i challenged myself to read a bunch of written work by womxn of color in 2017. there were so many that i hadn’t read yet, and at times, i found myself struggling to find written work that met the criteria (like, a book published the year i was born). 2017 proved to be a huge growth for my literature journey, and i loved that i found brilliant written work by these phenomenal womxn. below is the challenge and works i’ve read. (favorites are with asterisks; completed are bold. note: some books overlapped/double-dipped)
have more suggestions? see any that you’ve read or would’ve read instead? lemme know your thoughts.
a book that became a movie: joy luck club - amy tan
a book that came out the year you were born: jonah’s gourd vine - zora neale hurston
a book that has been on your tbr for way too long: the reeducation of cherry truong - aimee phan
a book by an author who uses a pseudonym: family - j california cooper
a book published in 2017: this is just my face - gabourey sidibe
**a book about food: the tea girl of hummingbird lane - lisa see
a book with more than 500 pages
a book written by a queer womxn of color: when the moon was ours - anna-marie mclemore
a book written by a trans* womxn of color: surpassing certainty - janet mock
a book in a genre you usually avoid: fledgling - octavia butler
a book with pictures: persepolis - marjane satrapi
a book purchased from a woc owned store
an audiobook at least 10hrs long: bad feminist - roxane gay
a book of poetry: driving without a license - janine joseph
a book becoming a movie in 2017-2020: everything, everything - nicola yoon
**a book with themes of community and support: the mothers - brit bennett
a memoir - with the same racial/ethnic identities as you: i wore my blackest hair - carlina duan
a memoir - with different racial/ethnic identities as you: my beloved world - sonia sotomayor
**a book set somewhere you’ve always wanted to visit: the best we could do - thi bui
a book that passes the bechdel test: juliet takes a breath - gabby rivera
a book set in two or more different time periods: the god of small things - arundhati roy
a book by or about a person with a disability: frida - barbara mujica
a book about a topic or subject you already love: brown girl dreaming - jacqueline woodson
a book written in languages other than english: the hate u give - angie thomas
a book that features main characters who identify as LGBTQ+: little and lion - brandy colbert
**a book by a best-selling author: redefining realness - janet mock
a book that you have to wait for: [almost every book i borrowed from the library, tbh]
**a book you selected based on the cover: fierce femmes & notorious liars - kai cheng thom
a book whose main character or author owns and expresses their sexuality: fledgling - octavia butler
a book you’ve given to someone as a gift: zami - audre lorde
a book someone recommended to you: the hate u give - angie thomas
a book you don’t want to admit you’re reading, but you’re going to read anyway: the sun is also a star - nicola yoon
**a book about a religion or spirituality different from your own: home fire - kamila shamsie
a book whose main character is 10+ years younger than you: inside out & back again - thanh ha lai
a book whose main character is 10+ years older than you
**a book that was on main display at the library or bookstore: hunger - roxane gay
a book based on a true story: miss burma - charmaine craig
a banned book: their eyes were watching god - zora neale hurston
a book with bad reviews
an e-book: brown girl dreaming - jacqueline woodson
a book of short stories: whatever happened to interracial love? - kathleen collins
a book that has been picked for a book club: song of solomon - toni morrison
a book with multiple heroines: fierces femmes & notorious liars - kai cheng thom
a book that starts with the first letter of your first name: the vicious deep - zoraida cordova
a book accompanied by a podcast, or the author has a podcast: misadventures of awkward black girl - issa rae
a used book that costs $5 or less: the border of paradise - esme weijun wang
a book with a theme of liberation: miss burma - charmaine craig
**a book whose cover has an animal on it: sing, unburied, sing - jesmyn ward
a book you can read in a day: fierce femmes & notorious liars - kai cheng thom
a book you heard from someone: what it means when a man falls from the sky - lesley nneka arimah
In recognition of National Coming Out Day and Filipino American History Month, Coming Out has curated a selection of Coming Out stories from Filipinix Americans. Coming Out is a non-profit, open-source library of stories for the LGBTQ community, Allies, and those who want to learn more from the experiences of others.
Our critic Lily Meyer says Daniel Alarcón’s stories “have a reporter’s mix of kindness and detachment, and perhaps as a result, his endings land like a punch in the gut.”
Check out her full review of his new collection here.
follow Isma, Eamonn, Aneeka, Parvaiz, and Karamat Lone as two families -- separated by class, privilege, tradition-- become intertwined under increasingly unfortunate events due to love, fear, and misunderstanding.
as then-Home Secretary Theresa May, now British Prime Minister, threatened the citizenship of diasporic black and brown, resulting in the rise of stripped citizenship in the UK (sources here and here), Shamsie intersects Sophocles’ Antigone and the fear and insecurity she and others have experienced in gaining and retaining citizenship (source here).
Shamsie’s prose around family, belonging, loss captured my attention.
Grief manifested itself in ways that felt like anything but grief; grief obliterated all feelings but grief; grief made a twin wear the same shirt for days on end to preserve the morning on which the dead were still living; grief made a twin peel stars off the ceiling and lie in bed with glowing points adhered to fingertips; grief was badtempered, grief was kind; grief saw nothing but itself, grief saw every speck of pain in the world; grief spread its wings large like an eagle, grief huddled small like a porcupine; grief needed company, grief craved solitude; grief wanted to remember, wanted to forget; grief raged, grief whimpered; grief made time compress and contract; grief tastes like hunger, felt like numbness, sounded like silence; grief tasted like bile, felt like blades, sounded like all the noise of the world. (p.187-188)
melissa lozada-oliva, a poet and spoken word performer whose recent work i’ve been lucky enough to read --thank you netgalley for sending it to me to read!-- is one more poet i’ll need to add to my favorites and follow.
after reading a few of her poems in peluda, which just released on september 26th, 2017, i knew i needed to research her background bc i felt her work, her narrative, her voice was important. this meant watching some of her spoken word performances on button poetry, and WOW. how have i not heard of her or her pieces before!? (was especially enamored by her poem based after ocean vuong, who i adore!) this book of poetry is a keeper, reflecting lozada-oliva’s unapologetic thoughts and feelings when it comes to her experiences as a young latina woman with immigrant parents.
here’s one of her spoken word pieces called ‘my spanish’, and titled ‘you know how to say arroz con pollo but not what you are’ in peluda:
a story that revolves around miel, a girl found in a water tower who is suspicious for the roses she grows on her wrist, and sam, a boy whose craft is to create moons for miel wishes to stay as a boy, and the love they so strongly posses, they will do just about anything to protect each other.
McLemore does an excellent job at pulling the reader into miel’s and sam’s narratives, using much of her and her husband’s personal experiences navigating and negotiating between cultural worlds and gender identities.
Mental and Gorilla and the Bird may share a subject – living with bipolar disorder – but they offer very different takes, says our own Glen Weldon:
Lowe’s Mental is the more polished, authoritative and comprehensive; McDermott’s Gorilla and the Bird, more intimate and personal … Ultimately, both books read like love letters, addressed to very different recipients: McDermott’s, to his mother; Lowe’s, to her medication.
what it means when a man falls from the sky - lesley nneka arimah
little & lion - brandy colbert
parable of the talents - octavia butler
up next from my tbr list is/on hold/maybe...
hunger - roxane gay
when the moon was ours - anne-marie mclemore
i’ve been reading works, almost exclusively, by womxn of color since 2017 began after realizing -wow- i haven’t read much or know too many womxn of color writers. 2017 and moving forward has been, is, and will continue to be challenging in multifaceted ways, socially, politically, and personally. but reading and (now) following these incredible WOC writers, especially black and brown womxn, helps me find [[cathartic]] grounding in these turbulent times. fuck up the system and take care of yourselves, yall.
People often describe the journey of transsexual people as a passage through the sexes, from manhood to womanhood, from male to female, from boy to girl. The simplifies a complicated journey of self-discovery that goes way beyond gender and genitalia. My passage was an evolution from me to closer-to-me-ness. It’s a journey of self-revelation. Undergoing hormone therapy and genital reconstruction surgery and traveling sixty-six hundred miles from Hawaii to Thailand are the titillating details that cis people love to hear. They’re deeply personal steps I took to become close to me, and I choose to share them. I didn’t hustle those streets and fight the maturation of my body merely to get a vagina. I sought something grander than the changing of genitalia. I was seeking reconciliation with myself.
A collection of three short essays that highlight the racial and queer experiences of Asian-American teens.
Guys, guys! One of my friends wrote an essay about queer Asian Americans and the issues that we face. She talks about a lot of important issues such as whitewashing, homophobia in the Asian community, and racism in the LGBT+ community. it even specifically calls out the fangirls who turn gay relationships into a fetish
Even if you aren’t Asian American and/or queer, you can still show support for us by talking about the issues that Asian Americans face. And… If you subscribe to the “Asians are a model minority and therefore they can’t suffer discrimination” schtick, you should really, really read this article because it also disproves that myth.
Please reblog this, y’all, it’s really important to me and really important for queer Asian Americans out there!
Brittney C. Cooper’s history of black women thinkers traces decades of struggle against racism and misogyny. Critic Genevieve Valentine says it’s a dense, serious read that rewards close attention.
In ‘Beyond Respectability,’ A History of Black Women As Public Intellectuals
Throughout my life I was hoodwinked by South Central’s terminal conditions, its broad and deadly template for failure. From the beginning I was spoon-fed negative stereotypes that covertly positioned black people as genetic criminals -- inferior, illiterate, shiftless, promiscuous, and ultimately “three-fifths” of a human being, as stated in the Constitution of the United States. Having bought into this myth, I was shackled to the lowest socioeconomic rung where underprivileged citizens compete ruthlessly for morsels of the American pie -- a pie theoretically served proportionately to all, based on their ambition, intelligence, and perseverance.
A girl nowadays has to get nice and close to tell if her man ain’t shit and by then, it might be too late. We were girls once. It’s exciting, loving someone who can never love you back. Freeing, in its own way. No shame in loving an ain’t-shit man, long as you get it out your system good and early. A tragic woman hooks into an ain’t-shit man, or worse, lets him hook into her. He will drag her until her tires. He will climb atop her shoulders and her body will sad from the weight of loving him.
Yes, those are the ones we worry about.
poignant. tells a intricate tale of three young people whose past and decisions stay with them.
