I Need to Read More Black Authors

It's MLK Day, a holiday to honor the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It just so happens that on this particular MLK Day, the first since drumpty-the-vile-twit's inauguration, I mean usurpation of the White House, one might feel a little depressed, either when one contemplates the racism emanating from the mouth and thumbs of said vile twit or when one just looks around one's society at all the work still left to do in the attempt to secure freedom and justice for all.

But. As they say, start where you are.

Where am I? As usual, reading, thinking, and thinking about what to read.

This morning I posed the question of what would be a good Martin Luther King Day read -- something by the man himself, perhaps, or some books that increase understanding of what black people have suffered in U.S. society, what injustices have gone into creating and perpetuating the racism we still practice, what power structures are in place, and so on. A couple of days ago, I posted about the writers from "shithole countries" whose books I've read over the past year and asked my Fbriends what authors not from Norway they have been reading since the occupation began. Last night, as I thought about what book to read next, I decided to make a conscious effort this year to make sure less than half of the books I read are by white male authors.

Today, these thoughts led to curiosity about the exact numbers, of how many authors I've read are white males and how many are not. Luckily, we have Goodreads! Which means I was able to sign in to my account, where I've tracked the books I've read since joining the site in 2008, and go ahead and count 'em up. First, I did a quick tally for the 46 books I read last year, calendar year 2017, and it was: White Guys: 16, Not White Guys: 30. That's not so terrible, I thought (other than the fact that I read only 46 books last year, but that has already been addressed and my New Year's resolution to get back to higher number-of-books-read-per-year levels has already been enacted, fear not), and I was a little proud of myself that I had read more authors who were Not White Guys than I had read White Guys.

Pride, ya know, goeth before the fall.

I then checked out my 2016 numbers. First of all, I read only 42 books that calendar year, which is even lamer than 2017 but we all know how distracted I was by teaching...or drinking...or being driven to drink by teaching during 2016. Or by Quincy coming from China...or by the Cubs' World Series...or something. Anyway, that year it was White Guys: 15 and Not White Guys: 27. Still a similar ratio. Let's have a look at 2015, with 54 books read. White Guys: 32, Not White Guys: 22. Yikes! Now, to be fair (although why should you be?) you could recall that that was the year I read about ten books of Edwin Arlington Robinson poetry -- basically all of his poetry I could. *What do you mean WHY he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry three times people THREE and I had to read his collected poems for hundreds and hundreds of pages and ... yes, I said "had to"*  But even though that's just one White Guy taking up ten slots, it's also ten slots that didn't go to books by Not White Guys. So anyway....

Clockwise fr top left: Danticat, Colbert, Achebe, Adichie, Coates

I know -- we probably all know -- that in general I read a fair amount of books by women. But guess what -- the majority of them are white. Damn it.

After checking out these initial numbers, I decided on this particular Martin Luther King Jr. Day to continue perusing my Goodreads "Read" shelf to see how many black authors I read last year, in 2017. The answer is: five.

In case you're interested, they were Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Brandy Colbert, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Edwidge Danticat. One of them I had read before last year as well. Two I had been meaning to read for quite some time. But, well, that's not very many. Five black authors out of 46 books read.

Um...it gets worse. In 2016, I read one. (Assata Shakur)  In 2015? One. (Maya Angelou)

Yes, I've read authors from a variety of countries and of a variety of ethnicities and races, this year and last year and every year. And yes, I've read as many writers who are Not White Guys as are White Guys. But I need to do a whole lot better.

I mean, it's one thing when you sit in your canon-driven literature classes and read a lot of old/dead white guys (although to be fair -- and this time, I will be, to my teachers -- I was actually exposed to quite a lot of Not White Guys over the years, in my English major classes, I daresay at a better rate than in some of the rest of academia....) but now in my "real" life I am not beholden to a syllabus. I can read whatever I want by anyone. So. Why don't I read/haven't I read more black authors?

Now, I do love me a reading project. A lot of my reading projects are list driven, and a lot of those lists tend to get populated by some of the same Old/Dead White Guys over and over again. Just to name three of my life-reading-projects-in-progress, the Pulitzer-winning fiction, the Modern Library Top 100 Novels, and the 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die feature no shortage of White Guys. Still, there ARE other races and genders on those lists. And I don't JUST read books from those lists (obviously, or my projects wouldn't take me so long), so I do read other novels. But I pretty clearly need to start some kind of African-American novels project. Who's got a list for me?

And this is not to mention my oh-my-god-it's-been-going-on-so-long-but-is-almost-finished Prez Bios project, launched during the Dubya administration, in which I've been reading a biography of every U.S. president in order to see where we went wrong. I've made it through all the men (White Guys a-plenty!) up to Dubya himself now, and the vast majority of the biographies have been written by, you guessed it, White Guys. White Guys write a whole lot of our history. It's just, like, totally in their hands.

What are we all going to do about that?

All of your suggestions are welcome - suggestions of novels written by black authors, suggestions of non-fiction written by black authors, and suggestions for how we can all do more to speak truth to power, fight entrenched injustice, and keep working toward freedom and making Dr. King's dream a reality.