Authors of Color: Building My To-Read List for 2018

I was looking through the Instagram hashtag, #BooksToReadBeforeYouDie, which is a pretty common way of looking for new books for me. While doing that, I saw one girl (@thesrishkebab on Instagram) who was not going to read any books in 2018 that were written by white men. Women, people of color - books that were written by the publishing world's minorities.

I thought that was pretty clever. Timely, caring, interested in new ideas. But first I wanted to check on my Goodreads list, where I write down all the books I've read. How many authors have I read that are not white guys? It turns out, I've read a good bit from women, so I won't show you all of those. However, I have read VERY little from people who are not white - people of color.

Here's that list - authors I've read who are not white:

• Jhumpa Lahiri - The Lowland
• [Edit: a friend pointed out that I've read Augustine's "Confessions," which is by a North African church father. So I'm up to 2 :) ]

I was so surprised! ONE!? And frankly, I didn't even like the book. I love the chance of exploring new ideas and hearing from people I haven't heard before, so I HATE that I haven't read more from other races and cultures. Sure, I've read from authors throughout Europe and America in the last few hundred years - Tolstoy, Austen, Camus, Voltaire, Dumas, Homer, The Bible - and I've read from some of the overlooked people in the world. I've read some history and some heady-hurty-thinky stuff, but all the while I've overlooked almost anything that came from someone with a different skin tone and anything below the equator. Here's a chart of the amount of books I've read per year in the last few years:

Middle East? Nothing more recent than the Bible. Asia? Zero. South America? Nope.

So now I am on a new mission: to diversify my reading. I started by going to the same kind of #BooksToReadBeforeYouDie lists, and came up with a list of books that I might be into reading (if I knew they were written by someone who looked like me, I didn't bother writing it down). Then, I crossed off the list any book written by a white person. Here's what I was left with (also in the picture above):

• Things Fall Apart
• I own this one! I was encouraged to get it after reading a post about how translations are often incredibly good, because they had to be well received in their own language first, then brought into a new culture. This author was a Nigerian man who passed away in 2013.
• Americanah
• On AbeBooks.com's list, this book is perfect for trying to understand a cultural divide - the story centers on a Nigerian woman who emigrates to the US. Written by a Nigerian Woman. 
• Invisible Man (Ellison)
• Another one that's already on my to-read list! Author was an African American man who passed away in '94. 
• One Hundred Years of Solitude
• I've never written it down to read, but I've seen this book around for a long time. A breakout novel from a Columbian author, Gabriel García Márquez. Now it's on my list!
• The Wind Up Bird Chronicle
• A long book (623 pages) that has some Japanese vs. China history and a personal story. The only book from an Asian author on my list this year. 

So, even with the two books I've already finished this year (Things They Carried and Born Standing Up), I should be able to make 2018 a white-minority reading year for me. Hopefully I'll be able to add more as I figure out which of these authors really connect with me. 

What about you? What are you doing to challenge your perspective this year?