Classics You Probably Haven’t Heard Of!

[00:00:00]Whenever we talk about classics, we always talk about Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, um who else?

[00:00:10]A whole bunch of people I can't think of. So, here are some classics you should read that are not by the names that you're already familiar with.

[00:00:18]>> [music] >> Hi friends. Welcome to or welcome back to Shopping for the Book Club. I am Shopping Monet. All books will be linked down below in the underneath bar. Use my links, bro. It helps. Um don't forget to like, comment, and share.

[00:00:35]And let's get into it.

[00:00:36]This list is in no particular order.

[00:00:40]Um I tried to come up with books and authors that one you might be familiar with, but you don't see regularly when we talk about classics. Um because although I love Toni Morrison, although I love Zora Neale Hurston, although I love um >> [sighs] >> Richard Wright, who is actually on this list. Um Alice Walker, who is also on this list. Um we usually talk about the same books by them. Um so, I want to, you know, give you some books that maybe you've never heard of. So, speaking of Alice Walker, we have The Third Life of Grange Copeland. Grange Copeland, a deeply conflicted and struggling tenant farmer in the deep south of the 1930s, leaves his family and everything he's ever known to find happiness and respect in the cold cities of the north.

[00:01:34]This misadventure, his second life, proves a dismal failure that sends him back where he came from to confront his now grown-up son's disastrous relationships with his own family, including Grange's granddaughter, Ruth Copeland, a child that Grange grows to love.

[00:01:52]Love becomes the substance of his third and final life. He spends it in devotion to Ruth, teaching and protecting her, though the cost of doing so is almost more than he can bear.

[00:02:04]I like never hear anybody talking about this book. And it actually is available on Kindle Unlimited if you have Kindle Unlimited.

[00:02:12]Next, we have Eight Men. This is a collection of short stories by Richard Wright. This says, "In these powerful stories, literary great Richard Wright probes the landscape of the human heart and soul with deep compassion and biting clarity. Each of the short works in Eight Men focuses on a black man at violent odds with a white world, reflecting Wright's views about racism in our society and his fascination with what he called the struggle of the individual in America."

[00:02:45]Again, I don't think I knew that Richard Wright had a collection of short stories. I came across that one um when I was asking for recommendations of books with numbers in the title um for Her Read.

[00:03:03]And one thing that I'm really enjoying about Her Read, Her Read is the hardest reading challenge you'll ever do. It started the beginning of this month. Um is how intentional I have to be about the books that I'm choosing to read for the prompts. I think that even if I don't fully complete it, which I think I will, um something that I will incorporate from it every year is looking through the prompts and seeing if I can do some of them because it's making me think.

[00:03:35]And I just love that. Um but also the community that it builds, like having to really ask and say like, "Do y'all know any books with numbers in it?"

[00:03:44]So, next up, we have Gloria Naylor, very popular black author that I have not read any of her work yet, which I need to fix. This one is Linden Hills. Now, one of my favorite books is Dante's Inferno. I read that in college and just the whole concept of uh the different levels of hell and traversing it. It I I had to write this paper on it. It was It was a grand time.

[00:04:12]This It says, um "For its wealthy African-American residents, this exclusive neighborhood of Linden Hills is a symbol of making it, the ultimate achievement, a home on prop prop prestigious, excuse me, Tupelo Drive. Making your way downhill to Tupelo is irrefutable proof of your worth. But, the farther down the hill you go, the emptier you become. Using the descent of Dante's Inferno as a model, this bold, haunting novel follows two young men as they attempt to find work amid the circles of the well-off community, exploring a mic a microcosm of race, social class race and social class, author Gloria Naylor reveals the true cost of success for the lost souls of Linden Hills, an existence trapped in a nightmare of their own making."

[00:05:08]Love anything >> [sighs] >> that is using other literature as source text. Um and it's playing with style.

[00:05:18]I think so often we get caught up in the same uh loop of the same types of literature all the time. And this feels like it's going to be like really good.

[00:05:35]Then we have The Blacker the Berry. Now, this one is by Wallace Thurman. You may have seen this one around. I feel like a lot more people have been talking about this.

[00:05:44]Um because there is a content creator I can't think of her name right now, but that did read it recently. So, this one you may have heard of.

[00:05:55]The Blacker the Berry by Wallace Thurman is a bold and important novel examining race, identity, and color prejudice within African-American society. The story follows a dark-skinned young woman confronting discrimination and social expectations while searching for dignity and acceptance. Honest and emotionally compelling, the novel remains a landmark of Harlem Renaissance literature.

[00:06:21]What other books does he have?

[00:06:27]There's a collection of his writings that's also on here.

[00:06:33]Um which probably is good. I feel like there are a lot of authors from the Harlem Renaissance that we just don't talk about, and that needs to change.

[00:06:44]Um then we have The White Boy Shuffle. This is by Paul Beatty? Maybe his name is I was pronouncing it wrong, but I do know that he is an author that writes a lot of satire, which has my ears perked up. Um I purchased most of his books because I got them on sale from like Half Price Books or something like that online or something.

[00:07:16]Um The first novel novel from the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sellout, Paul Beatty's hilarious and scathing debut novel, The White Boy Shuffle, is about Gunnar Kaufman, an awkward black surfer bum who is moved by his mother from Santa Monica to urban West Los Los There he begins to undergo a startling transformation from neighborhood outcast to basketball superstar, eventually and eventually to reluctant Messiah of the divided, downtrodden people, quote unquote.

[00:07:59]He has a couple of books that I want to read. Like The Sellout seemed like it was probably going to be funny. This one says, "A biting satire by a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court."

[00:08:12]Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, and the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality.

[00:08:29]The black Chinese restaurant. Born in the agrarian ghetto of Dickens on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles, the narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians.

[00:08:45]I die in the same bedroom I'd grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that have been there since '68.

[00:08:55]Since the '68 quake, raised by a single father and controversial sociologist, he spent his childhood as a subject in racially charged psychological studies. He is led to believe that his father's pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his family's financial woes. But when his father is killed in a police shootout, he realizes there was never a memoir. All that's left is the bill for a drive-thru funeral.

[00:09:24]It reminds me of Percival Everett. Like his style, his um tone and things. Like I like being able to find what my favorite authors were possibly reading.

[00:09:46]Because this came out in 2015, so maybe not necessarily. This will probably be more of his peer than um his uh still somebody he can look up to.

[00:10:10]But yeah, definitely an author that should be looked up to more.

[00:10:19]And then last but certainly not least, Not Without Laughter. This is by Langston Hughes.

[00:10:24]And the Penguin Classic version has a introduction by Angela Flournoy.

[00:10:30]So it says, "When first published in 1930, Not Without Laughter established Langston Hughes as not only a brilliant poet and leading light of the Harlem Renaissance, but also as a gifted novelist. In telling the story of Sandy Rogers, a young African-American boy in a small town in Kansas, and of his family, his mother Angie, a housekeeper for a wealthy white family, his irresponsible father Jimboy, who plays the guitar and travels the country in search of employment, his strong-willed grandmother Hagar, who clings to her faith, his aunt Tempy, who marries a rich man, and his aunt Harriet, who struggles to make it as a blues singer. Hughes gives the longings and the lineaments of black life in the early 20th century an important place in the history of racially divided America."

[00:11:22]That sound like my kind of carrying on.

[00:11:25]So, let me know, what are some classics that you can think of by black authors that you have not seen talked about online that you absolutely love or that you think should be read more. I would love to know what you guys are reading or have read.

[00:11:42]And if no one has told you today, I love you. You are kind. You are smart. You are important. If to no one else, to me.

[00:11:48]Bye, friends.

[00:11:51]>> [music]