My Year of Reading Women
(and other underrepresented groups)
In 2015, I’m challenging myself to read a book a week (or, 52 books in the year), focusing primarily on female and minority authors.
I’m doing this in an attempt to fill in some of the blank spots in my cultural and literary awareness, and because there are a ton of amazing books out there by women authors and writers of other underrepresented groups. Here’s what I’m reading, week by week:
Week 1: Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s “Learned” by Lena Dunham
Week 2: The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez and Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast
Week 3: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng and Peace is Every Breath by Thich Nhat Hanh
Week 4: Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay
Week 5: Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
Week 6: Euphoria by Lily King
Week 7: The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion by Meghan Daum
Week 8: Open City by Teju Cole
Week 9: A Tale for Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
Week 10: Seven Steps to Leading a Gender-Balanced Business by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox
Week 11: The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession by Dana Goldstein
Week 12: The Teacher Wars (again; this one was quite long but super interesting!)
Week 13: Blind Spot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald
Week 14: Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
Week 15: Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum
Week 16: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Week 17: Ghettoside: A Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy
Week 18: Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle
Week 19: Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution by Sara Marcus
Week 20: It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens by danah boyd
Week 21: Resonate: Present Visual Stories That Transform Audiences by Nancy Duarte
Week 22: The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
Week 23: For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange
Week 24: Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records by Laura Ballance, John Cook and Mac McCaughan
Week 25: Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals by Patricia Lockwood
Week 26: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. by Viv Albertine
Week 27: Long Division by Kiese Laymon
Week 28: Men We Reaped by Jessmyn Ward
Week 29: 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write: On Umbrellas and Sword Fights, Parades and Dogs, Fire Alarms, Children, and Theater by Sarah Ruhl
Week 30: Women in Clothes by Sheila Heti and Heidi Julavits (this one went a bit into a few following weeks as well; it’s a LOT longer than I had anticipated)
Week 31: It Starts With Food by Melissa and Dallas Hartwig (prepping for my Whole30 experience!)
Week 32: We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Week 33: Make it Mighty Ugly: Exercises & Advice for Getting Creative Even When It Ain’t Pretty by Kim Piper Werker
Week 34: The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic by Jessica Hopper
Week 35: Dietland by Sarai Walker
Week 36: Lightness of Body and Mind, a soon-to-be-published manuscript by my awesome friend Sarah!
Week 37: The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
Week 38: You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman
Week 39: The Confidence Code by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman
Week 40: Blueprints for Building Better Girls by Ellisa Schappell
Week 41: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro
Week 42: Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
Week 43: Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
Week 44: Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own by Kate Bolick
Week 45: Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling
Week 46: Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir by Carrie Brownstein
Week 47: The Clasp by Sloane Crosley
Week 48: Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America by Barbara Ehrenreich
Week 49: Daring Greatly by Brene Brown
Week 50: I Want to Show You More by Jamie Quatro
Week 51: Get In Trouble: Stories by Kelly Link
Week 52: Infinite Home by Kathleen Alcott
This has been an experience that has opened me up to so many amazing women authors in nearly every genre. I’m so grateful to the incredible, creative and immensely talented women I’ve had the opportunity to discover this year.
For more about the many things I’ve learned from this year of reading, I wrote a whole ‘nother post you might want to check out!
