In my last post, I talked about how writers should read more books by minorities and PoC, and I got inspired to make my own list of books I want to read. I’ve read a couple of books by women and PoC on this blog, but I want to read more, so I’m making a list in order to do that more intentionally.
As I mentioned in my other post, I want to read not only books by women/PoC that are dark and literary, but also ones that are light and breezy reads, so I’ll do 1 light and 1 heavy read from women of each ethnicity.
#1: Black women (heavy)
I was originally thinking of reading Beloved, which I tried to read in college but it just seemed too painful and I didn’t know what was going on in the first couple pages. I watched a couple reviews of Morrison’s other books, and I think Sula has the most appealing plot to me personally. It’s the story of a young black “good” girl who wishes she were more like a young black “bad” girl. It delves into the problems with binary thinking and sounds really interesting philosophically.
I might start with this, and then read Beloved, The Bluest Eye, and The Source of Self-Regard, an essay collection that came out two days ago.
#2 Black women (light…er)
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
I’ve heard this book is phenomenal! It’s about a girl whose boyfriend is killed by a policeman and how she channels her grief into activism. I have it on my Kindle already and the movie adaptation came out last October, so I need to get on it. 😛
#3 Latina women (heavy)
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
I know this book, a collection of vignettes about a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago is a classic, so I thought this might be a good place to start.
(and remind me to read something by Isabel Allende later…)
#4 Latina women (light)
The Dirty Girls Social Club by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
This one looks fun! It’s been on my Kindle since I read a couple of great pieces by Alisa Valdez-Rodriguez on her WordPress blog, but I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet, so I’ll make it my #4. 🙂
#5 Asian women (heavy)
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
My New Year’s resolution for this year is to read The Tale of Genji. I’m interested in Japanese literature. I recently reviewed Tales of Moonlight and Rain and that referenced The Tale of Genji a lot. I feel like I should read it before getting deeper into Japanese literature, since it’s a touchstone both for Japanese and world literature (it is literally the world’s first novel).
#6 Asian women (light)
Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
I have this one on my shelf and it’s short, so it should be a pretty fun, easy read (we’ll see… I have a feeling it’ll be one of those deceptively deep ones, haha).
Middle Eastern women (heavy)
Call Me Zebra by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi
An Iranian-American author I saw on a panel at Bay Area Book Festival. Once I heard her book was inspired by Don Quixote, I had to get it! I don’t know if it will be very heavy per se, but it is supposed to be very literary so that should be fun. 🙂
(Also, there are a TON of other amazing female Middle Eastern writers, as seen here and here. I just picked this one because I have it already and need to get around to reading it.)
Middle Eastern women (light)
We Hunt the Flame
This promising YA fantasy novel is coming out May 14th. Get it here.
Hafsah Faizal, a hijabi woman, made a Twitter post about how she was cropped out of a picture in a Publisher’s Weekly email newsletter. I preordered it to show support. 🙂 Hopefully it is good… the cover and website design are very pretty! It seems to be about societal gender expectations – sexism and toxic masculinity.
Indian women (heavy)
A Critique of Postcolonial Reason by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Gayatri Spivak was mentioned a lot in my literary theory class, so when I saw this book at Half Price I picked it up. It looks pretty dense, but Spivak is considered one of the founders of postcolonial literary theory, so I thought it might be good to read.
Indian women (medium)
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
I couldn’t pick between these two prize winners… neither is “light” but next to literary theory they might feel that way (lol). Interpreter of Maladies is a short story collection about the lives of Indian American characters. The God of Small Things is about two twins living in India whose white cousin comes to live with them (and then bad things happen…).
Native American women (heavy)
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
I looked on a couple of lists and checked some reviews and this seems to be an American Indian classic. It looks difficult to read, but the book I want to read after this, The Sacred Hoop, has a whole chapter dedicated to this book, so I thought I should this one first.
Native American women (light–well, failed again xD)
The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions by Paula Gunn Allen
This looks a little hippie-dippy but there’s a review on Goodreads that says it introduces and discusses a lot of Native American writers, so I think this would be a good place to get into Native American literature. Paula Gunn Allen was a professor of Native American literature at UCLA and her novel, The Woman Who Owned the Shadows, also looks really interesting.
Order:
I’m planning on starting with Genji, since that’s my New Year’s resolution for this year. Then tackle the books I already own in order starting with The Hate U Give and go down the list, then the books I don’t own in order.
Let me know if there’s any books from women of color that you love!
Also tell me/send me your links if you choose to do a similar challenge. 😉
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