/lit/ - Literature

Probably Native Son by Umbonga LaShonte

Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe

RIP in peace ;_;

i read Cosbyology two weeks ago

>I have never read a book by a black author.

Never.

Maybe I'd read something if all books by niggers weren't about how tough it's being niggers.

>>3864030
>Maybe I'd read something if all books by niggers weren't about how tough it's being niggers.
You were mislead by your shitty professor.

Novels written by blacks are usually about how shitty black people are.

Dumas is the only black man I read.

>>3864057
>It's tough being a nigger because of all the niggers

Find me one that does't write about slavery, jim crow, or African pride.

>>3864084

Things Fall Apart isn't about African Pride, Slavery, or Jim Crow.

It's about how fundamentalism doesn't work no matter what it pertains to. Colonialist fundamentalism pertaining to culture and religion doesn't work. African indigenous fundamentalism pertaining to culture and religion doesn't work either.

Give it a read, it's a good book.

there was this fantasy series that drew off African myths/history the same way LOTR/GoT draws off European myths/history

can't remember the title or author though

>>3864108
Are you sure it's written by a black person? Just because it drew it's inspiration from Afrrican myths/history dosn't mean anything.

>>3864084
>It's tough being a nigger because of all the niggers
Yeah, that's pretty much the plot of any novel written by a black writer.
>Find me one that does't write about slavery, jim crow, or African pride.
Lots and lots of them. Good lord, try harder, this is some 1/10 shit here.

>>3864132
>Lots and lots of them.
>Doesn't mention one.

Not even that guy, but come on, man. Don't do this "actually, there are lots of them, but I'm not going to mention any because I want you to remain ignorant" nonsense.

>>3864138
Toni Morrison's "Song of Solomon" doesn't feature any of those three topics as a plot device. (She's the most famous black writer, I guess that should count, right?)

Why so racist OP?

>>3864131
yeah it was he had a picture in the book jacket

>>3864138
Not that guy, but James Baldwin is a great author. Giovanni's Room in particular is a phenomenal novel.

>tfw when you realise you've never actually read any book written by a black person.

Not even kidding right now, not being racist, I just never really thought about it and now I'm surprised at the thought lel.

So where does one start with black literature? *trying hard not to say niggerature*

Read Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, OP.
That should change your mind.
Also, all of Achebe's oeuvre, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Native Son by Richard Wright, Ngugi wa'Thiong'o, Nuruddin Farah. There's lots of great novels by black authors.

>>3864247
>niggerature
I'm going to ignore that. Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Amiri Baraka, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison. Not an exhaustive list by any means, but a decent place to start.

I read Things Fall Apart last week.

Has a black person ever written a book without explicitly mentioning black people?

>>3864149
I was just curious.

>>3864149
>this awful bait

There must be like 50 great white authors for every great black author.

>>3864247
>not being racist
You shouldn't even have to clarify that.

>>3864296
At least, but that's more a product of longstanding social disincentive for black artists than any sort of race-based difference in skill.

A Man of the People - Chinua Achebe

It's a funny look at political corruption after decolonization.

>>3864259
Ugh. Apart from Ellison those authors fucking suck.

>>3864296
50? More like 5000.

>>3864308
I disagree. Besides, I didn't post them for you. I posted them for the anon who claimed he'd never read a novel by a black person.

>>3864308
>Toni Morrison
>James Baldwin
>Langston Hughes

Haven't read Baraka and am not a fan of Hurston, but you're dead fucking wrong buddy.

The Interesting Narrative by Olaudah Equiano. It was indeed interesting.

>>3864275
Has a white person ever written a book without explicitly mentioning white people?

James Baldwin fits the bill: Giovanni's Room is just about gay people.

>>3864030
>Implying all books by whites aren't about how tough it is being white

>>3864310
> 5000? More like over 9000

>>3864324
I hate all three of them, especially Morrison. I was going to include Thiong'o as a black author that doesn't suck, but then I realised it was a different post that mentioned him. I also quite like Tutuola, Selvon and Himes, but these guys are never taught on literature courses for some reason.

>>3864334
Never heard of them. Give me a good book for each, I'll throw them in my wish list.

>>3864334
>I hate all three of them, especially Morrison.
Morrison is good, if you actually bother to read what she actually writes. (Instead of reading 'interpretations' of her writing by batshit libtard professors.)

>>3864337
A Grain of Wheat
The Palm Wine Drinkard
The Lonely Londoners
A Rage in Harlem

>poor people
>writing

How does the virtue of having dark skin have any impact on their writing? Why should I give a fuck if they are black? Why should they receive special status and recognition?

>inb4 muh opression

>>3864378
Because culture and disparity in experience is real you fucking idiotic Americunt, not everyone is some bland Ayn Randian ubermensch who sprung from the suburban earth by the sheer force of their bootstraps.

>>3864380
>disparity
>muh oppression
I don't give a fuck about their plight. Not because of ignorance, but because I knowingly choose to not empathize with them. My life is easy. Why should I give a fuck?

>inb4 my feelings

I read De Bello Gallico last week. Wait, fuck, doesn't count. Not a novel.

Um, Things Fall Apart?

>>3864382
You should give a fuck so as not to be the most incredibly dull and boring type of person on the planet, you settler faggot

>>3864382
I think the point he was making is that it's interesting and refreshing to read things from a different perspective sometimes, and might even help you understand these people a bit better.

>>3864403
Black Jewish lesbian detected

Stop enriching me

>>3864380

And this is the prevailing attitude among undergraduates the world over. Get some negative capability, dullard.

>>3864008
I read this last week. Excellent book. You plan on reading the rest of the trilogy?

>>3864408

>negative capability

My nigga.

>>3864403
>muh ethnicity
>muh diversity
>muh enrichment
good god you guys are tedious

>>3864406
>implying i don't already understand these people
I dont think you read my post. I dont give a fuck about them. I have nothing in common with them and have no stake in their well-being.

>muh hardships
>muh oppression
>muh perspective

The answer here, as always, is to resist the temptation to bring the author's race into evaluation of the work.

Unless you're talking about Fanon or something, where the author's race is integral to the text itself.

But even then it's somewhat circumstantial. It's like asking 'When was the last time you read a book written by a mentally ill person, /lit/'?

>>3864469
When I read nietzsche

>>3864342
This. She's a remarkably lyrical writer.

I didn't give a shit about some hicks, but I still enjoyed The Grapes of Wrath.

>>3864474

Morrison is somewhere between David Foster Wallace and 'The Hunger Games' on my list of reading priorities.

>>3864457
I hate to fall to the ad hominem, but you sound enormously obese, dorsally-irritated, and just generally alone.

>>3864481

>I hate to ____... but I'm going to ____ anyway.

Come on, anon. You're better than that.

>>3864481

Not that guy, but really anon? You actually recognise that you're committing the ad hominem fallacy (pretty unimpressively too) but you proceed to state it anyway?

>>3864487
This is not a debate or argument, it's just one or two ignorant wankers going "hurr nigger books r boring."

>>3864492

Does the fact that an author is either

a) not white
b) not male
c) not heterosexual

Automatically make their books worth reading?

Haha. I'd rather run into a den of bears.

There's no point reading a book by a black person for the sake of it.

>>3864499
This.

Protip: The answer is no.

>B-B-BUT MY TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY COLLEGE PROFESSOR TAUGHT ME ABOUT THE EVILS OF DA WHITE MAN!

Uh...The Three Musketeers?

The Famished Road is on my to-read list, though

>>3864457
I suppose this is a valid position to take; as long as you acknowledge that your existence is inferior to the wretched of the earth, I've got no qualms.

>>3864524
No. I won't. Stay mad bitch

lmao at all the pasty-skinned weirdos in here mad that someone somewhere is taking a watered down Women's Studies class. Y'all are just as bad as tumblr, just so you know. Except worse because white and gross smelling, of course.

>>3864531

I'm not white, I'm Irish.

Great thread everyone. Along the same lines, how come black people can call us crackers and nobody cares, but if we say nigger we're threatened with violence?

Epic b8 m8.

>>3864499
No, and I would never argue that. And it doesn't make them automatically not worth reading either.

>>3864531
>lmao all the
stopped reading right there non-white scum

>>3864518
Also everything else by Dumas. The Count of Monte Cristo is one of my favorite books.

>>3864531
Black people have like ten times as many sweat glands as white people. You objectively smell worse.

>>3864535
Well, next time someone calls you a cracker, threaten them with violence. You know, if you feel up to the task.

>>3864535
Its okay for them to be racist because
>muh oppression

who give as fuck if its a double standard? as long as they are afforded special privileges because their great-great-great grandpa was a slave

>>3864535

Because being black has negative connotations while being white doesn't.

>>3864535
Yeah, that's always been weird to me . . . it's almost as if racism is a consequence of inherently unequal power structures rather than merely conceptual "prejudice" . . .

>>3864544

This. I teach English and there's this one Somalian kid that smells so fucking terrible I cannot comprehend it.

>>3864547
Maybe they should work at removing those negative connotations instead of being a bunch of violent degenerates, then.

>>3864548

Yes, and of course it's completely logical and not fallacious at all to presuppose that this inequality is completely accidental and isn't based on biological differences that might predispose one race to greater cultural and technological achievements than another.

No, these things can't possibly be genetic, at all. That would disagree with the narrative.

>>3864547
Could these connotations be due to some prevailing truth?
>Most inmates are black
OF COURSE NOT!

>>3864557
NO BIOLOGY IS WRONG! EVERY DISPARITY EVER IS DUE TO SOCIAL INJUSTICE!

>>3864518

How is someone with a single black grandparent black?

Love this thread so far. IRL most people I meet seem to afraid to speak with reason and logic on such issues; even online, /pol/ seems to be the last bastion of sanity.

The most annoying thing to me is the idea of Black History Month. Can you imagine the fit everyone would bitch if we tried to make a White History Month? How is the latter racist but not the former?

>>3864563
>inb4 "every month is white history month"
That is because of the large contributions of whites.

That is why blacks only get one month.

>>3864563

Morgan Freeman opposes the idea of BHM. He's alright in my book.

>>3864557
haha, a scrawny (or pudgy?) human biodiversity proponent I see? It's actually got more to do with allocation of resources, geography, etc

holy shit is /lit/ really this fucking stereotypically racist or is everyone trolling right now?

>>3864568
>i never went to college
>i never took bio 101
>if i did, i didn't understand it

see

>>3864564

>>3864568

Aren't you assuming that geographical contingencies haven't had an impact on the genetic features of different races?

Are you claiming that blacks and whites are basically biologically the same, or not?

Nice ad hominem btw. It's good to know I can't take liberal fanatics seriously.

>>3864563
It's a change for /lit/. There's actually some tumblr core feminists on here. Now I don't go to /pol/ or really agree with /pol/ on a lot of things, but that shit needs to stop.

>>3864572
>that feel when /lit/ has the most butthurt liberals of any board

GUYS I KNOW WE ALL JOKE HERE BUT IF YOU INSULT FEMINISM AGAIN... >:(

>>3864583
I agree.

The irony that /lit/ is an Orwellian shithole is almost palpable

>>3864572

I'm not a racist, I'm just skeptical about the claim that everybody is inherently equal in abilities and differences in power are never the result of personal limitations.

>>3864576
it's not significant. you're not telling me anything i haven't heard before, articulated in more sophisticated language--i've read nick land and all the other bullshit already. its just middle aged creepy white dudes who never grew out of their insecurities of being a spindly pale-faced dork pushed around by big strong cool black dudes in high school.

and I'm not a liberal, you are.

>>3864592
so youre a liberal then. alright, whatever, have fun with your dumb ideology i guess

>>3864566
They don't deserve a whole month. Are their achievements really one twelfth as significant as whites' achievements? I don't think so.

>>3864597
huh?

>>3864572
lit gets cross chatter from the other boards
i think int and pol invade every now and then
>most people who read books aren't racists
>/lit/ is definitely eurocentric tho, sorry brah

>>3864597

What is 'liberal' about that statement? Skepticism isn't liberal.

>>3864594
Keep going, mate. You're doing a great job of making black people look like a bunch of morons.

>>3864598
I never said they did. You are right. It was a preemptive strike against the feminist tumblr cunts.

>>3864594

Firstly explain how I am a liberal.

Then tell me whether you believe there are biological differences between races or not. I didn't ask whether you thought it was 'significant'.

And I'm not white btw; my ancestry is mainly Celtic.

>>3864606
>dat sage
lol butthurt

also, i just counter saged bitch

>>3864572
During the late morning/day time, /lit/ is mostly populated by NEETs who don't have any employment, academic, or social obligations and thus just post on 4chan about how they live "literary lifestyles" and hate tumblr. Kinda ironic that the most useless and unproductive members of society on 4chan are the ones who become retarded reactionaries, but then again it's the same with rednecks, so....

>>3864600
>>3864602
the primacy of the individual blah blah blah, thats the core of liberalism, even american liberalism. face it, you're a faggot liberal

>>3864613
>NEETs who don't have any employment, academic, or social obligations and thus just post on 4chan about how they live "literary lifestyles" and hate tumblr

You mean 4channers? If you don't like it, you're free to take your butthurt elsewhere. May I suggest reddit.

>>3864564
> NO BIOLOGY IS WRONG! EVERY DISPARITY EVER IS DUE TO SOCIAL INJUSTICE!
An interesting theory, but the fact is that American blacks aren't very African at all.

From pedowikia:
>Due to joint long histories in the US, approximately 30% of African American males have a European Y-Chromosome haplogroup. Approximately 58% of African Americans have the equivalent of one great-grandparent (12.5 percent) of European ancestry.

>>3864620
settle down friend, you have mistaken me for the enemy.

>>3864610
you're a liberal because 99% of the people on 4chan are disgusting liberals and you say racist uneducated liberal things.

and duh there are biological differences, like, the hair is different and the skin.

irish is white now, at least in amerika

>>3864623
>EVERYONE IS PARASITIC SHIT SO ITS OKAY
lol loser

>>3864592
who's that comedian who does that joke where its like
everytime somebody says i'm not racist
they are about to say something that is totally racist

>>3864601
It's not 'invading', it's using different boards. Get used to it. Not many people on 4chan use just one board.

>>3864620

Well if it helps I'm also skeptical about the claim that different races, on average, are absolutely equal in intelligence (which is a liberal claim).

All I'm pointing out is that 'realism' is partly about claims of that sort.

>>3864625
I'm not a liberal or a fascist you idiot (is there even a difference?)-- I'm a communist, stay the fuck away from me

>>3864572
Normally these losers whine that "go back to /pol/" is too common a response here, so presumably OP has sat in the thread trolling the entire time.

Wow this thread is full of fucking retards. I'm out.

>>3864576
This has always bugged me, as a scientist who works with genetics on a daily basis.

Yes, there are significant biological differences between races! (well, populations. I guess they're not really races)

Yes these differences extend to immune characteristics, physiological parameters of all types, phenotypic associational traits and every kind of physical expression of a gene that can be imagined.

The only reason there's no difference in intellectual potential and behavior is that these are the main human survival characteristics and have been therefore the primary focus of selection pressure since the bottleneck and well before.

Just because we're all intellectually and behaviorally the same doesn't mean there aren't differences guys.

I'm starting to hate liberals myself.

>>3864632
actually i think ur just a butthurt nerd lol

I can't wait for the slew of bans this thread is going to get. This board has sum femicunt janitor that bans everything she doesn't like. I don't give a fuck though, I have access to many internets

>>3864640
>Wow this thread is full of people that don't share my beliefs. I'm out.
FTFY.

>>3864640
good stay out

>>3864647

I agree with most of that.

Are we necessarily intellectually and behaviourally the same though?

And if we are, what is this necessity?

>>3864652
First world feminist are a fucking joke but right wingers who complain about them and say shit like "feminazi" are even more pathetic.

>>3864640
can we please just have a thread about black authors??
please?
>everytime a female author, marxist, or black person who writes is devolves into LIBERALS or FEMINISTS or muh oppression
>>3864638
thats why we do this

>>3864654
>muh postmodernism

Stalin had the right idea. fuck relativism. Wrong ideas should be purged.

>>3864658
Stay mad douche bag. I'm not even a right winger. I was just pointed out the mod is a cunt.

>>3864663
This billions of times. For the great good of society.

>>3864652
Janitors can't even ban you stupid fuck

>>3864665
I can guarantee that you're a right winger. Only the most euro-centric idiot "leftist" complains about first world identity politics as obnoxiously as a right winger, they might as well be one in the same. who did you support in the last election, third parties included

>>3864649

>>>/b/

>>3864671
They report you to the mods and mute you. It's as good as a ban most of the time.

>>3864674
seems more your speed i'd think. im not 19 anymore.

>>3864671
Sorry, mod then.

>>3864672
>U R WUT I SAY U R
lol nice b8 m8

>>3864689
Mods aren't board specific and you continue to be a stupid fuck

>>3864697
>im new to 4chan!

>>3864691
if you say liberal things it's pretty obvious that you're a liberal

>>3864656
Yeah, it pretty much has to be like that when the phenotypic expression is THE most importnat one to survival. It puts that one in the greatest flux in the population's gene pool since any combination of genes that leads to its expression will be selected for. With out getting too technical in terms of evolutionary genetics, it's like yahtzee.
If you have twelve dice theres a lot of variation that might crop up but the average numbers will be about the same. and it doesn't really matter which dice add the most to the total as long as the total is high: selection is acting on these genes as an aggregate, and since thats the case, and since some are going to be more stable, some more variable, but all in some level of flux you're going to get phenotypic (in this case behavioral and behavioral expressions of intellect) expression from lots of different inputs all getting the same result. Even if you totally isolated human populations for millions of years till we looked more different than star wars races, you'd probably still have pretty equivalent intellects. Not saying you couldn't get a sport of some type thatwould rapidly alter something ans malleable as intellect in a major way though: It happened once sixty thousand or so years ago and within twenty thousand years it was completely incorporated into all surviving populations basic genome. That's another reason theres no difference. If something works really well, pretty quickly it's the only game in town.

And since the bottleneck, it would have taken something that major to have created intellectual differentiation in populations, and since the populations have gene flow between them pretty constantly, there'd really be no way for differences to become established in any real, heritable sense in so short a time.

throwin' contracts at me
you know niggas can't read

Black people can write novels? Hmm, I never knew that.

It really is amazing though how few notable black authors there are. They need to get their shit together--you can't really blame then because their entire culture is basically "reading is for faggots."

Never. Why should I? Why are you holding the color of skin as a factor of such importance? OP is a cryptoracist.

>>3864733
I want /pol/ to leave.

I don't know. I don't pay attention to anything about the authors except for their names (and even then, only so I can find more by the same authors if I like their work, or avoid them if I don't).

>>3864733
>modern urban black culture created by poor southern blacks who moved north and didn't successfully adapt, then reinforced by people who claimed to oppose racism but assumed all black people were like that and thus encouraged horrible behavior in a way that was actually racist but looked like anti-racism

>>Implying ralph elisson's Invisible Man isn't the greatest American novel

Last thing I read by a black person was Langston Hughes and that was only a couple days ago.

>>3864814
>ITS WHITEY'S FAULT IMMA IN JAIL
lol

>>3864772
Keep saing douchbag

I'm from /pol/ and I'll NEVER leave.

>>3864919
No one said that, idiot. What was said was that a subset of white people actually encourage bad behavior and call it "anti-racism," rather than having expectations for black people that are equal to the expectations they have for white people.

>>3863990
>Checking the ethnic backgrounds of the authors of your books.
That said, probably never.

>>3864487

the joke
-----------------
your head

I wish I could be that autistic.

>>3864481
>dorsally-irritated

>>3864499
And the fact that the author is white/male/heterosexual does?

A book is a book, you read a synopsis and are interested, you look at the fucking cover and think it might be interesting, etc.

I don't ask where the "black authors" or the "WASP section" is at a bookstore, I just want fiction. Shut it down, /pol/.

>>3864919
it's pretty much true though, idiot?

I thought /lit/ said it hates Ayn Rand, but ITT you all seem to love her.

>>3864968
why would you have to "check", its something that'd be fairly obvious from the book's content and/or reputation?

Americans have this oddly racist way of seeing people as "blank slates" and thinking that's progressive and transcendent, when really it's just ignorance--the rest of the world isn't like you, the ''default'' state of a human being isn't the same as a middle class white American.

>>3863990

Coming of Age in Mississippi for History class. It was alright. Although it was a autobiography.

a blind man with a pistol by Chester Himes. fun book

>>3863990

Shakespeare.

We all know that Shakespeare, the actor, did not write Shakespeare. Who really did, the cultured people know, was the extremely wealthy, cultured, noble, beautiful and brave Earl of Oxford (who also had an affair with the queen).

What people do not know is that De Vere, the Earl of Oxford, had a black slave from Africa, with the same age as him, and who have been sold, even as a child, to the family. De Vere's father allowed the young black boy to have access to a large and generous library, and the boy grew up among the books, at the same time serving as a Pageboy for De Vere.

When De Vere discovered the talent of the young black man he allowed him to see his works staged under the condition that these were published under the name of an actor, Mr. Shakespeare.

Where do you think that those sonnets praising the color black comes? And why Othello is portrayed as strong, noble and brave despite its color? And all that imagery of yellow sands, of oceans, of forests, of deserts?

Shakespeare was black, gentlemen: he was a son of Africa.

>>3863990
'Bud not Buddy' when I was in the 6th grade. a fun read~!

Yeezus sucks.

Narrative of Fredrick Douglas a couple of months ago.

Shit was meh.

>>3864259
>I'm going to ignore that
>quote and mention
>ignore

>>3865678
>despite its color

ARR C WOT U DID THAR.

>>3864469
thus spoke Zarathustra

>>3864142
Too bad the novel sucks cocks.

>>3864547
you call someone a cracker to insult him, you call someone a nigger to insult him. you don't call someone black or white to insult any of them. cracker is just as racist. independently, blacks should not bitch about it and nor should whites

>>3864327
Not at all, you ever read a book nigger?

>>3865678
I've never heard this. Not /pol/, but obviously doubt this, and I'm assuming it's another silly conspiracy. Can anyone shed a little light on where this came from?

Samuel Delany - Dahlgren. Classic.

>>3864563
>/pol/
>last bastion of sanity
Come on man.

>>3865739

lel.

I trolled you.

It came from my head.

>>3865739
He was being sarcastic.

>>3864592

>I'm not a racist

>everybody is not inherently equal in abilities and differences in power are never the result of personal limitations.

you jos fall flat on face with that argument. Just because some is capale or incapable is not due to certain amoun of melanin on the persons skin, but due to social construct and economic disabilyties. that is a growing common problem in many countries.

Don't think I've ever read a novel written by a black person but not on purpose

Today. I read The Three Musketeers.