Comments

1. rosmar wrote:

   I agree with your overall point, but disagree with some of the details. Sherman Alexie, for example, is a bestselling author and has even been on The Daily Show.

   Actually, several of the people you listed here have had bestselling novels. Which doesn’t mean that they are getting the attention in MFA programs that they deserve.

   Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 8:35 am ¶

2. wanderinglady wrote:

   Thanks for this posting. It’s all about the idea that somehow the white male experience is considered “the universal experience” in the U.S. Everyone else is a “niche” writer… Good luck with your MFA program!

   You named a couple of my favorite writers (Sherman Alexie and Chris Abani), and led me to a few more. I’ll check them out, after I get finished with this Haruki Murakami book.

   I saw the list of books President Obama took to Martha’s Vineyard. I was pretty disappointed to see no women or POC (as far as I know) on the list. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/08/24/2009-08-24_on_marthas_vineyard_president_obamas_summer_reading_includes_few_beach_reads.html

   Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 8:35 am ¶

3. Mandy B. wrote:

   I was describing the book “The House on Mango Street” to a writer friend of mine, about six or seven years ago, and then asked him if he had read any other of Sandra Cisneros’ books. He looked at me as if I were from another planet and simply said, “No, Mandy; I don’t have white guilt.”

   The experience stuck with me, and is one of the principal ways that I remember finding out about hipster racism and the internal, community-based pressures that Whiteness puts on everybody to stay in line and read the books meant for “you.”

   Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 8:37 am ¶

4. lindsay wrote:

   My goal this year is to read more women authors, authors of color, and GLBT authors. I’ve been doing pretty good on getting a number of women and gay authors on my list, but I’m lacking in the POC area. Thanks for the suggestions – I just copied the whole thing straight into my to-read list.

   Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 9:11 am ¶

5. Frowner wrote:

   Thanks for this list! I volunteer at a left bookstore and will use it. One of our ordering group’s projects is to stock, shelve and promote books by writers of color. We got The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which sells (as you’d think) as fast as we can shelve it, because it was mentioned on this blog.

   The thing that’s frustrating to me (and that I need to figure out ways to work around) is that our white customers will buy a random book by a white author but usually won’t buy a random book by an author of color–that is, if we’re really promoting Push or something it will sell, but someone who’s just looking for something to read usually won’t pick up an Ishmael Reed novel or Toni Cade Bambara or similar if they haven’t heard of the writer even when they’ll try a new white writer they’ve never heard of. It makes me sad to see awesome books on the shelf and they don’t sell and they don’t sell.

   Now that I think about it, maybe I could try making little signs about authors whose work we’re trying to promote…

   Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 9:15 am ¶

6. Cindy wrote:

   I was struck by the comments of Mandy B.’s friend. Sad view that only “white guilt” would cause you to read a good book. …and thanks for the reminder Mandy B. because Sandra Cisneros is an author I’ve been meaning to read.

   I love Jhumpa Lahiri! I think her work is incredible! A recent discovery of mine is Shan Sa who writes from a first person narrative. Both of these would fit in the WOC category and have a unique perspective and writing style.

   Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 9:29 am ¶

7. Lisa wrote:

   Very interesting post, thank you. Chewing on some of your points and thoughts…

   Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 9:38 am ¶

8. atlasien wrote:

   @Mandy B: To be fair, I thought “The House on Mango Street” was unreadably bad. I think some books by U.S. writers of color fall into a really unfortunate niche: they are judged in terms of how well they represent an ethnic minority… not on literary merit. This means that some of these books that make it to the top create a really bad impression of “ethnic” literature, and that writers of color who want to be successful are pressured to follow their pattern if they want to succeed.

   I’m sure there are some readers here who loved “The House on Mango Street” and are really mad I dismissed it so cavalierly… I can’t help it, I literally could not finish reading the book because I found it so cloyingly sentimental. But I do happen to love certain authors who have been similarly dismissed by other people, so I can put myself in the defensive reader position as well.

   And to be 100% honest, I don’t like U.S. mainstream literature and rarely read it. It seems like the vast majority of the stuff written by white people involves involves someone going through a boring midlife crisis. Then the majority of it written by people of color involves a boring trapped-between-two-worlds-coming-of-age story. So on second thought, maybe I’m not the best person to comment on this… I love books and reading, I really do, but realistic fiction set in the present day does so little for me, although every once in a while I happen across a great exception.

   Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 9:43 am ¶

9. TMA (aka Tracy) wrote:

   Thea, thank you for this post. It reminds me on an internal struggle I’ve had off and on for years…what does it mean to be well read? And who determines what comprises the literary canon? From the way you describe your course reading lists, it appears that these definitions are indeed subjective. I spent many years thinking I was not “well read” because I hadn’t read Faulkner or much of Thoreau (I really wasn’t into On Walden Pond). However, I was/am a voracious reader and have read Junot Diaz, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Gayl Jones, Octavia Butler, Chinua Achebe, Paule Marhsall, Edwidge Danticat, Edward Jones, Colson Whitehead, and many other novels.

   Does it make me less well read if the majority of authors I enjoy, whose stories I connect with (as an AA woman), are mainly those of POC? I don’t know. I read lots of Ayn Rand (in high school) and used to enjoy James Thurber. Now, I’m more into to non-fiction and this is less of an issue/struggle for me. But I do wonder about it from time to time if I’m some kind of “reading racist” based on what I like to read.

   Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 10:03 am ¶

10. TierListE wrote:

    My college American history class did manage to give us “The Lone Ranger” in our required reading.

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 10:10 am ¶

11. Tintin LaChance wrote:

    This is an excellent list–once I have a chance to read for fun again, I’ll definitely be checking out some of these books.

    If I could suggest another author/book for it, my undergrad American Lit course included Nam Le’s book of short stories, The Boat, on the required reading list. It made for a good discussion on how we qualify something as “American” literature, as Le is an Australian citizen who has lived in and written on the United States–and aside from that, the writing was just really excellent.

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 10:23 am ¶

12. Brandon wrote:

    Great post… and I love the fact that you added a reading list, too. I can see how your experiences in class are frustrating, but one of the very best things we can do is offer up lists. I may be overly optimistic here, but I think that there are a good many people who just choose what they’ve heard of. If educated and aware of other possibilities, they might go there.

    And since we have a list, I have to add a few. Let’s give the recently-deceased Chester Hines some love. And how about Octavia Butler, especially her compilation of short stories, Blood Child.

    Check them out!

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 10:38 am ¶

13. angela wrote:

    i’d second colson whitehead, he’s a terrific writer, and i think a prize winner. he writes about the african american experience in new york city.

    i’d also add karan mahajan and rohinton mistry. both write about experiences in their homelands, and i wonder if they are subject to the same kind of exception that murakami gets.

    anyway, it seems that there are lots of great POC writers that we can rattle off (zadie smith, james baldwin, etc). why is it that they’re not considered part of the canon of writers examined in MFA programs? have they been relegated to the writers colonies?

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 10:57 am ¶

14. Slush wrote:

    Great post! It is tragic how school curricula can be so far behind the times. My mother is a high school English teacher, and whenever she asks me for any suggestions I am trying to get her to steer away from Wuthering Heights and toward foreign authors or post-colonial writers. (She’s receptive to this, but somehow she still thinks Heart of Darkness is worth making them read, no matter what I tell her.)

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 11:17 am ¶

15. Beth wrote:

    Yikes. That whole situation sounds tremendously frustrating.

    As far as lists go, I totally recognize that they can go on forever and forever, but, that said, I have to endorse the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks. Everyone should, like *right now,* get a copy of _Blacks_, which collects the whole range of her poetry in one fell swoop. A lot of folks read “We Real Cool” or “The Bean Eaters” in school, but there’s soooo much more than that. “In the Mecca” is one of my favorites, as is “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon.”

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 11:37 am ¶

16. Rita wrote:

    @Atlasien, Amen! This is why I pretty much only read YA/juvenile lit anymore. There’s plenty of divsity to be found there, and the stories are just simply more interesting.

    I’m glad to hear you didn’t care for Sandra Cisneros. I live in San Antonio, where she is one of our biggest local literary lions (along with Naomi Shihab Nye), and I always intend to read one of her books, but have yet to get around to it. Your comment makes me not feel so bad about not having read her.

    A couple of years ago she led a writer’s workshop in town, in which she bemoaned the lack of “serious” literature, which got me wondering what on earth “serious” literature is? If it’s what you describe in your comment, I’m not so much interested.

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 11:53 am ¶

17. Wendi Muse wrote:

    i am reading jhumpa lahiri’s interpreter of maladies short story collection right now and love it. i have also read both of diaz’s books (drown, which i read for a latino lit class in college and later wao, which i could.not.put.down for the life of me!). and while all of these books are amazing (and dare i add white teeth here too? it’s totally a poc / women coming of age type book), i think sometimes people truly cannot identify. certain things i noticed going on in wao i could connect with because i live in nyc and know about the dominican community, have dominican friends, have dated dominican people (i am not saying this in a but i have a black friend! kind of way, either). certain references or jokes or even issues of identity made more sense to me as a result of having had that exposure. the same could be said of lahiri’s work….which i think certain classes on south asian lit and history have prepared me for understanding. and so much of white teeth struck me from a personal standpoint. oftentimes, the history, emotions, references, experiences of poc, and specifically those whose regions, ethnicities, etc are traced in this work, are there in a way that many people who are white or even from another ethnicity or race but with limited exposure to the group being covered in the work may have trouble identifying/understanding or fear that they won’t and thus, never pick the books up in the first place. sorry for the run-on sentence.
    the problem is that poc have to know all about white culture and dominant culture, but they are never truly expected to know anything about us. they have to go out of their way to do so and even then, it oftentimes is read as patronizing or as external gazing as opposed to actually identifying. so yeah…it’s a tough place, and i can understand why people may sometimes feel discouraged or lack an interest to read certain books as a result of this fear of cultural alienation.

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 11:54 am ¶

18. Mammith wrote:

    Thanks for the reading list, I just ordered Inheritance by Lan Samantha Chang as it sounds quite interesting.

    She’s not American but I would suggest Zadie Smith as another great ‘Author of Color’. She wrote one of my favorite books, White Teeth.

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 12:08 pm ¶

19. AJ Plaid wrote:

    @atlasien–

    ….so, what books would you recommend?

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 12:12 pm ¶

20. mk wrote:

    @MandyB – I thought this was a really interesting comment –

    “the internal, community-based pressures that Whiteness puts on everybody to stay in line and read the books meant for “you.””

    it seems to work out that most of the books that I read and like are by women of color, and this makes me think a little more about why that is, why I sometimes feel like I’m doing something “wrong” and what it means.

    also, just to add to the list – one of my favorite authors, Joy Kogawa, hasn’t been mentioned yet I don’t think. I think a decent number of people (at least on the US/Canada west coast) get assigned her book Obasan for school reading…I actually like the sort-of sequel, Itsuka/Emily Kato better.

    As an aside, having a Racialicious book club would be awesome…does anyone use goodreads? Someone could set up a group…

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 12:13 pm ¶

21. Erica wrote:

    I think you made some excellent points.

    What about Isabel Allende though? I have enjoyed every book I have read that was written by her.

    By the way, I had a teacher assign a Sherman Alexie book (…part time indian).

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 12:14 pm ¶

22. Thea Lim wrote:

    @ Everyone

    Glad to be able to provide some comfort in the form of a reading list…it’s so rare that I am able to offer concrete solutions to the problems I raise

    @ Wendi

    I def hear what you are saying. As a non-NYCer who also knows very little about the DR and community, I had to read Oscar Wao with dictionary.com, the Babel Fish translator and urbandictionary.com constantly open…

    But even if I hadn’t looked up all the stuff that I didn’t get, I think I could still really enjoy and appreciate the heart of the book.

    Sometimes it seems like Shakespeare (for eg) is mostly cultural reference – but we are still able to appreciate it, like 400 years later. In some things we are willing to look past its specific cultural milieu and appreciate what universal experience is at its base. In other things we are not.

    I think that was my point with saying that lit is supposed to cross boundaries. I know for sure it does – otherwise I’d never be able to read or relate to anything. Alas no one has yet written the quintessential text of an anglo-irish-singaporean-chinese queer but ostensibly straight woman who grew up halfway between Canada and Singapore and now lives in Texas…

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 12:26 pm ¶

23. aa wrote:

    cosign. i’ve just started an mfa in nonfiction writing. while it’s not contemporary, the coolest things i’ve read so far are zitkala-sa’s “impressions of an indian childhood” and “school days of an indian girl.” both are from american indian stories. i had never heard of her, let alone read her work, and i was thrilled to be introduced to such an amazing write/renaissance woman. she co-wrote the first native grand opera in 1910. that’s hardcore!

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 12:27 pm ¶

24. Nicole M wrote:

    Thank you for the great reading list! I’ve only read Baldwin, Alexie, and Ha Jin on my own, am looking forward to the rest.

    In response to Frowner’s insight:
    “The thing that’s frustrating to me (and that I need to figure out ways to work around) is that our white customers will buy a random book by a white author but usually won’t buy a random book by an author of color”

    I think that a lot of consumers, in the face of a selection process uninterrupted by a hearty recommendation or intention to broaden their horizons, tend to stick with what they know. I find book selection in particular a difficult consumer choice: books are not that cheap, and I’m somewhat concerned about getting my money’s worth, so part of me is inclined to stick with authors who are like, or appear to be like, the authors I already enjoy. And race and class often come into play, at least subconconsciously.

    Another big factor is how books are described/marketed. Personally I find the usual jacket summaries and hyperbolic back-cover quotes to be unhelpful. I don’t need they plot summarized for me; I want to know how this is going to make me feel, what kind of tonal quality I’m going to be immersed in, and what from slice of the human experience I’m going to gain insight.

    On that last point, I share Brandon’s optimism that with greater awareness, people would make fewer “safe” choices and explore more POC authors. As a former bookstore clerk, I can tell you that the more I engaged customers in conversations about their reading habits, the more I was able to make recommendations they would follow. Most bookstores maintain a library-like silence out of what I believe to be equal parts a misguided attempt to “respect” the consumers’ solitary intellectual selection process and the unfortunately pervasive culture of retail bookstore clerks being snobby and dismissive and generally wanting to avoid interactions with customers at all costs.

    I don’t know what your store is like, Frowner, but if any of this sounds familiar, I say toss the hands-off policy out the window and start providing real customer service. Staff recommendation displays are a great start, but putting a book in someone’s hand and saying “I think YOU should read THIS” is immensely effective. You possess a great and unique power, so don’t be reticent to use it to get the authors you like read by a wider audience.

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 12:34 pm ¶

25. jen* wrote:

    @Slush – oh those poor kids. someone tried to make me read Heart of Darkness once. I’ve mostly blocked it out. hated that book. with the fire of a thousand suns.

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 1:56 pm ¶

26. Freakzeek wrote:

    Great Article, Muramaki’s my favorite writer. Got say I loved the House On mango street(was the book that got me writing poetry & lit). I have a question for anyone who wants to answer, As an african american, it seems to me that most POC’s books are always doom and gloom. the main character always has this tragic history or backstory. As a Poc, I’ve had my share of Pain and Misery, but do i really want to read about it all the time? For example, Push and Color purple, two books that make me uncomfortable about a harsh reality that i normally use books to escape from. Now I’am not saying they don’t deserve there place in a creative writing class, but i could see how a white reader could find alot the baggage that the main characters normally have in poc story as daunting. ….. sorry for the long rant, i guess i really don’t have a point. I mean is there any stories we’re the Main Character is a Poc and actually Happy? or doesn’t Come from some horrible familial relationship?

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 2:20 pm ¶

27. Josh wrote:

    A few years ago, I got my MA in English with a focus on Creative writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and my experience there was quite different. In my American Lit class, we focused pretty heavily on African-American writers, from Frederick Douglass to Charles Chesnutt to Ralph Ellison to Nella Larsen. There were also classes available focusing on Toni Morrison and Latino Lit, among others. Writers of color often came up in discussions in workshops, too – I was introduced to the incredible book Kindred by Octavia Butler that way (and I highly, highly, highly recommend that book, by the way – it’s an under-appreciated modern classic).

    Reading this article confirms my suspicion that this was atypical, unfortunately.

    I do appreciate the reading list, by the way. There are a number of writers there who I’m not familiar with and will have to check out.

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 3:03 pm ¶

28. kikilarue wrote:

    Thea — Wow! I’m wondering where in the US your program is located? Or what kind of institution it is? (Maybe this is something I would know from other posts. Apologies if it was mentioned elsewhere and I missed it.)

    In my circle of friends, these books and authors are common currency. Not trying to sound more-intellectual-than-thou to anyone, but it IS alarming to think of your classmates bothering to pursue (and pay for) an MFA without having much apparent awareness of contemporary literature.

    Given that good authors and good teachers seem nearly unanimous in their belief that wide reading is crucial for skilled writing, even the instructors in your program seem to need some remedial homework.

    I mean, I was assigned Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, and Amy Tan in middle school for crying out loud! And, yes, some of those conversations were tricky for white and poc kids trying to talk about the reality of white privilege! But we all survived the experience and many learned a lot from it.

    Also, what media are your peers consuming generally? Even a regular appointment with mainstream cultural coverage would make a dent — “Fresh Air” on NPR, the New York Times book reviews, these are not “fringe” media. : )

    I am really sorry that you are having this experience in your program. It is surprising and disheartening to hear.

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 3:16 pm ¶

29. Mandy B. wrote:

    Interestingly, I am not a big fan of Sandra Cisneros either. I was, ironically, reading a Spanish translation of the English original, for a class.

    The point is that we should just be able to discuss the books she or anybody else has written, whether it be in a positive light or not– my reading her or any other author of color should not automatically be a political or racialized statement to society about white guilt.

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 4:04 pm ¶

30. ahimsa wrote:

    I love the book list (thanks!) and I second many of the author names (e.g., Jhumpa Lahiri, Zadie Smith) added in the comments.

    I wanted to add an author that has not yet been mentioned, Charles Johnson, probably best known for the novel Middle Passage (1990 National Book Award). I have also enjoyed other works by him such as Oxherding Tale, Dr. King’s Refrigerator, and a collection of essays called Turning the Wheel.

    For what it’s worth, my comments come from the perspective of a reader only. I’m not a writer, much less a student pursuing an MFA, so I have no real expertise on which authors should or should not be included. It’s an interesting discussion – thanks for sharing your experience!

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 4:16 pm ¶

31. Aliya wrote:

    I had similar experiences studying for my BAH in English Lit.. but it extended to most authors outside of Canada/America/Britain, and “foreign” authors were still European (mostly French). The way the courses are structured also encourage minimal reading of texts from POCs (i.e. the requirements are heavy on Renaissance, Restoration, Victorian, etc, but the Post-Colonial Lit course is kind of “optional”, with American Lit, Modern Lit, and Canadian Lit as the other options). As one of the only West Indians English Majors at my university (the only other one I knew graduated a year before me), in my final year I attempted to take the only course they offered in Caribbean literature in place of a Modern Lit credit, since I already had a post-colonial lit credit, and taking another “post-colonial” course wouldn’t really count towards my degree.. shockingly enough (ha!), the admin/undergrad chair were not amused/impressed/vaguely interested in entertaining the possibility.

    Which I found particularly irritating since you can take American/Canadian Lit as separate categories, but allll “post-colonial” lit from other former colonies are lumped into one category..

    But that’s my gripe.

    p.s. I’m pretty sure I also could not take Aboriginal Lit for credit/instead of Modern/American/Canadian lit (cuz Aboriginal Lit isn’t Canadian, right?)..

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 4:26 pm ¶

32. Kaonashi wrote:

    Sherman Alexie and Sandra Cisneros are fantastic. I once met Sandra at a poetry slam; very intense lady. Another one to add to the list (even though she might not be everyone’s cup of tea) is Natsuo Kirino; “Out” and especially “Grotesque” are books that stay with you long after you’ve finished them.

    Thanks for the list! ^_^

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 4:32 pm ¶

33. ahimsa wrote:

    @Frowner – Speaking only from my own experience, what makes me buy a book by an unknown author is a combination of personal recommendations and newspaper/blog reviews. Do people really come into your store and ask about the race of the author when they are looking for books? If not, how would they know the race from the name?

    Unless there is a photo, how does anyone know what an author looks like? I mean, think of the comedian Russell Peters – he has Indian ancestry but he has an “English” sounding name. Or think of the author Lionel Shriver – most people assume that’s a man’s name. I suppose many books do have a photo of the author but do people actually use that photo to select books?

    I feel like I must be missing something because I do most of my book buying online (my local book store is online at powells.com) based on a list of titles I have collected from various sources. I rarely browse in bookstores and even when I do I never choose books by their cover art, author photos, or jacket blurbs. But maybe that’s unusual?

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 4:41 pm ¶

34. Slush wrote:

    @ahimsa, I don’t run a bookstore or anything, but a lot of books have photos of the author on them. And if not, there’s plenty of assumptions to make from someone’s last name.

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 4:51 pm ¶

35. Slush wrote:

    Sorry, I guess you’d already observed that. But your question – do people use the author’s photo to choose books? I think yes, actually. I’m not endorsing that as a good strategy, by any means, but I think it probably factors in for plenty of folks. People like reading something by someone attractive, for example, and we all know who gets to define the standards for attractiveness most of the time… Plus I think there are a lot of people who will assume that they won’t relate to a book by a POC. Which goes back to the problem of not having enough exposure to them in schools in order to debunk that perception.

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 4:57 pm ¶

36. GüeraLola wrote:

    @ Erica *High five* I adore Isabelle Allende I fell in love with Daughter of Fortune and I highly recommend it. I love dreaming in Cuban
    *Ceremony
    I liked, Like water for chocolate but Hated the ending
    *Geisha: A Life
    *The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by
    * there eyes were watching God
    Lucky going to a diverse school teacher made sure we had a diverse reading list. So most of theses I read except Like water for chocolate in High school

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 5:08 pm ¶

37. shah8 wrote:

    freakzeek, I think black families of a certain ilk have a zest for murakami. I have yet to read any, but his books are all around me.

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 6:41 pm ¶

38. [dave] wrote:

    loving the recc’s here ….

    this article put me in mind of much of the Race Fail goings on happeningin the SF/F arena …

    check out this …

    http://theangryblackwoman.com/2009/08/05/this-is-why-science-fiction-cant-have-nice-things/

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 6:43 pm ¶

39. Jha wrote:

    GueraLola: Their Eyes Were Watching God was terrific! Interestingly, it was also a book I had to read in my class on modernism.

    I can’t believe no one here has mentioned Tariq Ali’s Islam Quintet yet. The poetry in those books is to die for, and he paints powerful character portraits – as well as writes women’s perspectives sympathetically! I was impressed by how he snuck that in.

    Cindy Pon’s Silver Phoenix got plenty of airtime a while back. She was told, “Asian fantasy doesn’t sell”.

    Also, on the tail of dave’s link:

    A list of Mindblowing Science Fiction by PoC.

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 8:52 pm ¶

40. atlasien wrote:

    @Aj Plaid… tough question… I read so very little recent mainstream fiction. I mostly read older classics and science fiction.

    For books that haven’t been mentioned yet, I really loved Chang-Rae Lee’s (1.5 gen Korean-American) “A Gesture Life”. I haven’t read Junot Diaz yet but I’m planning on it. I’d never knock Toni Morrison, I think her popularity is 100% deserved and she’s a brilliant writer.

    For recent white guys, I like Cormac McCarthy and T. Coraghessan Boyle.

    Moving beyond into “genre” fiction, I can’t stand Octavia Butler (I’ve admitted it before already on Racialicious… her ideas are great but the way she writes seems really flat to me) but worship Samuel Delany.

    I also like most of the stuff Walter Mosley writes. He’s uneven but really ambitious. And going further back, I’ve read most everything Chester Himes every wrote.

    As an aside, I have to recommend a book written by George Schuyler in 1931 called “Black No More”, one of the earliest African-American science fiction stories… it’s about a machine that turns black people white, and the bizarre things that happen to segregated society as a result. Schuyler used to be a socialist and then went totally nuts and became a conservative Republican… I think he wrote his book halfway through the transition so it’s quite uncategorizable in terms of philosophy, but extremely witty and fascinating.

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 9:07 pm ¶

41. ashlynn wrote:

    Sigh. To sum up this post for me: I’ll go to the pool today, but I won’t get in. Literature is always a tough one for me to stomach…

    But I will say MAJOR PROPS to atlasien for mentioning George Schuyler! I attended a gifted and talented school created in honor of his daughter Philippa…though this is not a black author, I HIGHLY recommend Compositions in Black and White by Katheryn Talalay- a fantastic biography about Philippa Schuyler (a gifted concert pianist of quite a mixed heritage, to say the least ) that could offer Racialicious days of posts…

    Sherman Alexie and Gary Soto are treasures. Also, Caucasia is one of my definite favorites. I’d also like to throw Coe Booth out there- she’s fairly new, mostly YA, but certainly another positive voice and writer of color to add to the spectrum.

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 10:01 pm ¶

42. Lyzardly wrote:

    I’m currently pursuing an MA in English and find that while being in Newark, NJ on the most diverse campus in the country (for 13 years running!) certainly broadens the scope of literature that is covered and taught, the old canon persists.

    As I am also studying for the GRE Subject Literature in English exam to apply to PhD programs, I wonder how much this test has to do with what is taught. I don’t know if it is as applicable to an MFA program, but I know in the MA program plenty of students plan on pursuing a PhD. The GRE exam is not updated very often and they tend to focus on what they think EVERY English program in the country will have covered. So, to cover their butts the GRE folks stick with the canon of dead white men. And to cover their butts (to make sure they are preparing students for the next stage of school), the programs also find themselves falling back on the old canon.

    This is all just hypothetical of course. I also did my BA in English (in Utah of all places) and my US Literature class texts were almost entirely texts written by women of color. I thought nothing of it at the time and it only came to my attention that I had not studied many dead white men when I did terribly on the GRE Lit practice exams. I wouldn’t change a thing about the education I received, but it has made me wonder about how and why the old canon persists in places that you wouldn’t expect it, like Newark.

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 10:09 pm ¶

43. mk wrote:

    @Atlasian – I read Black no More for a class in college – real interesting book, and thanks for the info about his politics.

    You know what I would really like to read? A work of fiction by a white author that genuinely addresses whiteness and white privilege head-on. I have read a lot of, white main character comes to understand that racism and inequality exist, but it tends to devolve into a, now I’m enlightened and an activist and I can change things and not be racist type thing. Which could be inspiring, on a certain level, but real life is not that easy. Or there have been books that seek to expose racism, and that to my (white) reader’s eyes seem to do some good. But that’s not what I’m looking for…the closest thing that I can think of off the top of my head is Leah’s thread of the Poisonwood Bible, because she comes to terms with what is done to people she loves in her name as a white american. But I’m not sure how much privilege comes in. I’m not saying that I don’t think white authors write anti-racist books, but more often than not I think they do this by writing about racism and/or inequality in such a way as to open the eyes of people who’ve had the privilege of growing up without having to live it, rather than writing stuff that really examines white privilege. Maybe this kind of story doesn’t really lend itself to making it into the mainstream either, though I think the privilege that any white author enjoys is really not arguable.

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 10:13 pm ¶

44. Neesha Meminger wrote:

    Susan from Coloronline, a blog dedicated to supporting the work of women authors of colour, did a rather extensive list of authors and books here: http://coloronline.blogspot.com/2009/07/susans-unofficial-list-of-great-ya-by.html.

    Thea, my MFA experience was much like yours. Not even a Toni Morisson or Alice Walker in sight, never mind some of the “lesser-known” names.

    Posted 03 Sep 2009 at 11:43 pm ¶

45. nana k. wrote:

    AMEN! i completed my MFA in CRWR two years ago, and struggled with this issue, particularly during my last year. it was so disheartening to look over a reading list for a course, or peruse the class reader, only to see that our assigned readings were mostly white males, w/ the occasional white female worked in. in courses that focused on diversity, we primarily read works by obscure (though no less important)–m. scott momaday, etc… as you say, the writers you list (roth et. al.) have earned their place, but it’s time those who teach in these courses take more responsibility for diversifying their reading lists. i confronted one professor about it, and his response was, “well, i teach what i like;” which is a valid point. i did the same when i was TA-ing for an undergraduate english course. however, if what you like is so limited to a certain portion of literature, perhaps you shouldn’t teach courses that allegedly have a wider focus?

    Posted 04 Sep 2009 at 12:58 am ¶

46. 2ndyearMFA wrote:

    In my MFA program many of the writers mentioned (Jhumpa Lahiri, Junot Diaz, Ha Jin) are required reading; in fact, I don’t think I have to read any dead white guy books this year unless I feel like it. However, while the school’s reading list is all people of color, in last semester’s workshop, I was the only person of color in the room. And that disturbs me because before I started my degree, I thought that a program that offered funding would attract a more diverse group of students.

    (And, as a latina, I wish I liked Sandra Cisneros, but her poetry, OMG her poetry is a special kind of dreadful.)

    Posted 04 Sep 2009 at 1:07 am ¶

47. g531 wrote:

    What’s interesting to me- precisely for this reason I had been discouraged towards an MFA as an undergrad, for this and, of course similar reasons of $ and funding. The lack of attention writer of color receive is poor indeed. Even if we tend to focus on coming of age stories which, for young writers tends to be the case and, often times, because those narratives are few and far between…I am thinking back to the critique of ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’ (sigh).
    So, in short, I appreciate this post tremendously. First read Diaz and Alexie in a prep school out East, they were adored by my English teacher, one of the many reasons I loved him as he was one of the exceptions to the rule in a very white space. I wish you the best of luck, as I run into similar issues as a graduate student in cultural studies, the limitations of scholarship that are acclaimed and read of nonwhites…(sigh) or the canon of third world theorists/theorists of color…

    Posted 04 Sep 2009 at 7:05 am ¶

48. dejamorgana wrote:

    Atlasien: YES for the Samuel Delany love! One of my favorite writers ever. I think he gets overlooked these days because his SF doesn’t discuss racial issues, while Octavia Butler gets all the love for writing about race in SF. I think there’s room for both types of writing (and I do like Butler – I think “Adulthood Rites” is an amazing book), but Delany is much more the kind of writer I actually enjoy and would like to become.

    To add to the reading list, there is a great SF anthology called “Dark Matter: a Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora”, edited by Sheree Thomas. It includes a section from “Black No More” and a bunch of other great stories, some of which focus on race and some that don’t. Awesome book.

    Posted 04 Sep 2009 at 7:05 am ¶

49. Jess wrote:

    Thea I am not sure where in the country you are, but I think you are seeing two effects here.

    One is what the people in the class have read. Not necessarily what was on their various reading lists when they took their English/Literature classes. That is, the patterns of what people will pick up in the course of their lives won’t necessarily reflect what they had in the course, and what they remember won’t reflect that.

    For example, I am one of those people who keeps all the books he owns. (Yes I am a pack rat). So when I look at 20 years worth I see a big stack of science fiction, for instance, and relatively less mainstream (whatever that means). So if I were in an MFA class the things I would likely have run across — and more importantly, what I would remember — will fall in that category. This will affect how I discuss it. And I must say I am shockingly poorly read when it comes to mainstream non-science fiction– I mean, I don’t think I have ever picked up Chuck Pahlaniuk, or Roth, or even Pynchon.

    So there’s the self-selection issue here, you know? What kind of person is going to be in an MFA class? That will go a long way towards answering your frustration I think.

    Separate from that is the issue of the promotion that PoC writers get and where their literature is placed. I have to say, I couldn’t tell you the race or ethnicity of most of the authors I ever picked up — I thought for years Sam Delaney was Irish.

    (altasien, I sort of agree with you about Butler– though for different reasons. But I still like her stuff, and I had a yen for her short fiction rather than her novels).

    Anyway, I was just thinking that another issue is what you like and what the other people in the class like(d) will differ — remember, you’ve been steeped in activism for a while now. There’s loads of people (even PoC) who aren’t. I mean, I mention Stephen Baxter in a conversation and get a blank look, or LeGuin (less so) or even Norman Spinrad and Kim Stanley Robinson. Yet all of these folks are award-winning authors who do sell quite a bit.

    When I look at the PoC writers I know, a lot of it tends to be pretty obscure. Just luck of the draw, I guess, but how many non-Latin Americans know who I mean when I say I read Hijo del Hombre by Augusto Roa Bastos? (All the Latin folks I meet know him, but in the US he’s a cipher). Or Anna Seghers?

    Both are prizewinners too, you know?

    I’m not saying there aren’t issues with the ‘canon’ (a rather outdated and oft-abused concept, BTW) just that it might help to poll your classmates and get an idea of what their historical reading habits are, and then do a comparison with where PoC writers — who as you say, get the prizes and are obviously important to those who judge these things — end up.

    That would be an interesting exercise I think.

    Posted 04 Sep 2009 at 7:27 am ¶

50. K.lo wrote:

    @Lyzardly- The MFA is a terminal degree, it takes at least 3 years, and it is not a stop (in a formal way) on the path to a PhD. Often a person who pursues the PhD will be picking a different focus after the MFA. I thought of it as VoTech when I was in grad school. The idea being that you were prepared to live the life of a Pro artist, or that you could teach people to do the arts. Theoretically a person can teach college when completed. Of course, being creditentialed to teach people to tell stories when you’ve only been trained to value certain kinds of voices over others is a huge problem.

    Posted 04 Sep 2009 at 9:27 am ¶

51. gatamala wrote:

    JHA I can’t believe no one here has mentioned Tariq Ali’s Islam Quintet yet. The poetry in those books is to die for, and he paints powerful character portraits – as well as writes women’s perspectives sympathetically! I was impressed by how he snuck that in.

    Book of Saladin was my fave of the three.

    I’m going back and forth between this post and my amazon lists. Nice.

    Posted 04 Sep 2009 at 9:33 am ¶

52. gatamala wrote:

    ^^that I own

    Posted 04 Sep 2009 at 9:42 am ¶

53. Otra Vez wrote:

    I think part of the problem is that hetero white males are generally less comfortable and more at risk professionally when discussing race, gender, or sexual orientation. My teachers who were female, gay, and/or POC always had more POC, women, and GLBT writers on there reading lists. This fear could easily be extended to the HWM students in your program as well, as half of the point of getting an MFA is building cooperative professional relationships. Of course, themore you play it safe the worse you are at it… and the cycle continues.

    That being said, I’d contact your program director with your concerns (if you haven’t already). It is troubling that a generation of elite writing teachers is being created at a place where POC are not included in their reading.

    How HWM&F discuss the works of POC with POC in workshop sounds like a fascinating research topic. This could be a great jumping off point for an examination of how writing is taught.

    Posted 04 Sep 2009 at 1:23 pm ¶

54. Miranda wrote:

    GREAT POST! I was introduced to Sherman Alexie in class. When I was in middle school. Great stuff.

    Posted 04 Sep 2009 at 5:57 pm ¶

55. April wrote:

    Wow. And I thought Yale (my alma mater) was the standard bearer for all dead white men in literature (actually, in everything). But from my literature courses there, I was able to cobble together a pretty impressive reading list of authors of color, especially postcolonial ones. Maybe MFA programs are a different case altogether. That’s surprising to me, though–you would think the schools offering them would have more reason to be up to date, since MFA candidates are trying to get their work published, not pore over old manuscripts for their dissertations.

    @Slush:
    Why must it be either Heart of Darkness or postcolonial works? The two go together pretty well in a literature curriculum. After all, it had a heavy influence on Chinua Achebe’s classic, Things Fall Apart, which is on virtually every introductory postcolonial syllabus. Granted, Conrad can be difficult to get through, but then again, so can Toni Morrison–and I bet I’d be hard pressed to find anyone here arguing against reading her novels!

    By the way, I’d recommend the novels of Caryl Phillips (a West Indian-British-American writer). I particularly enjoyed The Nature of Blood and Dancing in the Dark.

    Posted 04 Sep 2009 at 7:06 pm ¶

56. Ain't I an African? wrote:

    Another excellent writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I love her!

    Posted 04 Sep 2009 at 9:42 pm ¶

57. Julian wrote:

    Thanks for this insightful post. I think that you make a great point people often forget, that just because a writer has been anointed by an award doesn’t mean they’ve been embraced by readers in general. For many people these awards basically represent the state of literature; if an author wins one, it means the game is over, basically, and they have won – they will be read for generations to come by readers everywhere. What more could they want? And yet, as you point out, an author can be an award-winner and still get shunted to the dusty shelf where so many PoC authors end up. They may be respected, but if there is no readership to accompany that respect, then they will not have an impact commensurate with their work. If there’s no grass-roots readership these writers will end up as a footnote while the status quo continues as before.

    As a PoC, I definitely have experienced this ‘universal whiteness’ that you talk about. If I want to write about my experience, for instance, I face a choice. I can write about a ‘neutral’ white character, who is not *actually* neutral but is at the center of the scale as readers perceive it. Through him they can connect to the ‘universal human experience’ and all those prestigious qualities that a universal character can have. Alternatively, I can write about a PoC, who – while more deeply felt, and lived, from my P.O.V. – while usually end up in the ‘minority’ ghetto, regardless of my intention. Readers may read and connect with such a character, but it will be at arm’s length and in the language so often reserved for minority writers – language which posits an authentic ‘other’ that is anything but neutral, i.e. universal. It’s harder for me to write that white character because that isn’t my experience, but writing about a PoC character can be even trickier, because that character will seem much more ‘colorful’ and ‘ethnic’ than I intend him to be. A piece of bread will always be a simple piece of bread, but a tamale (to use one now-cliched example) will forever be weighed down with a distracting number of associations.

    Note: this issue has already been around long enough for novels like Everett’s ‘Erasure’ to insightfully tackle it. Yet it persists, without much change in the public perception. In fact, when people do address it, it often seems to be in the form of a complaint, as when literary fiction is blamed for being ‘out of touch’ with ordinary readers. I.e., go back to writing about a world where race doesn’t exist, and we’ll all be happy again. You’ll notice that the one author singled out for criticism in the article below is a (implicitly boring) PoC while none of the ‘entertaining’ writers are.

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574377163804387216.html

    Posted 05 Sep 2009 at 1:06 am ¶

58. EGhead wrote:

    I wanted to suggest the possibility that you’re over-analyzing this. What it comes down to, I think, is that white male is still the default human in all areas of society and so still has the stranglehold on everything ‘artsy’ from museum exhibitions to reading lists. I don’t think it’s active racism or subconscious racism… just laziness. It’s laziness to not recognize that white male has been made the default and to try to look for alternatives, in the hope of expanding one’s perspective as well as helping the ‘alternatives’ become the mainstream. I’m not saying this is any better or worse than an active or subconscious personal racism, just saying it’s different.

    Also, about the white classmates who are afraid to critique work… I think it’s shitty– for everyone involved but mostly the writers of color, of course– but I think your classmates are trying to be as progressive and ‘PC’ as possible– not trying to judge the experiences of people of color or critique them in any way. Unfortunately, they haven’t been taught any viable alternative to just staying out of it, which I’ll place on the school system and the universities and, certainly to an extent, the white classmates themselves (I mean, this is a grad program, not high school English).

    Posted 07 Sep 2009 at 7:30 pm ¶

59. EGhead wrote:

    Just wanted to stress that I don’t think it’s active or subconscious PERSONAL racism, but a laziness to reject the INSTITUTIONAL racism, which I actually personally think is just as bad as laziness in rejecting personal racism.

    Posted 07 Sep 2009 at 7:33 pm ¶

60. NancyP wrote:

    One major problem in getting books by American black authors into the hands of readers is the booksellers’ physical segregation of “African-American” fiction and non-fiction into a special category. This seriously reduces the chance of serendipitous discovery while looking for an author’s non-segregated book. American Asian, Hispanic, First Peoples authors don’t face this problem, nor do black British, Caribbean, or African authors – all are put into the general fiction (or genre fiction) shelving.

    Posted 08 Sep 2009 at 10:36 pm ¶

61. Kitty wrote:

    Well, Walter Mosley and Henry Chang are right there under “mystery” or “detective fiction” (they may be found under some other category but they are to be found in the mainstream shelves.) Your list is pretty limited. It leaves out whole genres. People of color write mysteries and science fiction, too. And white people read their books because they are really, really good.

    Posted 09 Sep 2009 at 7:10 pm ¶

62. amory wrote:

    I’d like to see another amazing author added to this list: Ngugi Wa Thiong’o. He is AMAZING… check out Devil on the Cross.

    Posted 10 Sep 2009 at 1:11 am ¶

63. amory wrote:

    and Octavia Butler!

    Posted 10 Sep 2009 at 1:12 am ¶

64. Jessica wrote:

    Oh gosh, I can relate so well to what Mat Johnson said about POCs in creative writing workshops and how “the level of critique they get from said peers is thin… with the justification that people are loathe to critique writing that describes an experience they themselves haven’t had.”

    I dealt with this so much in the three creative writing classes that I took in my small, predominantly white liberal arts college… and in each class I was the sole student of color. It always felt as though people were scared to comment because they couldn’t relate to my experiences, even though I always thought I was writing within such universal themes. I always felt so mortified whenever my pieces were workshopped. I just wanted the sessions to end as quickly as possible.

    And I think I internalized some of the ~colorblindness~ or white normativity too, because I was IRATE when my professor told me that I was writing about the Asian-American experience. I didn’t think that I was. But… I was! And there was nothing wrong with that! But I wanted to deny it and to think that everything was color blind so people wouldn’t be afraid to comment on it.

    Thanks for this, I’ve got lots to add to my reading list! If I think of people to add, I shall recomment.

    Posted 11 Sep 2009 at 11:21 pm ¶

65. Ange wrote:

    Let’s not forget:

    Carolivia Herron
    Erika Lopez
    Ishmael Reed
    Percival Everett
    Darius James
    Tayria(sp) Jones
    Luiz J. Rodriguez
    R. Zemora Linmark
    Catherine Liu
    Ed Lin

    and that was just my first semester of my MFA.

    Posted 12 Sep 2009 at 2:20 am ¶

66. Ange wrote:

    PS:

    “Dogeaters” OWNS MY BROWN GIRL SOUL ON THE REAL!!!

    Posted 12 Sep 2009 at 2:27 am ¶

67. Thea Lim wrote:

    @Kitty

    The list was about “literature” – so rightly or not, it doesn’t include genre fiction. Though def a list that includes (or focuses on genre fic) is worthwhile. I actually prefer reading that stuff, but that doesn’t get assigned in a literature survey course. Call it the genre barrier

    Posted 16 Sep 2009 at 2:23 pm ¶

68. JM wrote:

    Sorry to hear that your reading lists are so limited in scope. I’m currently in a Literature graduate program myself, and it seems like all we read is authors of color. Granted, I take the classes that reflect this subject matter, because this is my area of interest, but I also think that I’m fortunate to have gotten into a program that has a lot of progressive and conscious faculty (in comparison to more conservative programs) about issues facing people of color, representation of such, etc. My department is also currently welcoming its first cohort in its new MFA program this year. I agree that many authors of color do not get enough recognition or acknowledgment for their work. Sometimes, however, when it comes to what’s reflected in class, it depends on the grad program you’re in and what the faculty in that program are like (also, very importantly, representation of faculty of color).

    This upcoming quarter, it will be the second time that I have to read Oscar Wao for seminar!

    Posted 16 Sep 2009 at 3:45 pm ¶

69. CKR wrote:

    I am a writer myself and a young black female. I mostly enjoy writing fantasy. At the moment I am pursuing my BA in Liberal Studies with a minor in Creative Writing.
    One of the many things I grapple with as a POC is the role I want to play, the things I want to do, and my responsibility as an African American female writer. I mainly got into writing for two reasons: 1. I love it -lol. 2. I got frustrated reading fantasy books and the like that had no one that looked like me in them, or at least never left it up to my imagination to make them look like me (everyone was described as white so there was no “confusion”).
    I’m also an avid reader but as a reader I’ve found less books that stick out for my interest. Some of you may wonder why my major is Liberal Studies while my minor is Creative Writing. Mainly b/c the Creative Writing program is sub-par. The reading and focus is predictable and stale to me. Also, it seems segregated. For me to read books by AA or POC authors it seems I have to take a class that focuses ONLY on POC authors. And most all of them focus on race in their books. Why the separation?
    Also, although there are some books and authors of color that I absolutely love for their talent, I feel like when POC authors are picked to study it is mostly authors that focus on race in particular. Are there no modern POC authors that simply tell a good story with some POC characters in it? I think there needs to be more of a balance b/c it gives off this idea that anytime you have a author who is a POC race is going to be the topic of the day- unless it’s a romance novel or similar.

    @Atlasien:
    I completely agree with you about mainstream literature.
    @Rita:
    I agree with you about YA books as well. They definitely seem more diverse at times. Also, more interested in telling an interesting story. Although I do think they could do better as well in showing POC characters as more leads in diverse groups and not just the friend.

    @Nancy P:
    I’m glad someone said it about books by black authors being separated from other literature. What is up with that? It makes it seem like ONLY black people would be interested in these stories. What I fear as a writer is putting out a book (that although perhaps having a POC character as a lead, it is overall diverse with other characters from different walks of life) and it it simply being placed in the “black interest” section (this is what some book stores call it) because I happen to be a African American who wrote it.

    Posted 17 Sep 2009 at 1:24 pm ¶