elsie1 wrote:Looking for Southern fiction authors
Ernest J. Gaines. Try his work A Lesson Before Dying (1993). I read it the summer after I graduated high-school and I remember liking it very much. Strangely, I've never read anything else by Gaines since. Morrison and Gaines have different styles, but the themes they work with - the status of blacks in America, and especially in the South in Gaines' book - seem to overlap.
If you want to try out one of the Great American Novels, then Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952) is a must. While I did find it a taxing read at some points, it ended up being one of the most rewarding works I've ever read. I only read it once (for my senior year in school), but I remember using it in essays more than any other work besides Heller's Catch-22 (1953) and Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Ellison's work has always stayed with me, so I can safely say that it influenced me very much.
A more contemporary work that you might find interesting is Philip Roth's The Human Stain (2000). In it, the background of a retired classics professor is slowly unveiled. It's acerbic, political, and sometimes quite shocking. The main reveal early on in the novel is really excellent, something I just did not expect.
I recently got myself Sinclair Lewis' Kingsblod Royal (1947). I've never read Lewis before, and instead of getting one of his more renowned works, I got this one because the description gives me the impression that it's a literary predecessor to Roth's work.
Anyway, start with Gaines' book if you haven't already read it.