On the Southern Literary Trail discussion

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I'm definitely in on this one. I read it several years ago and remember how powerful it was. Glad it's a 2 month book, so I can start a little later and take my time.

I have book in hand but I haven’t read the blurb yet but see it has a very high rating.

I can't wait to start this one. It'll be my first Ralph Ellison novel, I've only read one of his short stories and that blew my socks off. I'm also reading Caste and I'm hoping they will be good dance partners.

I have it, not sure I'll get to it. A lengthy book with this subject matter is not appealing to me at present but if I can start and get invested it might work out for me. It sounds worthy of my time in any case.

I hope to get started with this in a few days. A second read for me because it was excellent the first time around.

I’m halfway through and loving it. 🤩

I got started on this yesterday, and this time around I downloaded a study guide I found on Hoopla to help as I'm reading. Unbeknownst to me and the importance The Great Migration had on this book, I started reading The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson about a week ago and am reading it slowly. Looks like the two together will deepen the understanding of them both.

Diane wrote: " I started reading The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson about a week ago and am reading it slowly. Looks like the two together will deepen the understanding of them both."

I really need to read that one. Her other book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, is also on my tbr list.

I wondered if that might be the case with TWOOS Diane. I read it about a year ago.

I loved that one Diane. I haven’t read her newest book that Tom mentioned. I’ll look into that hoopla study guide too, thank you.

The study guide mentioned that when he left college to go to NY he became a part of the migration. TWOOS is fascinating.

I'm sure Caste is in my future.

Okay, book club buds - I am ready!
Here is a list of books that I just got, all for $30 at the used bookstore.
Spoiler tag for length.
(view spoiler)[
I wish GR had the cover that I got. It's a 1989 Vintage edition. Primary background color, over 2/3 of the page, is black. Then it cuts to white. At the intersection where the two colors meat, there is a broken heart. The left side of the heart is red, and in the black part. The right side of the heart is black, in the white side. BUT there's a white circle where an eye would be, and then you see that there is a nose, so the jagged "broken heart line" is actually a face!

I scored a Norton Critical Edition, excellent condition for $6. I haven't read it and have no idea why it matters to this read, but it keeps coming up in critical analysis I've skimmed.

I actually already had this one, purchased from the same store months ago for $5.

From the dust jacket:
Published more than a decade after Ralph Ellison's award-wining masterwork, Invisible Man, Shadow and Act is a seminal collection of the late author's essays, reviews, and interviews. The essays, written between 1945 and 1964, run the gamut from literature to art...

A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by John Hersey. $3. I got it bc the first essay is by Robert Penn Warren. Who I fell in love with when this group read All the King's Men. The first section of this book is called "The Cost of Being Human", and RPW's essay is "The Unity of Experience".

Also got a Cliff's Notes and a Bloom's Notes.
(hide spoiler)]

Diane wrote: "I got started on this yesterday, and this time around I downloaded a study guide I found on Hoopla to help as I'm reading. Unbeknownst to me and the importance The Great Migration had on this book,..."

Here's an interesting fact, that I learned from Carter G. Woodson's The Miseducation of the Negro. It makes so much sense, but never occurred to me before he pointed it out! Folks had to decide which big city they would migrate to, right? Financial cost was a major factor in that decision. Therefore, most blacks who migrated to D.C. (where I was born) and NY were from the Carolinas and Georgia. Migrants to Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, etc. were from the "central" southern states like MS and TN.

Here is a link to digital copy of Woodson's A Century of Negro Migration and Other Works (1918). I haven't read this one, but I found the link while looking for the specific passage referenced above.
From the Library of Congress, Digital Public Library of America.

https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/the...

Oh, the joy of shopping in used bookstores! Woodson's thoughts on where they would go based on where they started is borne out in the personal narratives included in Warmth of Other Suns.

When our Invisible (and unnamed) Man first got to NY, it was like another country to him, starting with his first subway ride. A crowded car where he stood pressed up against a white woman, he was terrified but confused because no one seemed to think anything about it. There was no obvious "separation of the races", but it existed in subtle ways.

Diane wrote: "I got started on this yesterday, and this time around I downloaded a study guide I found on Hoopla to help as I'm reading. Unbeknownst to me and the importance The Great Migration had on this book,..."

I had similar thoughts Diane, only I started reading Caste rather than The Warmth of Other Suns. They definitely complement eachother. Maybe later in the year I'll repeat the trick and read a Richard Wright novel alongside TWOOS. I started Invisible Man a couple of weeks ago, and then became massively distracted, so I'm back to it now. And I'm going to take my time.

I'm taking my time too. I think you have to with this book, even tho it's the second time around for me.

@Diane - I dream of a road trip vacation where I take several days to just drive to used bookstores, across the south specifically.

@Diane and Dave - Ditto on my reading plan, which is why I bought so many supplements. I really want to understand why the novel is so important to American culture.

Cheryl, that's my favorite daydream! We need a van though. Let me know when you're ready to roll!

Diane wrote: "Cheryl, that's my favorite daydream! We need a van though. Let me know when you're ready to roll!"

Yes, with a van we can fit more book club buds in with us... but where will we put all of our books? Dang it, Diane, we're going to need a bus 😄.

This is actually on my bucket list when I retire. Visit all the National Parks and as many bookstores in between. 😘

Lexy wrote: "This is actually on my bucket list when I retire. Visit all the National Parks and as many bookstores in between. 😘"

National Parks is my bucket list. You might enjoy this article. It's never too late!

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/01/117889...

That's a really beautiful and inspiring story Cathrine, thanks for sharing it

Great story, Catherine!

Diane wrote: "Cheryl, that's my favorite daydream! We need a van though. Let me know when you're ready to roll!"

Cheryl Carroll wrote: "Diane wrote: "Cheryl, that's my favorite daydream! We need a van though. Let me know when you're ready to roll!"

Yes, with a van we can fit more book club buds in with us... but where will we put ..."

Cheryl Carroll wrote: "Diane wrote: "Cheryl, that's my favorite daydream! We need a van though. Let me know when you're ready to roll!"

Yes, with a van we can fit more book club buds in with us... but where will we put ..."

I'm in! Sounds like a perfect vacation to me :)

I finished prologue and chapter 1. This is heavy and must be taken slowly. Chapter 1, evil and cruel. I don’t know how the narrator got through that speech. After reading chapter 1, prologue tone makes sense. Descriptions are so well done, it’s painful to read but necessary.

I'd hold on to your hat in Chapter 2 Laura!

I had to walk outside after finishing chapter one to get some sunshine. That was rough.

You do have to take it slow Laura. I knew what was coming and it was rough, but I don't doubt it could all have happened just that way. The narrator's naivete is what hurt me the most.

He kept thinking of his speech through all of that degrading fight and then to be made fun of while giving it. Despicable.

Lexy wrote: "This is actually on my bucket list when I retire. Visit all the National Parks and as many bookstores in between. 😘"

@Lexy, Cathrine, Anne, and Diane -- I have the NPS Passport book, Collector's Edition! I will be visualizing our dream vacation during the toughest parts of this novel...

@Laura, totally despicable!

@Cheryl, you’re gonna need that dream for this one, it’s heart wrenching! I still have 200 pages to go, it just feels like one hopeless event follows another but I can’t stop reading.

Goodness! An hour of reading and I'm only now to the start of Ch 1.

I’m taking chapter at a time. I just finished chapter 2. What a confession?!?! I’m stunned.

There are some hefty descriptions which makes reading pace one that is slow but honestly,I can’t take too much of this at one sitting.

Because the chapters aren't too long, I aiming for 3 chapters a day. It seems to be working. I loved chapter 5.

Read chapter 1 last night. Not exactly an ideal bedtime story. It immediately reminded me of a scene from Quentin Tarantino's Django which If I recall, I stopped watching after said scene 😖
Coincidentally, saw a short piece on another invisible man Paul R. Williams. Such beauty and I had never heard of him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-aPM...

Cathrine not a read I want to end my day with. Looking forward to Dave’s love of chapter 5. I’m beginning chapter 3 today, snails pace.

I'm nearly half way through and really enjoying it. The narrator has just got to New York and now it's getting really interesting. I'm beginning to think that The Warmth of Other Suns is a better dance partner than Caste, so I may put the latter on a back burner for a while.

Have any of you read Native Son? I keep hearing echoes of it in the first chapter.

Cheryl Carroll wrote: "Have any of you read Native Son? I keep hearing echoes of it in the first chapter."

I've not Cheryl, but Richard Wright is very high on my TBR. Where would you recommend starting with him Native Son or Black Boy?

I read Black Boy in high school, but that was a loooong time ago. He is quoted at the beginning of a lot of chapters of Warmth of Other Sons, and Ralph Ellison was a protégé of his in NY.

Diane wrote: "I read Black Boy in high school, but that was a loooong time ago. He is quoted at the beginning of a lot of chapters of Warmth of Other Sons, and Ralph Ellison was a protégé of his in NY."

Without a doubt I'll be reading Richard Wright later this year. I'll take a break after Invisible Man. But clearly there is pattern here and it was kicked off by Ernest J Gaines.

@Dave - one reason I'm in these groups is to learn, so I soak up as much knowledge from you guys as I can. And it has been so worth it!

I do want to say though, that I think it was Richard Wright who came before Ellison and Gaines. I do not say this as a scholar or academic and could absolutely be incorrect. The reason the order matters to me personally is just on observing how they influenced each other - like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, for instance. (I haven't studied them in depth, but know that that is their order.)

I too will be taking a break from race issues after this read. But in the fall I plan to start re-nominating Wright's The Man Who Lived Underground... we can't escape our past, but we can certainly build upon it!

We haven't read Richard Wright in this group, and we do need to fix that. This is where I first heard about Gaines, and he quickly became one of my favorite authors. He tells us about racism is a much subtler way, so beautifully you feel it in your bones. But yes, Invisible Man leaves us needing a break.

Diane wrote: "We haven't read Richard Wright in this group, and we do need to fix that. This is where I first heard about Gaines, and he quickly became one of my favorite authors. He tells us about racism is a m..."

I'm definitley going to read some Richard Wright, probably in the autumn. I'm taking a very brief break from Invisible Man (just a few days) and distracting myself in the crazy world of Barry Hannah.

Barry Hannah, interested in your take, Dave.

Barry Hannah is not my cup of tea at all.

Hey guys... we REALLY need to talk about chapter 2. Minus spoiler tag, bc there is A LOT to cover. Should I just post on the Final Impressions?