Suggestions on African American Novels

[ranzy]

Hi everybody. I am attending a class in American Literature and the main theme is African American Literature. Among the others compulsory books we have to choose one of these novels to read and write a report:

Richard Wright - Native Son
Zora Neale Hurston - Their eyes were watching God
Toni Morrison - The bluest eye
Alice Walker - The color purple

I don't know much about them, so I'd like if anybody who has read them could suggest me which is the best.

Thanks

[Virgil]

Hi everybody. I am attending a class in American Literature and the main theme is African American Literature. Among the others compulsory books we have to choose one of these novels to read and write a report:

Richard Wright - Native Son
Zora Neale Hurston - Their eyes were watching God
Toni Morrison - The bluest eye
Alice Walker - The color purple

I don't know much about them, so I'd like if anybody who has read them could suggest me which is the best.

Thanks

Hi Ranzy

I've read the bottom two, The Bluest Eye and The Color Purple and they are OK. Good works but I wouldn't consider either great. I've never read Native Son but that is supposed to be good, and I've been meaning to read Their Eyes Were Watching God (it's on my list, but I never seem to get to it) and that is supposed to be great. My opinion I would pick Hurston or Wright.

But then we disagreed on The Grass Harp. ;)

Here are some web sites to help you make up your mind:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Son
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Their_Eyes_Were_Watching_God
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bluest_Eye
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Color_Purple

[Il Penseroso]

I've read Wright's autobiographical "Black Boy", and found it quite good. I've never read any of the choices, but works from the first three. Based on what I've read I would go with the Morrison novel, but that's without being familiar (at all) with it. How about talking with your instructor? He or she'd be familiar with all and should be able to help, right?

[Idril]

I've read Native Son and The Color Purple and the one that had the most impact on me was Native Son. It's really a devastating book, I could never bring myself to read it again but it was incredibly powerful.

[ranzy]

Thanks for the suggestions. I think I will read Native Son.

[Nick Rubashov]

good choice on choosing Native Son. Same as Idril, I've never reread Native Son; but then again I never had to. The book is so powerful just one read through was enough to leave an incredible impression on me. I know you'll thoroughly enjoy it.

[Jozanny]

I am reading Ellison's Invisible Man with my unusual repast and coffee, and I often wonder why he couldn't get another novel out of himself in his lifetime. He would cry out to his sympathizers, in the 1960's, that he was not an Uncle Tom, which some accused him of, since identity politics was coming to a head in those days. I believe him, but I am not sure I understand him. Richard Wright, on whom the nameless IM protagonist is probably based, I get. Toni Morrison, I get, even if I reject, sometimes, her lavish indulgence for suffering. Ellison is more of an enigma to me.

I went off on this little tangent in General Chat while I was eating (of course), so I thought I would move this over here, in general literature, in a more appropriate thread, and this one will do. I read Native Son in a really controversial American Literature survey course, toward the end of my university life, and technically it is an uneven book, but it has its moments. I read The Bluest Eye as well, and IMO, it is Morrison's harshest and cruelest work, and I do not envy authors who dig in to the degree she does. I started a story about a white woman who turns racist after a series of events, and I'm not really sure I can ever pull off finishing it, because it is difficult to write about what creates bigotry without endorsing, in a sense, what you are examining--but since these giants of African American literature are on my mind this morning, I'd like to pose a question: Who are Morrison, Wright and Ellison writing for? Who do you think their intended audience was, when they launched their careers? Howard Stern, being Stern, used to say AA literature of this quality was targeted toward white guilt--and I ain't much of a Stern fan, but sometimes his commentary was more than simply incisive. I think it would be over-simplifying to say he was right--but did he have a point?

PS: I know a bit of Hurston's biography, but she is one of the majors I have not sampled yet.

[Kafka's Crow]

The Native Son is one of the most powerful books I have ever read. It will be etched on your memory for the rest of your lives. I read it 8 years ago but still feel the fear at the thought of how Bigger did what he did out of sheer fear and insecurity, one of the most unfortunate characters in American literature.

[Jozanny]

The Native Son is one of the most powerful books I have ever read. It will be etched on your memory for the rest of your lives. I read it 8 years ago but still feel the fear at the thought of how Bigger did what he did out of sheer fear and insecurity, one of the most unfortunate characters in American literature.

Eh. It is an angry book--and Wright's anger is certainly justified--but Bigger is almost quaint by today's standards, and as an anti-hero, he is much less interesting than Ellison's nameless everyman. Wright offers a realistic portrait of the AA male's plight in American society, no argument from me there, and the novel flares brightly and then thuds with some mouthpiece issues during the trial, but, I am not sorry that Bigger has to pay his debt to society for his crimes. I feel Wright's outrage, but I am not sure it translates into my outrage for what Ellison longs for, pleads for, which is social equality. Morrison is another issue. She makes me feel all right, but she makes me feel almost too much; it is almost too difficult to enter the journey which she demands of you, and Beloved not only demands, but is too obsessive, too thick, to use a Morrison word. Song of Solomon, which any lover of literature can love, taught me things I needed to learn. The Bluest Eye is a much harder book, but it needs to exist.

I opened my story I mentioned and revised a sentence, and decided to try and finish it even if a publisher may never want to chance it. I was assaulted when I still lived in the inner city--that is where the story comes from, though I have forgiven the attacker.

If Morrison can touch upon the truth she does then I can keep trying that as well. I am not she by a long shot, but what she taught me, in her strongest work, was the integrity and honesty of voice can be very powerful, even if it hurts.:)

[Virgil]

Jozy, Howard Stern is hardly an intellectual. If you want to read about white guilt (and I'm not necessarily subscribing to the theory that those authors are writing for white guilt) read Shelby Steele. Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Guilt:_How_Blacks_and_Whites_Together_Destro yed_the_Promise_of_the_Civil_Rights_Era
Certainly on a political level there is an appeal to white guilt, but I'm ambivilent when it comes to literary authors. Perhaps it's a by product, but I don't know about a motivating reason to create literature.

[JBI]

You may also like to look at some poetry - Robert Haydon, Langston Hughes, Jay Wright, Thylias Moss, Rita Dove, and others, all of whom have/had established, quality careers.

In terms of the Morrison book, The Bluest Eye is one of her early works, though good, I feel it doesn't establish itself the same way as her later works.