Score

If you don't pay attention to the list description, the stuff you add that doesn't belong is going to be deleted.

Agh I got all excited and did exactly what I wasn't supposed to do...

You're welcome to make your own list that doesn't set out to accurately represent the work of another.

Fantastic list, as always, Aubrey! I had never thought of Toni Morrison as avant garde, but thinking back on Beloved and Sula, I've realized that her style is very much experimental. Thank you. I love the article, too.:)

Dustin wrote: "Fantastic list, as always, Aubrey! I had never thought of Toni Morrison as avant garde, but thinking back on Beloved and Sula, I've realized that her style is very much experimental. Thank you. I l..."

You're welcome, Dustin. It's a case of authors not being placed in certain categories on account on them not being part of the "standard" canon, as per usual.

Dustin wrote: "Fantastic list, as always, Aubrey! I had never thought of Toni Morrison as avant garde, but thinking back on Beloved and Sula, I've realized that her style is very much experimental. Thank you. I l..."

She's been recognized as such since at least 1989 ::
Breaking the Sequence: Women's Experimental Fiction or possibly 1983 :: Anything Can Happen: Interviews with Contemporary American Novelists.

Hard to take this seriously with no mention of Ishmael Reed. The irony is that it's an omission he would have predicted, given his critique of maudlin conservatism + amnesia in American literature.

Xantha, calm down.

You made a list called "The Black Avant Garde" that pops up in a Google search that a lot of people might end up relying on. And you left off one of the more experimental, radical, and political 1970s black writers (who is not obscure at all). The "maudlin conservatism" I was referring to was including basically everything by Morrison and Rankine. I doubt many people would consider either of them "avant garde" in even the loose sense of that term. I didn't make the list - you did.

Hell, if you're just including writers you like as "avant garde," where is James Alan McPherson?