Some personal favorites

[Arcdelad]

Black history month is almost over, and this weekend while I was bed ridden I pulled out some of my favorite african american authors...african american lit from the 1880's to the mid 20th is, in my opinion, THE absolute best categorical body of fiction in all of american literary history...I would stack fitzgerald (one shot wonder), faulkner (deliberately obscure), and steinbech (....okay...I love steinbech) any day against the canon of african american literature...these are two books I think everyone should read...plus a sample quote from each that is especially poignent:

Book: "Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass", by Frederick Douglass
This was revised many many times, there are glaring ommisions, but this is the rise from ignorant slave to educated abolishionist that all other African American works referenced and bounced off of.

"The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all
concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of
earnest struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation,
are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want
rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without
the awful roar of its many waters"

Book: "The Souls of Black Folk", WEB Dubois
This book sends shivers down my spine. Amazing. ALthough Dubois did later become more black panther and less Dr. King, and died lonely in Gana...

“All men cannot go to college but some men must; every isolated group or nation must have its yeast, must have for the talented few centers of training where men are not so mystified and befuddled by the hard and necessary toil of earning a living, as to have no aims higher than their bellies, and no God greater than Gold.”

[un4]

I like Fitzgerald and Steinbeck...

[Vengeance]

History isnt my best subject, nor do i read much about reality. So...