/lit/ - Literature

Be honest, you only read Invisible Man and half of Beloved.

>>10513784
>read your thread
nah

>>10513797
Like most high schools, our teachers made sure to give us the white guilt curriculum to the maximum extent possible.
We had to read Native Son, Their Eyes Were Watching God, read Angelou's and Hughes' poems, and we had to watch The Color Purple movie.
I'm familiar enough with the "muh struggle" subgenre of literature.

>>10513784
kek I had a "non-binary" shaved head coworker who quoted Toni Morrison at every opportunity

Did you expect them to say it's easy? Not sure what you're looking for.

>>10513821
I'm not doubting you, but I think you might be confusing her with Maya Angelou. She's usually the token black woman with "inspirational" quotes that tumblr girls love.

I don't think you've really read those authors and if you did your imagination must be stagnant to boil down works of art to a single sentence.

They may say that, but it isn't all they have to say. Stop being ao reductive.

>>10513862
see
>>10513814

And any of the ones I haven't read, I know the general plots. These stories aren't exactly complex and most of them are interchangeable, and you don't need to read them to get the basic idea.

>>10513814
So you haven't read all of the authors you listed?

While Ralph Ellison was primarily concerned with race I've found the themes in "Invisible Man" to be applicable to many aspects of my life.

>>10513784
thank god my father was a mulatto and his mother was a mulatto as well, what little mental capacity i have over the monkey horde is a gracious gift.

>>10513875
>These stories aren't exactly complex and most of them are interchangeable
Bullshit. The Bluest Eye's use of poetic imagery and symbolism differentiates it from everything else there.
>B-but I sparknoted them
READ THE BOOKS FAGGOT. THIS BOARD IF FOR PEOPLE WHO READ. IF YOU HAVEN'T READ A BOOK DON'T FUCKING POST ABOUT IT.

>one culture oppresses another culture

>dominant culture complains that oppressed culture complains too much about having a hard time of it

>oppressed culture makes dominant culture feel guilty whenever it gets the chance

>dominant culture now feels oppressed and complains they are being treated unfairly

> ?

Is this the power of this timeline?

>>10513891
>using an oppressed-oppressor binary and expecting to understand anything
You should just give up at this point.

>>10513905
What would your explanation be?

>>10513891
Blacks had 150 years to get their shit together. White people aren't the reason why their lives suck.

>>10513909
>Blacks had 150 years to get their shit together
Not really

>>10513909
>oppression against blacks ended after slavery ended
you are the dumbest person I have ever seen

>>10513890
You don't need to read every book to make a judgment about it. Some things are just self evident.

Do you listen to Insane Clown Posse's new album every time to give it a fair unbiased review?
Do you eat poison mushrooms to see if they really do kill you?
Do you travel to Mogadishu to see if it isn't a third world shithole and might actually be a nice place to visit?

No of course you don't. So get the fuck off your high horse.

>>10513909
Wypipo invented the modern welfare state and made abortions more restrictive

>>10513922
Quality rebuttal. I expect nothing less.

>>10513930
Look a this fag and his false equivalency
Of course you're a proud non-reader

>>10513930
>You don't need to read every book to make a judgment about it.
Yes, you fucking do. I'm not even going to read the rest of your post, because the sheer retardation of this sentence has me in awe.

>>10513859
nope it was Toni for sure, this was an advanced specimen

>>10513922
>>10513943

>You're dumb
>You're a retard

So this.....is the power of leftist argument tactics.

>>10513942
In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad.

>>10513943
Oh so in that case, I'm assuming you've read the complete Twilight series, the complete Harry Potter series, the complete 50 Shades series, every John Grisham novel, every Danielle Steel novel, every Tom Clancy novel, every Stephen King novel.
Because of course, you can't make a judgment on their merit otherwise right?

>>10513922
so why did sub-saharan africa suck long before the white man showed up?

>>10513969
No you don't, silly
You can read 'bad books to understand just how bad they really are
The same for 'good' books
You're just rationalizing your a-priori notions that black Americans aren't worth reading

>>10513891
>>one culture oppresses another culture
>Abstracting the identity of an individual author into some vague, rudimentary collective binary based on oppression
Ask me how I know you're a women

>>10513941
>>10513959
>>10513994
you guys are retarded because anyone familiar with even a little bit of us history could tell you that jim crow laws were still oppressing blacks after slavery ended

>>10514011

>I can't stop beating my girlfriend, quit heroin and get a job because white people made it illegal for me to drink out of certain water fountains

>>10514024
Bro they couldn't vote or go to decent schools. Why are you trolling?
Blackie managed to do alright because they had the nuclear family until the welfare state DESTROYED black fatherhood

>>10513995
You called me a non-reader. I read a great deal, just not your pulp.

I can't blame black American authors for writing about their experience, I'm just not interested any longer. I did like Baldwin, but forcing other, usually subpar authors into curriculum just to keep hammering racial suffering is fucking annoying.

>>10513995
Do you need to eat a dead sewer rat to know it's poor fare? Protip, there are other ways to discern the quality of something short of consuming it. You use related information. I don't need to read Fifty Shades of Grey to know it's trash, I can make that assessment based on who wrote it, who reads it, why it is popular, etc...

I mean, almost all of the "great" black authors are artificially "great" as >>10514042 explains, they are promoted based on agenda, not merit.

Take Toni Morrison for example, she didn't win the Nobel prize when her books were released/relevant, what followed was a giant fucking protest/chimp out by the left and whopptidoo, suddenly she wins it in 93. Look it up, this happened. This happens everywhere, all the time.

>>10514068
you keep using a false equivalency
avoiding eating food that will make you sick is not the same as reading authors you are prejudiced against

black authors do get shilled by white guilt cucks but that doesn't mean they don't have something to offer

you're being purposelessly close-minded for political reasons. there are plenty of reasons to dismiss these authors but those stem from merit which you can only point out of if you actually read them

the female black authors are nigh irredeemable tho

>>10514042
>>10513784
>like Baldwin
Fyi OP Baldwin did write a book that had nothing to do with race called Giovanni's room. It's actually quite good, I reccomend it
no homo

>>10514111
>avoiding eating food that will make you sick is not the same as reading authors you are prejudiced against
There's nothing false about it, both are unpleasant and unwise endeavors that take the place of better choices. It's not prejudice, it's just fact.

>>10514111
How is the equivalence false? The point is simply you don't need to be personally familiar with an act to have some understanding of it. Are you retarded?

>>10514140
>>10514154
There are biological mechanisms to determine if food is unsuitable for consumption. You have no control over the physiological response, i.e. gagging and vomiting. Nature selected for these traits. You then can generalize the greater class of spoiled food.

The mechanisms to determine if literature is unsuitable for consumption are cultural. Your prejudice against black authors is not innate. It is a post-hoc justification for your intellectual laziness.

>>10513784
>read Dumas
>wow being a french bachelor is awesome

>>10513784
>people writing about their life experiences

imagine that

Why don't they make a book about what it's *really* like to be black?

The world through the eyes of a black person is vastly different than the world through the eyes of a non-black person.

For example, blacks have a very low iq, yet they are still functional where a white person would be retarded. Do you know what this means in terms of perception? It means everything in the world is vaguely threatening, occasionally magical. The motives for other people's behaviour are never truly clear and events are understood in a loose connect-the-dots fashion.

Often times the external world is so perplexing that black people instead create their own reality. This manifests in fake history, blind belief, and skewed interpretations of straightforward knowledge.

Unfortunately the closest you'll ever get to a black person communicating this (for they are so dim in consciousness that self-assessment is impossible) is via their unashamed use of broken english.

>>10513909
In the US segregation (legal discrimination against them) didn't even end until the 60s. Also

>be extremely poor after slavery, pushed into ghettoes
>have and raise children in extreme poverty, violence and drugs ensue
>most of the society outside of them discriminates against them, won't give them opportunities, blame them for the violence and drugs
>these children similarly grow up poor, can't escape the ghetto, cycle repeats

>>10514305
But anon, I already read things written by retarded people. One example would be your post.

>>10514196
>The mechanisms to determine if literature is unsuitable for consumption are cultural.
>there's no such thing as good literature, all literature is equal
>das racist
compelling argument

>>10513814
One of my most vivid childhood memories is my class being led in literally chanting MLK's name in the 2nd or 4th grade by a music teacher. It was pretty wack.

>>10513784
Read Sowell, then come back here and tell me his message is "being black is hard".
>inb4 he gets accused of "acting white"

>>10514360
Dude, Sowell is honorary

>>10514323
Who do they blame for becoming enslaved in the first place then? Is there no point where their lot becomes their responsibility?

>>10514367
Say what you want, he's still black. If you're OP, your post is shit.

>>10514368
I don't believe in white guilt so it's not really a question to me of who to blame, rather that we shouldn't blame an entire community for admittedly kind of sucking a lot (with rampant drug abuse, violence, and poverty) when there's so much historical weight against them and it's hard to reverse this historical weight in the snap of a finger.

>>10514374
Fuck off faggot I'm not the OP, I came here to laugh at you

>>10514380
EPIC burn, dude!

>>10514360
>>10514374
>>10514385
What is your point here anyway?
>Sowell is great in his field, therefore Baldwin is worth a damn
What kind of person finds value in both Sowell and Baldwin?

>>10514378
Why wouldn't you blame them? I don't understand, they are where they are because of their ancestors. Same with anyone else.

>>10513930
>You don't need to read every book to make a judgment about it.

>>10514393
It's the typical liberal delusion that people are totally malleable and that functionality can occur in a vacuum, it's this little mental gymnastic they play while separating the worthiness of someone from their actions "oh but he could have been a good person" that's not how causality works retards.

>>10514391
I'm saying that there is bound to be black literature worth reading, it just may not be mainstream.

>>10514393
Race isn't real, never mind clear and obvious distinctions between supposed races and their circumstances.

>>10514354
>there's no such thing as good literature, all literature is equal
>das racist
You're attacking a straw-man and not my argument at all.Don't be a witless coward.

You don't even know if I like these authors or not. The point is that you have no justification to dismiss authors outright without a thorough examination of their work.

>>10514305
That is not what it is like to be black, it is what it is like to be retarded. You could make the argument that there are more retarded blacks than whites, but not ALL blacks are retarded, and even if you believe that, it is evident that not ALL retards are black. The skin colour of a retarded authour is not really important.

>>10514416
Sorry but that sums up your post perfectly, I made no claim about you liking any authors or not, yours is the strawman.

There's a perfectly valid justification to dismiss authors without directly examining their work, by examining it indirectly, who reads their works, who wrote it, why you're talking about it right now and so forth. In the case of the majority of black authors, those who read it are indoctrinated morons or forced school children, those who write it are fungible indoctrinated morons with racial handicaps cashing in on nu-society's glorification of victimhood, and so on.

You really think it's unreasonable to dismiss, say, a popular children's story as not real art or literature without having read it, based solely on the fact it's written for and appreciated by children? I don't fucking believe you, and neither do you I bet.

>>10514360
Completely based author that always BTFO race-baiters

Idiots ITT are ignorant because they don't like to read and they hate blacks

>>10514423
>The skin colour of a retarded authour is not really important.
Are you familiar with the concept of probability?

>>10514360
Isn't this guy just an uncle Tom who tries to sell books through the controversy of being a black republican? Everyone's got a fucking gimmick these days.

>>10513930
were you born this stupid or was it the fact that your head was up your ass since you were(are?) a teen?

>>10514465
he's not a republican
calling him an uncle tom is character assassination based on his race
you should be ashamed of your ignorance

>>10514465
He's not a Republican though. You can say what you want about how Republicans have endorsed him, but he still is and always was politically independent. He's had several chances to run for office, and he's never taken any. Just read his stuff if you want to know more about him.
>uncle Tom
You really are racist, aren't you? Every minority who doesn't agree with the progressive agenda that minorities are little babies who can't take care of themselves and need to be coddled are "uncle Toms".

>>10514473
>>10514480
>he's not a republican
>He's not a Republican though.

2 seconds of looking him on youtube suggests otherwise, you can find him shitting on Obama for basically no real reason and even doubting climate change, he's completely in line with party politics producing some of their best soundbytes as 'their' black.

>>10514499
Those are independently formed assertions though, he's still independent.

>>10514468
Do you have any actual rebuttal to prove me wrong? Or are you guys just going to keep saying
>wow....i literally can't even....

You people can't form an argument or basic logic to save your lives. It shouldn't be a mystery at all why leftism is crashing everywhere around the world and the narrative is shifting towards the right wing. People everywhere are tired of your bullshit.
Your lives are only going to keep getting more miserable unless you start incorporating facts in your arguments somehow.

>>10514441
>Sorry but that sums up your post perfectly
No, you're empirically wrong.

>perfectly valid justification to dismiss authors without directly examining their work
This is intellectual laziness at it finest. You're not interested in engaging with new ideas and point out their merits or flaws. You only want to preserve your personal bias.

>>10513797
Invisible Man was actually pretty good.

>>10514538
I have no bias, I just recognize reality for what it is. You can't even substantiate your disagreement in any way, you've yet to do so once, all you can do is scream prejudice without engaging the argument whatsoever. It's tiresome.

Wow great thread... thanks /pol/

>>10514546
>I have no bias, I just recognize reality for what it is

>>10514518
Am I speaking to THE J.B Peterson?? It's an honor, sir.

>>10514549
This is unironically probably the best thread /lit/ has had in weeks. You should be thanking me for giving you actual discussion instead of another Joyce or Rupi Kaur meme thread.

>>10514441
Yeah the real victims are white men like us. Where's our glory?

>>10514591
>No I don't need read to books in order to determine whether they're good or not
>Yes you do
>No I don't
>Yea you do
>No I don't
>Repeat ad libitum

Fuck off and die.

>>10514598
Do you think The Hunger Games is a good book? Have you even read it?

>>10514598
You really don't need to read a book to judge it though. It's not even up for debate.

Since you're a hypocrite faggot, you probably did it a half a dozen times today already.
I'm sure since you're a raging cuck, you probably automatically dismiss writers like Ayn Rand without having read her.
>dude like....my professor said Ayn Rand sucks, so...I'm not going to read it lol

We all do it, so don't get up on your holier than thou pedestal and claim you don't.

>>10514612
>You really don't need to read a book to judge it though. It's not even up for debate.

>>10514603
No
Yes, when I was 15, it was a gift from my uncle.
You're confusing selecting which art you want to consume with actually formulating a judgement. Do you think the Jerusalem Delivered is a good book? Have you read it?

>>10514560
>[ ] argument substantiated
>[ ] argument not-substantiated
>[x] argument not-substantiated for the umpteenth time

/lit/ - Not Reading Books & Low-effort /pol/baiting

>>10514628
>Yes
See, I was right to completely dismiss all of your opinions. You're clearly a retard. There's the door.

What's the lit equivalent to Gucci?

>>10514612
>I'm sure since you're a raging cuck, you probably automatically dismiss writers like Ayn Rand without having read her.

Never said a bad word about Ayn Rand in my life, and I'm not even American so I never heard one of my professors say that she sucks. You're projecting.

>>10514612
>i'm ignorant and so are you
Da fuck?
You don't know me.
Not everyone is a stupid boomer like you.

>>10514639
christopher moore

>>10513784
I like Langston Hughes desu.

>>10514633
Woah... so this is power of "basic logic"... I'm impressed.

>>10513784
>You guys don't actually read non-whites and take them seriously right?
Nope, but I'll never utter a word of it outside of my beloved mongolian basket-weaving consortium. You get crucified for speaking the truth in the real world.

>>10514651
>person literally eating their own feces in the middle of the road
>thinking they have a shred of wisdom to share

>>10514657
>looool ur Le Dumb because you read a book on which you didn't know anything about that was a gift by your uncle when you were young and clueless

BASIC
LOGIC
MUDAFFAKKKKKKAAAAAAAS

>>10514499
Shitting on Obama and doubting climate change isn't Republican only positions.

>>10514499
I shit on Obama and climate change and I hate Republicans with all my strenght. If you stop thinking the world is as TV presents it to you, who knows, you might even grow up a bit

>>10513875
A lot of African authors are like that as well. it's always about "life so hard boi!". And they don't change the way they say it as well

>>10513784
>read any white writer
>being white is easy, I'm depressed.

>>10513784
Did you ever consider the possibility that being black might actually be hard? Also, you're being ridiculously reductive.

Hughes, Ellison, Wright, and Baldwin are all pretty good and worth reading IMO (yes, black authors are generally overrated, this is not the same as being bad). Alex Haley is questionable. Achebe, Walker, Hurston, and Angelou are garbage. Toni Morrison is a pretty good stylist even if I dislike everything else about her and her writing.

>>10514793
>t. hasn't read a book in her life
know how i know you're a sheboon?

>>10515046
you can't handle the bantz so you go to namecalling
pretty low my dude

>>10513797
if you think invisible man amounts to >"being black is hard", you misunderstood it.

>>10515004
>being black might actually be hard?
sounds crazy, but it could be possible