Literary Fiction by People of Color discussion

Group member Poingu suggested that we start a thread for rediscovered fiction by authors of color. Her thoughts were inspired by the reissue of the novel Oreo by Fran Ross. Please share any information you have about novels that are now being reissued and are beginning to receive the attention they deserve.

I'm reposting some of the links from other threads about Oreo. Please add any others that you have found interesting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/15/boo...

http://www.npr.org/2011/03/09/1342047...

http://www.onthemedia.org/story/oreo-...

The New Yorker also published a review, here:

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...

At least one reviewer mentioned how hard it is to quote from the book when reviewing it, because every sentence brings with it some new surprise twist and it's hard to know when to quit quoting. I felt that way too. I tried quoting from Oreo in my Goodreads review and gave up after realizing I'd copied about 600 words and counting into my little review.

Thanks for starting this thread, Wilhelmina. I've been thinking a lot about how authors of color will fall out of favor/print, if they are somehow out of step with the political times, or for some other reason that has nothing to do with the worthiness of the book. Also there is always this added pressure also for authors of color to appeal to or educate or somehow reach a white/majority audience, either out of the desire to promote social change through fiction, or simply to sell enough books to make a living.

So much has nothing to do with literary merit. I was completely shocked when I learned that Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass was out of print for decades, until being 'rediscovered' in the 60's.

Let me recommend with great enthusiasm another novel that was out of step with politics and which in addition turned off white readers, to the point where it almost disappeared until lately: No-No boy by John Okada.

This novel was just reprinted last year by U Washington Press. Ruth Ozeki wrote the foreword to the new edition and it's worth getting a copy of the new edition just to read her essay about Okada and about the immediate post-WWII realities of Japanese American life. Here is a blurb from the publisher:

"No-No Boy has the honor of being the very first Japanese American novel," writes novelist Ruth Ozeki in her new foreword to John Okada's classic of Asian American literature. First published in 1956, No-No Boy was virtually ignored by a public eager to put World War II and the Japanese internment behind them...No-No Boy tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a fictional version of the real-life "no-no boys." Yamada answered "no" twice in a compulsory government questionnaire as to whether he would serve in the armed forces and swear loyalty to the United States. Unwilling to pledge himself to the country that interned him and his family, Ichiro earns two years in prison and the hostility of his family and community when he returns home to Seattle. As Ozeki writes, Ichiro's "obsessive, tormented" voice subverts Japanese postwar "model-minority" stereotypes, showing a fractured community and one man's "threnody of guilt, rage, and blame as he tries to negotiate his reentry into a shattered world."

Thanks, Poingu!

No-No Boy is excellent! I'm glad to hear of this reprint, Poingu! I once went to a session at a librarian's conference here in WA state that was all about the No-no boys and about this book in particular.

Karen Michele wrote: "No-No Boy is excellent! I'm glad to hear of this reprint, Poingu! I once went to a session at a librarian's conference here in WA state that was all about the No-no boys and about t..."

Karen, you're such a resource. I hope you post other books you've come across in your work that haven't received the readership they deserve.

No-No Boy was one of the books that finally got me to realize how arbitrary our idea of "great novels" is, and how many works have been forgotten or under-read especially because of systemic prejudice against voices of color. It was very disorienting to learn that Douglass and Hurston were unread until one person/publisher brought them back from the literary graveyard and republished them.

I posted my review of No No Boy, here:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

Another neglected novel that everyone seems to agree should be read, and should be a classic, is The Man Who Cried I Am by John A. Williams. It appears to be out of print--the cheapest used copies on Amazon are $39. That can't be right--I think I picked my copy up at a dime-a-bag library sale. Otoh it is not in circulation at my library. I've begun to read it now, after reading John A. Williams's obituary recently in the NYT, here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/07/art...

Like No No Boy, The Man Who Cried I Am hit way too close to the bone to be embraced by white readers and fell out of favor, especially after Williams criticized Martin Luther King. If you read the obit you might think, as I did, that the "angry black man" label Williams got from the white intelligentsia in his day is a lot like what Coates is now getting for his book today, with a prime example being this op-ed by David Brooks:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/17/opi...

Scribner has issued a new edition of Middle Passage by Charles Johnson, which won the National Book Award in 1990 and yet seems not much read today...here is a link to an interview w. Johnson, "Middle Passage at 25", published in the New York Times:

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/201...

Poingu wrote: "Scribner has issued a new edition of Middle Passage by Charles Johnson, which won the National Book Award in 1990 and yet seems not much read today...here is a link to an interview w...."

How exciting! I get the sense that Johnson was widely read once upon a time but definitely needs to be revisited.

University of Washington Press also reissued a beautiful reprint of Carlos Bulosan's America Is in the Heart (Washington Papers with a new introduction.

http://uwpressblog.com/tag/america-is...