These are all the books I read in 2016:
These are all the books I read in 2016 written by women, POC, and/or non-Americans:
Of the 13 remaining books (not counting the comic compilations), only one is written by a woman who is not white (The Internet of Garbage, Sarah Jeong) and only one is written by a person who is black (The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead).
I’ve got work to do.
I made 2016 the year I’d read more, and now I’m committing 2017 to consciously reading more broadly.
I’ve loosely based my selections per month on holidays and month-long observances, but I also snuck in people/books I’ve been meaning to read anyway.
I made an ambitious list (compared to the 34 books I read this year — 16 of which were comicbooks) of the 53 below.
January: Chinese New Year
- The Cowshed: Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution by Ji Xianlin
- The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China by Lu Xun
- Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation by Ken Liu
- The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Sonny Liew
February: Black History
- Langston Hughes
- Known and Strange Things by Teju Cole
- The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
- Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
- March by John Lewis & Andrew Aydin
March: Women’s History
- Jhumpa Lahiri
- White Trash by Nancy Isenberg
- Insatiable: Porn—A Love Story by Asa Akira
- The Border of Paradise by Esmé Weijun Wang
April: Arab American Heritage (+ Confederate History)
Trawling Wikipedia by month, I found that 7 states still observe Confederate History Month. Those states can fuck off.
- Randa Jarrar
- How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America by Moustafa Bayoumi
- Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
- The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
May: Asian/Pacific American Heritage, Haitian Heritage
Pretty upsetting that us Asians and Pacific Islanders are all lumped together. So I gave Chinese New Year all of January ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- Primo Levi
- The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat
- The Vegetarian by Han Kang
- I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita
June: Caribbean American Heritage, LGBT Pride
- The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
- Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
- Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda & Jeremy McCarter
- Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit
July
- Roxane Gay
- Jesmyn Ward
- Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching by Mychal Denzel Smith
- Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X
August
- Helen Oyeyemi
- The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
- Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
- The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
September: Hispanic Heritage (through October)
- Jorge Luis Borges
- Reputations by Juan Gabriel Vásquez
- Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
- The Sellout by Paul Beatty
October: Filipino American History, LGBT History
- Maxine Hong Kingston
- Jacqueline Woodson
- All the Single Ladies by Rebecca Traister
- Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
- Noli Me Tángere by José Rizal
November: Native American Heritage, Transgender Awareness
- In the Darkroom by Susan Faludi
- Whipping Girl by Julia Serano
- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indianby Sherman Alexie
- Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
- The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
December
- John Maeda
- Atul Gawande
- Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile
- To Live by Yu Hua
Thanks to Jamie and Janvi for helping me come up with some items on my list. I am so open to any author/book suggestions, especially for groups that are under-/unrepresented in my list.
I’ll leave you with this quote, and let you know how 2017 goes.
Cora didn’t know what optimistic meant. She asked the other girls that night if they were familiar with the word. None of them had heard it before. She decided that it meant trying.
from The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
