good." Graham tentatively suggests that the Percy Jackson books are too beholden to their own time, and timelessness or universality is, of course, often used as a measure of quality. But it's not a very convincing measure.

>As just one example, most of the classic children's literature books—Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Narnia, Treasure Island—look very dated today by virtue of their overwhelming whiteness, their time-bound, helpless inability to imagine that people come in more than one skin color. Rick Riordan, in contrast, takes care in his books to include heroes of many ethnic backgrounds: Hispanic, black, Asian, and Native American, as well as white. Children of the gods in his novels also often have learning disabilities; dyslexia is seen not as a failure, but as a mark of specialness or heroism. Thomas told me, "I do think that [Riordan] does a better job with diversity than some of the middle-grade texts I grew up with," and she added that the books were very popular among her nephews and nieces, and among the middle-school children she works with in Philadelphia. Riordan has a more thoughtful, original, aesthetically considered take on issues of marginalization and diversity than do the D'Aulaires, or for that matter, than does Hemingway. It seems likely that many kids take that into account, in various ways, when they respond to his books. Should we really be so quick to assume that their taste is debased?

>That's a lesson that adults have trouble with, if the condescension and contempt in the discussion of children's reading is any indication. Maybe the people who really need to read Percy Jackson are the grown-ups.

>reading /lit/ on the merit that it was written by a little black girl