Invisible Man - R. Ellison
Native Son - Richard Wright
Miseducation of the Negro - Woodson
Souls of Black Folks - W.E.B Dubois
Autobiography of Malcolm X - Alex Haley and Malcolm X
Up From Slavery - Booker T. Washington

Add on

Only criteria - the book is 30 years or older. Hence "settled" and easily obtainable @ most bookstores.

Poetry, Novels, Essays - please

one
k. orr
an absentee post

The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
For colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf- Ntozake Shange
The Blacker the Berry - Wallace Thurman
My House - Nikki Giovanni
Black Skin White Mask - Frantz Fanon



~MJR~


If our history has taught us anything, it is that action for change directed against the external conditions of our oppressions is not enough.---Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.---Alice Walker

Lactose intolerance is the most common "food allergy," but to call it an allergy is to take a white-centric view that trivializes the fact most of the world's people are not biologically designed to digest milk. Milk does no body good, but for the vast majority of the world's people--people of color--its a public health disaster. No other animal drinks cow's milk, not even calves once they are weaned.---Dr. Shanti Rangwani

for Fanon before I'd say the other one you posted.

But he was an algerian frenchman, educated in france i think. At least i'm pretty sure he was north african by heritage, and french by nationality.

he died in usa thou
and both books must have been very important to afroamericans anyhow, no matter his nationality

nm.

martinique.

Youngin, look here, let me know when you can go into a mainstream bookstore and pick up the book he named, more times than "Wretched of the Earth".

As to why you brought that biographical fact up, I'll chalk it up to you just reading about him in ya classes and deciding to want to impress ya finding upon the folks on this here board.

After i posted it, wanted to help the post with all i had to share, i saw i shouldnt because of the way it came out.

>As to why you brought that biographical fact up, I'll chalk
>it up to you just reading about him in ya classes and
>deciding to want to impress ya finding upon the folks on
>this here board.

Yeah.. eh, I was suggested to read it by my pops, and was all hyped up by how it was on point with much of what we were discussing on activist, so i posted the part i liked the most, the prologue (because the rest of the book itself was too heavy). I dont remember if i wanted to impress, but i remember i was happy i could share something with the board. Trying to grow on it, even if it was (and is) too advanced for me.

(damn.. i keep saying things that insult people, without intending to do so)

just cause you can't find it easily...
that makes Black Skin, White Masks
a non-classic?

for whom?

"Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe"

i don't think this counts as "black literature" right k'orr?

im suprised you even used the word "african"

"The only thing we wanted for our country was the right to a decent existence, to dignity without hypocrisy , to independence without restrictions... The day will come when history will have its say."-Lumumba

and don't know the flavor.

It took my like three years to find that book and I can't say enough about it.

America taught me how to kidnap and torture cats...

Crisis of the Negro Intellectual - Harold Cruse
The Street - Ann Petry
Their Eyes Are Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
The Fire Next Time - James Baldwin
Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man - James Weldon Johnson
Home to Harlem - Claude McKay
Blues People - LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka
Black Power - Kwame Ture and Charles V. Hamilton
Soul on Ice - Eldridge Cleaver
Blacks - Gwendolyn Brooks

Quicksand and Passing- Nella Larsen
Invisible Man- Ralph Ellison
Anything by Toni Morrison
Anything by James Baldwin

I am a Martinican Woman and the White Negress- Mayotte Capecia
Death and the Kings Horsement- Wole Soyinka
The Lion and the Jewel- Wole Soyinka

anything by Toni Morrison?

I'd hesitate to call Paradise a classic by any stretch of the imagination.

the woman is an excellent writer, but she went overboard with that one.

I have not read Paradise, but I did hear that it is not her best work. Since the books had to be over 30 years old, I figured we could disregard it.

I bought that book in Barcelona, man that shit was good.

America taught me how to kidnap and torture cats...

Nigger - Dick Gregory

Like Slave on the Block for instance and his poems

cane--jean toomer
incidents in the life of a slave girl--harriet jacobs
zami--audre lorde
brown girl, brownstones, paule marshall
clotel--william wells brown
plum bun or there is confusion--jessie fauset
black no more--george schuyler
iola leroy--frances e.w. harper
our nig--harriet wilson
the complete works--phillis wheatley

frederick douglass--his autobiography and selected speaches
a voice from the south--anna julia cooper

i don't know if any of this is "settled", but, you know, i suppose they are some of the more popular books.

-----
free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves. --marcuse

what did you think of Zami, i am getting through it now. I am kinda bored reading about her childhood school experiences

i love zami so much. i can understand how you can get bored with that part of lorde's life. the second half is quite different. it moves a little more quickly. above all, i have to give the work/lorde so much respect and admiration for doing/creating something that hadn't been in existence before...

i think what's really interesting in the first part are her mother, language, notions of home, and how those permeate the rest of the book.

i just finished rereading it not too long ago, so if you wanna know what i think about certain parts, i'd be happy to discuss them.

(for me though, it's all about sister outsider.)
-----
free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves. --marcuse

I loved them both.

What I liked about the first part was how she was able to render her childhood from the perspective of a little girl, giving it lots of mythological viscera and making it beautiful.

See, some of the second part bored me... until she started sleeping with women.

(in case you don't know, I am not making any silly het boy references... simply, I found it ... special because we have same-sex attractions in common... )

the first part can be seen as a bit more fascinating than the second. i was a bit disappointed in the fact that lorde sort of leaves the reader up in arms when it comes to her relationship w/ her mother. i was particularly interested in it, and also how the relationship w/ her sisters ended up.

i think part of zami's purpose is to illustrate lorde's efforts to create zami through various relationships w/ women, and to also discover the erotic in everyting that she does. i'm really interested in how her prior biomythography was influenced by and/or was a continuation of her famous essay on uses of the erotic.

but anyway...

sister outsider, well, i just love it.


-----
free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves. --marcuse

i'd include dust tracks on a road, by hurston
price of the ticket-james baldwin
here i stand-paul robeson
passing-nella larsen
sula and the bluest eye-toni morrison
sister outsider and black unicorn-audre lorde
betsey brown-ntozake shange
the dutchman-leroi jones
young, gifted and black-lorainne hansberry

The Color Purple
Temple of My Familiar
Possessing the Secret of Joy -- all by Walker

Other gems like

Mama Day - Gloria Naylor


.... too many books and not enough titles and authors coming together... I'll be back!

Peace,

Q

>Mama Day - Gloria Naylor

"Mama Day" is not a classic. It's a great read, but if you're going to put a Gloria Naylor book, I MOST definitely have to go for "Linden Hills."

we must be on the same wavelength because i was like why is nobody saying MAMA DAY.....oh that is my favorite book....alot of peeps practice things like that, but of course the disparia has us all thinking that traditional african practices are crazy....but gloria can mess with the mind too....oh linden hills had me trippin when she brought the dead baby in after they escaped the basement...but there's one thing i could never figure out....why was Needed putting fish heads in the dead folks mouths...and you know what...when i think about....this book was basically the show SIX FEET UNDER....i loved it....

that was a very good book. very deep and provocative, a must read.