#BUT if for whatever reason y'all want to know my opinions on pre-modern lit lemme know

[creolesasuke]

AUTHORS, fuck not books maybe i can't even read

Since I also got your last message (I'm assuming that's you anyways) that asked for book recs I'll give both authors and books that I think you should read from them. Note that I will be including some...umm....Questionable writers here since there are some whose work I still feel can be incredibly relevant and powerful, but I'll nevertheless still add disclaimers so that you can avoid them if you'd prefer. I hope I don't have to say that reading and engaging with an author's work critically is not an endorsement of their politics. But ANYWAYS:

Toni Morrison: Toni Morrison writes with such power, grace, and wisdom that it's hard to imagine anyone disliking her work. What's interesting to me about her is that even though she's from Ohio, her novels have such southern gothic sensibilities that I sometime consider her a southern writer. But I think was makes her distinct from say Faulkner, O'Connor, and other southern writers is her optimism, very different from the southern modernist's tendency towards cynicism. Sula, Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eyes (huge cw for csa and abuse), and Beloved (a book about the generational trauma of U.S. slavery so once again read with caution) are my personal favorites.

Virginia Woolf: Reading To the Lighthouse was a transformative experience for 17 y/o me. I had never read a novel that so perfectly captured existential longing and ennui. And after reading Mrs. Dalloway, I soon regarded Woolf as my favorite writer. Until I learned she was a huge anti-semite and racist. Yet I unfortunately can't discount the massive impact she had on me as a writer, and for that reason I have to mention her.

James Baldwin: I love James Baldwin even though I can only read his novels only once and never again bc they make me want to die. Giovanni's Room is literally the saddest novel I've ever read. James Baldwin was famously a bit MESSY she was a MESSY GIRL, but I still love this man so much honestly. Even though thinking about Giovanni's Room makes me pass out

Alice Walker: I've only read The Color Purple, and I probably will not read more of her since she's a raging anti-semite, but even so I can't deny how much this book affected me the first time I read it. It's funny bc The Color Purple film is such a staple of Black American culture and yet so few people know that in the book the main character is explicitly a lesbian. The novel is epistolary, being entirely composed of letter between Celie and her sister Nettie, and this depiction of black sisterhood is one of most authentic and endearing in literature. Cw for csa, racism, misogyny, lesbophobia, abuse.

Zora Neale Hurston: the mother of African American literature. Curiously enough, she was relatively unknown until 1975 when Alice Walker published an essay on her in Ms. magazine. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a landmark work of black southern fiction.

Suzan-Lori Parks: Postmodernism has become less and less appealing to me as I grow older, but something about how Parks deconstructs the black experience (boy do I hate that term) and presents history as like a collage of fragmentary signs and symbols keeps drawing me back. She can be so opaque and cryptic and yet it never comes across as pretentious or contrived. The America Play and Topdop/Underdog are my favorites. A lot of her plays depict racism but almost in a comedic way. If you aren't a fan of dark humor/shock humor then steer clear.

Derek Walcott: Omeros is the only thing I've read but it's still one of my favorite long poems of all time. I don't know much about him as a person but I love love love his use of language. One of the most inventive writers on this list.

William Faulkner: William Faulkner was just about every genre of bigot you could imagine but because of that he presents one of the most authentic depictions of the southern experience you'll ever read. As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury are my favorites, but I'm planning on reading Absalom, Absalom next so who knows. His short story A Rose for Emily changed my life. Cw for just about every act of violence imaginable, especially antiblack racism.

Tennessee Williams: A gay neurotic mess of a man whose plays essentially introduced the southern gothic style to American theater. Also a huge racist. The Glass Menagerie perfectly encapsulates the feeling of being gay and misunderstood understood in the south, even if the main character isn't explicitly gay. A Streetcar Named Desire probably needs no introduction, though I once again must warn you that there is an (infamous) rape scene (it's not explicitly shown but heavily implied). An extremely disturbing, almost expressionist depiction of masculinity vs. femininity

James Joyce: My favorite writer (unfortunately). I really cannot explain to you why I love this man so other than him being Irish and Make Pretty Word. Read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners before Ulysses. In A Portrait of the Artist there's technically a brief mention of statutory rape between the narrator and a sex worker but it's very brief and written in a highly metaphoric manner. I don't know much about him as a person other than him being a drunk and chronically ill. Perpetual virgin also. So catholic it'll make your bones ache.

Gabriel García Márquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude sophomore year of high school was another formative literary experience, and was actually the first Latin American work of literature I'd ever read. To this day whenever I try my hand at writer I always veer towards magical realism, so influential this book was. A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings is my favorite short story. I'm currently trying to read El Amor en los tiempos del cólera and El Colonel no tiene quien le escriba in the original Spanish. Failing spectacularly ❤️

Clarice Lispector: BASED. BASED. Lispector was a Ukrainian Jewish woman whose family fled to Brazil during WWI, and thus a lot of her novels relate to her experiences as a Jewish woman. The Passion According to G.H. is almost a feminist reimagining of The Metamorphosis by Kafka and it absolutely will haunt you for the rest of your life. Extremely high on my list of favorite writers, alongside Joyce, Woolf, Morrison, and Shakespeare, and that's only after having read one of her books. Incredible woman.

Jean Genet: I'm still reading Notre-Dame-Des-Fleurs but, and I normally don't do this, learning about Jean Genet personal history has intrigued me almost more than the novel itself. He was just such a fascinating man and from what I can tell was a massive ally to black people. I haven't finished the novel yet but from what I've read he has a very interesting conception of gender and sexuality, although I'm literally only like 10 pages in. He almost reminds me a bit of John Waters in that his writing explores transgressive sexual and gender, but different from Waters is Genet's aestheticism. He's a very lyrical writer. I don't know if I recommend him so much as I'm interested in seeing that y'all think about him.