We are three months into 2016 and I realized two things:
What really interested me though is examining what I have been reading. By gender, my reading is pretty even - 14 books by male authors, and 19 books by female authors. I think in the past I have read even more heavily female, but this was not terribly surprising. When I looked at my reading by race, however, it was a little dispiriting. I read 20 books by people of color, and 13 books by white authors. Yes, that means I read more books by people of color than I read books by white authors, but this was in a three month period when I was actively trying to read outside of my own experiences. When I needed to read a transitional reader for my children's lit class, I worked pretty hard to find the one transitional reader I could find that had a non-white character (and the book I found was great - if you need a good book for a fairly new reader who is looking for slightly more advanced books, you should definitely point them to Ruby Lu, Empress of Everything by Lenore Look). Or when I needed an historical fiction novel, I choose Sugar by Jewell Parker Rhodes.
- I really should be blogging more. I have a lot of excuses, mostly centered around writing a master's paper all semester, but really, they are just excuses. I enjoy keeping this blog, and I have missed it.
- A quarter into the year seems like a good time to check out my reading stats for the year.
What really interested me though is examining what I have been reading. By gender, my reading is pretty even - 14 books by male authors, and 19 books by female authors. I think in the past I have read even more heavily female, but this was not terribly surprising. When I looked at my reading by race, however, it was a little dispiriting. I read 20 books by people of color, and 13 books by white authors. Yes, that means I read more books by people of color than I read books by white authors, but this was in a three month period when I was actively trying to read outside of my own experiences. When I needed to read a transitional reader for my children's lit class, I worked pretty hard to find the one transitional reader I could find that had a non-white character (and the book I found was great - if you need a good book for a fairly new reader who is looking for slightly more advanced books, you should definitely point them to Ruby Lu, Empress of Everything by Lenore Look). Or when I needed an historical fiction novel, I choose Sugar by Jewell Parker Rhodes.
But in a year when I am trying to read outside of my own experiences, 20 out of 33 seems pretty low. Among the white authors, two were writing about disabilities, but that is still only 66 percent. Looking closer at the titles, why I read them all make sense. The first two books I read were the top two on my list of books I wanted to read. I happened to be looking at the list sorted alphabetically when I was at the library, hence After Alice and After Birth. I read Reading Proust for a book club where I did not pick the book. I read Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton after buying it for my husband for Chanukah--we are all obsessed with Hamilton the musical, and I needed to know more about the man. But a lot of the other books I needed to read because they were reviewed in the New York Times Book Review, or I have heard from a lot of people that I need to read them. And what people tell me I need to read are mostly books by white authors.
This is not completely true. After seeing Matt de la Peña speak at the Durham Public Library last month, everyone I knew was reading his books, and I too read the ones I hadn't yet read, all in quick succession (you should go pick up The Living and The Hunted right now, unless you are about to go on a cruise, in which case you should wait until you get back). And I keep up with blogs like Reading While White and American Indians In Children's Literature, which put different books in front of me, so that I am adding them to my Goodreads list. But still the majority of books that are casually mentioned to me are still pretty white, and mostly American.
So, I will keep up this journey of reading books that are more windows for me into a world different than my own, rather than mirrors. Mirrors are good, but they are not what I need right now. So I am going to sign off for now, and delve back into Kwame Alexander's new novel in verse Booked, and we will see where the second quarter of the year takes me.
This is not completely true. After seeing Matt de la Peña speak at the Durham Public Library last month, everyone I knew was reading his books, and I too read the ones I hadn't yet read, all in quick succession (you should go pick up The Living and The Hunted right now, unless you are about to go on a cruise, in which case you should wait until you get back). And I keep up with blogs like Reading While White and American Indians In Children's Literature, which put different books in front of me, so that I am adding them to my Goodreads list. But still the majority of books that are casually mentioned to me are still pretty white, and mostly American.
So, I will keep up this journey of reading books that are more windows for me into a world different than my own, rather than mirrors. Mirrors are good, but they are not what I need right now. So I am going to sign off for now, and delve back into Kwame Alexander's new novel in verse Booked, and we will see where the second quarter of the year takes me.