I’ve been thinking about this for some time and I finally made up my that I’m going to do it.
In 2017 I’m only going to read books written by and about people of color.
The idea came to me a few years ago when I going through my literature books. Trying to figure out what I was going to keep and what I was going to give away. I noticed that my library was quite culturally, ethnically, and racially limited.
Of 300 books only 17% were written by and about people of color and the remaining were by European or American white males. I also noticed that there were very few women authors in this collection. I always knew that my scope of reading was limited as literature major, but I had no idea as to how limited until I took stock.
A couple of years ago I came across a blog, A Year of Reading Around the World by Ann Morgan (check out her Ted Talk) and I thought: ‘Wow! how interesting. Maybe I should look into doing something like that.’ However, I decided to forego that endeavor for right now and go with diversifying my reading with books that are on my To Be Read list and books I can easily get at the library.
Here’s my list thus far. If you have any suggestions, please don’t hesitate to share.
| Last Name | First Name | Title |
| Achebe | Chinua | Things Fall Apart |
| Adichi | Chimamanda Ngozi | Americanah |
| Alexie | Sherman | The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven |
| Allende | Isabel | Ripper |
| Alvarez | Julia | Saving the World |
| Butler | Octavia | Kindred |
| Cao | Lan | Monkey Bridge |
| Chang | Jade | The Wangs vs. The World |
| Cohelo | Paulo | The Alchemist |
| Erdrich | Louise | ??? |
| Diaz | Junot | The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao |
| Gyasi | Yaa | Homegoing |
| Hosseini | Khaled | The Kite Runner |
| Hurston | Zora Neale | Jonah’s Gourd Vine |
| Ishiguro | Kazu | When We Were Orphans |
| Kingston | Maxine Hong | China Men |
| Kwan | Kevin | Crazy Rich Asians |
| Marquez | Gabriel Garcia | ??? |
| Mathis | Ayana | The Twelve Tribes of Hattie |
| Morrison | Toni | Home |
| Murakami | Haruki | Norwegian Wood |
| Otsuka | Julie | When the Emperor was Divine |
| Satrapi | Marjane | Persepolis 1 & 2 |
| See | Lisa | Shanghai Girls |
| Tan | Amy | The Hundred Secret Senses |
| Tsukiyama | Gail | A Hundred Flowers |
| Yanagihara | Hanya | A Little Life |
20/20 Hines Sight 
Good luck with the project, you have some wonderful reading material ahead of you. Norwegian Wood and Americanah are favourites. If you want more inspiration look at the guest posts on my sie that have come from bloggers in different countries. Eg Caribbean, India, Japan. https://bookertalk.com/world-literature/the-view-from-here/
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Publishing companies push books by white males, it’s what they do. I just finished Herbie Hancock’s autobiography, Possibilities. Maybe not up your alley or your cup of tea, but it was an interesting book. But then, I’m a music nerd and love electronics and he was/is an innovator of electronic music, so….
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How true Trent. I still find it sad in this day that that is still the status quo. I like Herbie Hancock. I’ll check it out. I definitely need to add some diversity within the list. I had planned to add A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah.
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