There’s So Much I Want To Learn From Writers Of Color

 

As I grown as a person, I’ve found that it’s up to me to work on unlearning some of the more harmful things that society has taught me. Although the national #We Need Diverse Books movement is about changing the books industry, my personal movement is about changing myself. Just as I’ve learned to value myself as black woman, I have unlearned the belief that people like me are not worthy protagonists. I am still unlearning the habit of praising white people for deigning to do what people of color have already been doing. As I’m figuring out what’s important to me, I’m spreading my horizons to include other perspectives.
As I add more books to my reading list for this year, I’m both excited and depressed by the sheer amount of options I have, because it’s indicative of all I’ve been missing out on. I want to read grow as a feminist, so I’m eager to read Sister Citizen and Talking Back. There’s so much I want to know about the black lives around the world that I know The New Jim Crow and Of Africa are just the tip of the iceberg. I know very little about Asian and Asian-American culture, so I wonder what I can learn from books such as The Garden of Evening Mists and A Tale For The Time Being. And of course, I’ll never stop loving fantasy and science fiction so I can’t wait to explore these genres from the POC perspectives in Wizard of the Crow and Sultana’s Dream. You get the point. I doubt a year will be enough to make up for a lifetime of looking at world from one perspective, but at the very least, a year is a step in the right direction.