I Challenged Myself to Read 50 Books by POC This Year

and, with a month to go, not only met, but exceeded the challenge!

At the start of the year, I vowed to read 50 books by people of color. The idea came from an interview with speculative fiction writer Nalo Hopkinson, who talked about how books by people of color tend to be overlooked by publishers and readers alike. If you just find books to read by browsing the most popular shelves at the bookstore, it's easy to fall into reading books primarily, if not solely, by white authors. Of all the children's and YA books that made the New York Times bestseller list last year, for example, only nine percent were by authors of color.

After 11 months of voracious reading, I'm happy to announce that I met my goal (with a month to spare)! I have now read 54 books by people of color this year. (By the time this article is published, that number may be actually 55, depending on how quickly my library holds arrive.) Of the fifty-four, most (37) were by women of color.

At first, it wasn't easy. I rely on my local libraries and budget cuts have left shelves looking a little threadbare. Searching for books by authors of color sometimes proved challenging. But, as the year went on, I often ducked into the library looking for ONE book by a writer of color and walked out with four. Reading all these books by people of color made the absence of people of color and/or other cultures more conspicuous in novels by white authors. I started to think more about how whiteness is often written as the norm and I noticed when physical descriptions were absent from books altogether.

I decided to compile my whole list of 50 books—hopefully it's a resource to other people seeking out writers of color.

You can read the entire list, with some summary, here:
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/my-2014...

or simply go to my 50BooksbyPOC shelf here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...

Anyone wanna take the challenge with me next year?