Comments

• 1 Thao // Feb 20, 2009 at 5:05 am

  Thanks for the post Sarah, makes me realize that English written books on my shelf are all by white author, expect for Flygirl. Silver Phoenix looks really good and I’ve always wanted to read this English book by a Vietnamese author – Stealing Buddha’s Dinner.

  I should diversify my shelf, seriously!

• 2 cloudscome // Feb 20, 2009 at 8:19 am

  This is a great post. I am taking part in the Diversity Rocks! challenge here: http://diversebooks.blogspot.com/2008/12/2009-diversity-rocks-challenge.html

  Here are a few other blogs I read to find diverse books:

  http://blackeyedsusans.blogspot.com/
  http://www.papertigers.org/wordpress/
  http://www.mitaliblog.com/

  I’m glad to find AuthorsNow!

• 3 Neesha // Feb 20, 2009 at 11:03 am

  Beautiful post, Sarah.

• 4 sarahockler // Feb 20, 2009 at 4:40 pm

  Thanks for your thoughts, you guys!

  couldscome, welcome to AuthorsNow! I’m going to check out those other sites.

• 5 admin // Feb 20, 2009 at 9:57 pm

  Sarah, have you seen the statistics put out by CCBC? It’s pretty interesting to see the numbers of books that are put out each year by “people of color.” Why does that phrase always sound so weird to me. Are white people not a color? ha! Anyway, here’s the link. Enjoy!

  http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/books/pcstats.htm

• 6 MJ // Feb 21, 2009 at 6:48 am

  Please enter me for the Hot Girl giveaway!

  I teach kindergarten. My classroom library is very diverse but sadly my personal library is not.

• 7 Doret // Feb 21, 2009 at 11:04 am

  Sarah, I can’t wait to hear what you think of Hot Girl. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I try to have diversity on my bookshelve but I am guilty of browsing with interest, books by authors who aren’t Black or White and never getting around to reading them. I put them on my mental tbr list but not enough make it to the top. So I also joined the Diversity Rocks challenge I think its going to keep me honest.

• 8 The BrainLair // Feb 21, 2009 at 12:15 pm

  The weird thing is, I’m black but I work in a predominately white school corporation. My shelves are embarrassing. I will definitely link to Brown Bookshelf. I’ve self-censored for so long, I never even noticed when I stopped buying African American writers, with the exception of Christopher Paul Curtis. I’ve got other ethnicities covered. In my head I guess I didn’t want people to think I was purchasing them just because they were from black authors. Weird, huh?

• 9 Brenda Gurung // Feb 21, 2009 at 1:53 pm

  My bookshelf (and reading habits in general) have always been ethnically diverse, but how about this extension to your thought, Sara:

  Let’s reach for all levels of diversity with openness to expand our perspectives: ethnic, religious, sexual orientation, gender, political, economic, age, … You get the picture.

  In general the American societies I study are on their way to embracing ethnic diversity, but we’ve got a ways to go for true, deep diversity. There’s so much more to all of us than our ethnicity.

• 10 Brenda Gurung // Feb 21, 2009 at 1:57 pm

  PS Sorry, Sarah. I misread your name and left off the “h.”

• 11 Kymberley // Feb 21, 2009 at 2:43 pm

  Native American authors I recommend are Cynthia Leitich-Smith (pre-Tantalize Louise Erdrich, Joseph Bruchac, and Sandra DeCoteau Orie.

  I love CCBC and Brown Bookshelf, and pretty much any/all of the authors already mentioned!!

• 12 cora // Feb 21, 2009 at 4:24 pm

  Let’s reach for all levels of diversity with openness to expand our perspectives: ethnic, religious, sexual orientation, gender, political, economic, age, … You get the picture.

  Brenda, tell it. I’m there with you.

• 13 cora // Feb 21, 2009 at 5:45 pm

  Arggg, I think I lost my first post. Let me try again and I’ll try not to be long-winded. My outlook mirrors Brenda’s.

  I run a lit group for young women. We focus on woc writers. I run an online discussion forum and blog to support what we do. I have only recently begun posting reviews on my personal blog and because I’m a one woman show, we don’t have as many reviews as I’d like on our community blog. That will be changing this year.

  I read across genres, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation. I think anyone who doesn’t have diverse reading habits is missing out on some much quality literature.

  I am very active at a social network for book lovers. Recently I began to explore teen book review sites and while I am disappointed, I am not surprised. The lack of diversity in the books reviewed is depressing.

  I wrote elsewhere that it is assumed that all readers are interested in popular, mainstream literature but that multicultural literature is limited in themes and characters and therefore, it appeals primarily to people of color. This is an unfounded assumption, but you’d have to read the literature to know this is untrue.

  Most often when black literature is reviewed by white reviewers it is historical fiction because you know black writers only write historical fiction and biographies. When I’ve asked white readers for multicultural recommendations, more than once I’ve been told, “But, I’m not black, why would I know black authors?” (Close your mouth)

  If you ask me to name my favorite authors and books, I can easily rattle of a list diverse by race, gender, genres, themes and cultures. I majored in English and I read plenty of the standard white guys. Like them, too.

  I am however a woman, an African American woman, and I have an affinity for hearing our voices. I am a curious, voracious reader and I want to hear other people’s stories, too. My reading habits reflect a real interest in diversity.

  If I’m guilty of anything is that I tend to forget about the white guys. I swear I like them, but let’s be real- they are not hurting for an audience.
  Women of color, people of color get little play except from readers who know and want to read quality literature from as many perspectives they can find.

  I have the good fortune of running a small community library. Our collection represents works primarily by and about women. Our collection reflects a commitment to multiculturalism and diversity. Our collection reflects the experiences, voices and aspirations of our readers and provides an introduction to worlds they don’t know but I know they could relate to in they open the book.

  I invite you to check us out at Color Online.

  I regularly read a wrung sponge, The Happy Nappy Bookseller, and The Brown Bookshelf. Recently discovered The Diversity Challenge, White Readers Read Black Authors and Lotus Reads.

  Thanks to KB at Brain Lair for sharing this link. Enjoying this discussion.

• 14 cora // Feb 21, 2009 at 5:56 pm

  Short list of YA I recommend:

  Does My Head Look Big In This by Randa Abdel-Fattah
  When Kambia Elaine Flew In From Neptune by Lori A. Williams
  From The Notebooks of Melanin Sun by Jacqueline Woodson
  If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson
  Born Confused by Tanuja Desai Hidier
  Perepolis byMarjane Satrapi
  A Step From Heaven by An Na
  A Stone In My Hand by Cathryn Clinton
  Sadika’s Way by Hina Hak
  Life Is Funny by E.R. Frank
  Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie
  Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
  A Cool Moonlight by Angela Johnson
  Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata
  Sold by Patricia McCormick

• 15 Lenore // Feb 22, 2009 at 9:15 am

  I seek out books that are set in other countries and cultures. And I love to promote great books no matter what they are about. The color of an author’s skin isn’t something that even enters my mind, and I always thought was a GOOD thing…

• 16 cora // Feb 22, 2009 at 6:25 pm

  Lenore,
  You mean you don’t see color as something that would negatively affect how you see someone? Why do we have to not see a person’s color? Why not see color and think it is something beautiful and good?
  I don’t filter out color. I take it in just like I do gender, age, nationality, culture and any other demographics. Color/ethnicity shapes who we are and impacts our perception as much as any other facet.

• 17 epiphany Renee // Feb 24, 2009 at 5:28 am

  I am a person of color and I have to admit I have never thought of the race of the authors I am reading. In fact, unless I have seen an author photo I have no idea what ethnicity they might be. I have just never taken into account the Author ethnicity – the lead character’s color has been a swaying matter, such as in Memoirs of a Geisha and in Broken China.
  I am, however, already reading Ash by Malinda Lo (as well as your book, Twenty Boy Summer) for a debut author challenge.

• 18 Henry Davis // Aug 19, 2009 at 3:12 pm

  There is a great book out called A Lesser Pain. A memoir about the influence that child abuse and prison has on the mind. The author has been incarcerated three times but finally beat the odds of recidivism, depression and drug abuse to become a published author. It is not just another story about an ex-con it really explores a lot of the subject matter that his peers rarely explore or admit to.

• 19 Tara // Apr 18, 2010 at 6:10 pm

  Well, I’ve got that covered. I’m black and I’ve never read a book by a black author that wasn’t required for school (with the exception of Precious, forced on me by my mother). I love books by Indian and other Asian authors and middle eastern ones. I love reading about other cultures (including Africa, but they’re usually non-fiction works). The majority of books I’ve read are written by white authors, but that’s because they tend to write the genres I’m most interested in (dark fantasy, fantasy, literature in general).

  Speaking of that, I’ve noticed that “African American” is a genre in the bookstore but “Caucasian” is not. It seems like African American and other black authors tend to write primarily about the black experience. Asians write about the Asian exprience (but less so, I think, especially with the prevalence and acceptance of Chinese and Japanese culture in America), Colombians write about the Colombian experience… You get my drift. Non-white authors seem to focus very deeply on ethnicity, while whites seem much more diverse. Sure, there are books about Irishness (I think immigrant authors of any race or ethnicity are more likely to write about being immigrants/their previous homeland) or being a white American, but there are also books about being a wizard or a vampire, a sailor or captain of a spaceship.
  1) I could just be totally blind and underexposed.
  2) Maybe there are tons of non-Anglo authors that have published “non-ethnic” books, but they don’t flaunt themselves as a certain race, so I just don’t know they’re of color and assume they’re white.
  3) Maybe nobody’s interested in publishing the work of non-Anglo authors if it’s not ethnic. Perhaps because they make their main characters their own race?
  4) Once again, there might be tons of fantasy, sci-fi, and generally non-ethinic-centered books written by authors or color, but they don’t sell because the majority of American readers are white and connect more with protagonists of their own race. If they want to feel like a different race, they’ll pick up an ethnic book.

  What do you think?

  PS. I’m well aware that there are exceptions to this tendency–I’ve seen a vampire book written by a black author–but it still seems like authors of color focus more on ethnicity (for instance, if Harry Potter was Korean, the entire series would still work. Not so if Margaret Garner from Beloved was an ethnic German) than whites do. Their works seem to be more populous in romance, literature, and general fiction than (especially) in the more fantasy-driven genres.

• 20 woolrich arctic parka // Jul 14, 2011 at 5:56 am

  I would like to read the bookYou have won this AuthorsNow! Spotlight

• 21 Ganadian Goose // Oct 6, 2011 at 2:38 am

  I believe in their own right, your writing is very good.

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