People of Color Reading Challenge Wrap-Up

Books I read for this challenge:

1. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin (also read for Top 100 Children's Novels Challenge)
2. One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia
3. Skim by Mariko Tamaki (Also read for Graphic Novels Challenge)
4. Bird by Zetta Elliott
5. Alvin Ho: Allergic to Birthday Parties, Science Projects and Other Man-made Catastrophes by Lenore Look
6. The Rock and the River by Kekla Magoon
7. Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper
8. The Eternal Smile by Gene Luen Yeng (Also read for Graphic Novels Challenge)
9. The Last Summer of the Death Warriors by Francisco X. Stork
10. Before We Were Free by Julia Alvarez
11. The Perfect Shot by Debbie Rigaud
12. Make Way for Dyamonde Daniel by Nikki Grimes
13. Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork
14. Going Going by Naomi Shihab Nye
15. Standing Against the Wind by Traci Jones
16. Rickshaw Girl by Mitali Perkins
17. Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum
18. We Are the Ship by Kadir Nelson
19. The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han
20. Project Mulberry by Linda Sue Park
21. Amulet: The Stonekeeper by Kazi Kabushiri (Also read for Graphic Novels Challenge)
22. Teaching Critical Thinking by bell hooks
23. Teaching Community by bell hooks
24. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
25. Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie
26. The First Part Last by Angela Johnson
27. Alvin Ho: Allergic to Girls, School, and Other Scary Stuff by Lenore Look

My goal for this challenge was to read more than 25 books by people of color. In addition to these 27, I read several dozen picture books by authors of color, so I did reach my goal.

Most of these books were excellent, and I discovered a couple of new favorite authors. My favorite books for this challenge were Grace Lin's Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Zetta Elliott's Bird, Kadir Nelson's We Are the Ship, and the two books on pedagogy by bell hooks. I only disliked one book on the list, and I think that's because it's a teen romance novel, and that's not a genre I really read. I discovered a couple of books to add to my Children's Lit syllabus: Mitali Perkins's Rickshaw Girl and Kadir Nelson's We Are the Ship. I've also added Zetta Eliott's A Wish After Midnight to my Adolescent Literature course.

I feel like adding more books by authors of color to the syllabi of the courses I teach is one way that I can advocate for authors of color. Depending on enrollment in my courses, that's 30-60 more books that an author sells. I have also started requested more books by authors of color at my local library and purchasing books myself to donate to their collection.

But I'm still disturbed by how the numbers work out in my final reading tally for 2010. Out of 180 books I've read in 2010, only 27 are by people of color. That's 15%, if I can do math correctly. And that doesn't seem close to adequate.

Given my other reading challenges--the Printz, the Top 100 Children's Novels, Book Prizes--it wasn't always easy to find authors of color in those categories. I counted just 4 books by authors of color on the Top 100 Children's Novels list--and 2 of those are by Christopher Paul Curtis. (Love Christopher Paul Curtis!)

If anyone ever questions whether awards such as the Coretta Scott King Award or the Pura Belpre Award are necessary, they only need to take a look at the supposedly non-race-focused awards. For instance, of the 52 Printz Winners and Honor books, only 5, as far as I can tell, are by people of color--less than 10%.

When I look at the reading challenges I'm considering for 2011--the Amazon Best Books challenge; Australian Writers challenge; Steampunk challenge; Top 100 YA Novels challenge--how many authors of color are represented on those lists or in those genres?

I am committed to reading more books by people of color, but I see that it is going to require more commitment and consciousness on my part than I had this year, despite the reading challenge, despite the reading I did on diversity in publishing, despite the changes I made to my course syllabi to include more than 50% diversity.

A couple of ideas for 2011:
1. Join the POC 2011 Reading Challenge.
2. Create other challenges like a Coretta Scott King or Pura Belpre Award Challenge.
3. Put in more time to research authors of color within the reading challenges I'm already planning to sign up for.
4. Commit to putting at least 75% of my book-buying budget into authors of color. Then consider donating the books to the library.