Should the race or sexuality of an author play a role in your decision to read them or not?

Should the race or sexuality of an author play a role in your decision to read them or not?

The read less straight white men movement is bullshit. But I do like to read books from diverse authors to acquaint myself with their/different perspectives.

...

>Being racist and sexist is ok when minorities do it
This really debunks the concept of social "justice" as social change in favor of groups who feel socially disadvantaged

xD

Of course not. Everyone knows it. This thread is shit. Kys yourself, faggot.

since i have to assume she means fewer the whole fucking point implodes

but as a straight white man, i want to read more.

Why is she telling me to read less?

B... But they write all the good books

No, but that goes the same both ways.

name me 1 (one) queer, non-white, woman who has written a novel that is praised as highly as something by one of the lit favs (dostoyevsky, pinecone, DFW, tolstoy, joyce etc)

of course not
for all it matters the author can be a black albino who is a trans male female with three arms and a dick on his head
it doesn't change the quality of the book

if it matters to you , you should kill yourself

I don't see a problem.

But mostly in the "positive" sense: it'd generally be a bad move to avoid a book you want to read because of who the writer is, because you might not be so motivated to read then. It might feel forced.

But what if I don't know what to read next? If I have no other particular criteria, why not look up someone who is a woman or black or something, if I generally read more white men than others.

I've read several great authors sooner rather than later thanks to occasionally using this mindset to pick a book. Like Toni Morrison, I'd heard her mentioned but hadn't acquired any of her books: when I first did, I did so thanks to thinking like this.

Night wood by Barnes

...

Is 'Death of the Author' canon?

Lorraine Hansberry

Yeah probably. If I want to read about another culture I'd read from an author of a different background. If I want to read something I will relate to I'll read from someone that I identify with. Of course that kind of stuff matters

Literally who?
This.

Clumsy sentence construction. Just write "stop reading Shakespeare" and be done with it.

You can't go wrong with non-straight white men desu

Yes, you should read widely for perspectives. I see a lot of criticism of post-colonial literature here, and I disagree strongly. If you have gotten past the Veeky Forums entry level, and maybe classical works, there is nothing wrong with moving on towards Naipaul or Arundhati Roy or Thiongo or Gao Xingjian or Orman Pamuk. As far as female literature, there are plenty of great novels written by women, so many that I dont know how you can avoid reading them unless you do it on purpose, in which case you are as bad as the cunt in OPs pic.

I was gonna read Oscar Wilde. Gay, but still white. Do I throw it in the trash? Help!

Or do I just read less of Oscar Wilde? Only 5 pages?

I'll be honest, I've only read a dozen or so women authors and not a single black author (unless you're a memer who thinks of Dumas and Obama as blacks).

I don't think I'm some kind of a racist sexist outlier, so if my experience is indicative of larger trends, most people for one reason or another mostly read white men.

So I can understand how minorities would want to change that and get people to read their works too. But I'm worried this might turn out to be counterproductive. Ten years ago, if someone suggested me a minority writer, I would think nothing of the fact that the person is a minority. If they're a good writer, they're a good writer, right? But these days, with so much effort being put in getting people to read minority authors, if I were recommended a minority author, I would at least subconsciously think "Are they really a good author or are people only saying that because they're a minority?".

>But these days, with so much effort being put in getting people to read minority authors, if I were recommended a minority author, I would at least subconsciously think "Are they really a good author or are people only saying that because they're a minority?".

Should be able to make decisions for yourself based on a bit of research desu

>Reading post-colonial "literature" when you haven't even finished the entire Western Canon
ISHYGDDT
S m h t b h f a m

You can always see the 20 year olds who just started reading on this board. Once you get to the second tier of the canon, like Lucan and Parzival and Diderot and have been reading 100 books a year for about 20 years, its nice to start finding hidden gems.

Unless someone's properly famous (ie Oscar Wilde), why would you even know their race and sexuality?

>I only read off lists approved by a Bulgarian Crocheting Forum and what my professors tell me to read

Shit like pic related is pretty obvious, but is still extremely unique and interesting.

You missed the irony and replied with an ironic post that is technically sincere in the context of the first irony

I don't know what level were on

Homer was a black woman.

Memes aside, I've actually heard theories that Odyssey was written by a woman and falsely attributed to Homer. Something about how male and female characters were written.

Homeric revisionism revolves around the nature of epic poems, and whether Homer was a collator and archivist or an actual verse author. If he was more a collator, and was writing down what previous oral poets had passed down (likely) it is not unreasonable to find feminine influence, as an epic poet may have had only daughters and in like 900bc passed his knowledge to her.

I think that only holds true for non-contemporary authors desu. If someone recommends James Baldwin, doing "research" will be a lot more helpful in coming to the conclusion that he is worth reading than doing the same for contemporary authors like Colson Whitehead, in part because of recency bias, in part because of the highly visible "read and publish more minorities" campaign.

...

Yes, it should. I exclusively read straight white men for several reasons. Partly, I do that because I do not want to appropriate the culture of women or PoC. Further, I, as a man, am incapable of understanding their struggles. Lastly, I do not buy their books, since that would be patronising. They are strong and independent, and do not need my man-dollar subsidy.

>campaign
It is a fundamental change in 90% of academia, and is organic at this point. unfortunate but true. That said, you can definitely still find good works, even within the Identity Struggle category.

i could read more non-white authors, but by the logic 'these people' use, wouldn't doing so mean I was appropriating their culture?

L Ron Hubbard was a black man

I don't see why it should matter unless if the author's race plays some significance in what they write, i.e. their own personal culture/family/history/etc like Chinua Achebe. Otherwise just read what's good, nigga

I don't think there's any contradiction between something being supported by academia or being organic and it being a campaign, unless you understand "campaign" in the narrow sense like a calculated political operation that no one actually believes in. I meant more in the sense of zeitgeist; when some field becomes very popular and prominent in the media (whether that be books, music, or other forms of art), it becomes very difficult to discern what is actually good. I really enjoy Marlon James, but I doubt reviews would have helped me decide to read him.

>sexuality
no
>race
yes

t b h senpai you don't know who pinecone is he could be a trans fat black hedgehog who practices wicca for all u kno

> not holding up a message declaring "READ MORE YUKIO MISHIMA"

>fewer

No; less

>less fantasy
>fewer fantasies
I think the fact it's plural makes it countable. I cant think of a good example to the contrary

I won't read anything written by a women. They are all inferior writers.

*FEWER
CHRIST ALMIGHTY YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS SHIT UP

No, only superficial twats and dead ended minority writers who want to blame someone other than their own hackery think so. Question: if Jane Austen became revered in a far more repressed time wtf is your excuse?

Yes I will never read a book written by a nigger or a vagina.

What the fuck does their sexuality have to do with it, I don't blame degeneracy on genetics.

Why can you only identify with white men, if that's what you're saying? You and Henry James or Charles Dickens or F Scott or DFW have what exactly in common besides being white men? You have more in common with a african american lesbian born in 1988 than any of these 19th-early to mid 20th century writers.

If their whole act is 'not being white and/or male,' then why would I read them? I will gladly read Wilde, Dumas, Mann etc. not because of their sexuality or race, but because having your life based around race is boring and predictable; if you went to one these conventions that this lady's at, you could just sit there, watch, and think of what they're going to say before they say it every time; it's utter ridiculousness.

the Irish aren't white so James Joyce is still the best choise

>read less literature created by an arbitrary racial group instead of reading based on its merit.

These types of 'liberals' have no idea how illiberal they are.

>that misuse of semicolon while trying to be smart

The answer is...you haven't read much. Idk how old you are or how much you read so I guess no judgement, but the problem is clearly the narrow scope of works you've gotten around to. And works by women or minorities have a history of being dismissed even if they are great, this is basic history- look at how many works feminists had to "rediscover" in the 70s because everyone dismissed or forgot the work of Jean Rhys and dozens of others.

What she means to say is: read my books, and if you don't you are morally evil. It's ressentiment in its most purest form.

Name a book by a nigger that isn't about
>muh life as a nigger

>most purest
most pure ofc lool

>look at how many works feminists had to "rediscover" in the 70s because everyone dismissed or forgot the work of Jean Rhys and dozens of others.
Ok bitch. Unless you make a proper study that shows that there aren't a similar number of undiscovered great literature from white men, you don't have a fucking argument. How fucking stupid are you? Just because some literature gets forgotten and some of it happens to be from females, you think you have a fucking point? Piece of shit """"feminist logic"""" you can't fucking argue go fuck yourself faggot

lol I'm sure there are tons of great work by men that have been forgotten because only a small percentage of books get remembered in 50 years time. In fact! There are probably more by men because more men have been published. None of this contradicts my point that women have this plus critics/academics at the time not caring about their work on the basis of their sex going against them. Read A Room of One's Own of something.

Learn to make a point before replying to me again, and I'll kill myself before I'll read your mandatory reading from your piece of shit degree.

rip bitch