50books-poc Uncounted: Resource Pimping: Librivox
Because it's good to share.
Librivox.org, which is partnered with Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive, is a non-profit organization that recruits volunteers to create public domain recordings of public domain works.
In layman's terms: free audiobooks. And if you ever wanted to make a techno remix of Shakespeare's sonnets but didn't know where to go in order to get samples, well now you do.
As you can imagine, Librivox is dominated by English-language works as written by white men. There are however works by people of color on the site. Some of the works I found include...
Works by People of Color:
Baldwin, James. Fifty Famous Stories Retold. (version 2)
Baldwin, James. Four Great Americans.
Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk.
Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano.
Hasan, Shayk. Persian Self-Taught.
Williams, William Carlos. Selected Early Poems of William Carlos Williams.
Various. African-American Collection.
Zitkala-sa. Old Indian Legends.
Works by People of Color Translated by People of Color:
Goldberg, Isaac. Brazilian Tales.
Ozaki, Yei Theodora. Japanese Fairytales.
Works by People of Color Translated by White People:
Confucius. The Sayings of Confucius.
Lao Tzu (trans. James Legge). Tao Teh King
Pu, Sung-ling (trans. Herbert Allen Giles). A Selection from Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, Vol. 1.
Sun Tzu (trans. Lionel Giles). The Art of War. (version 2)
While I was looking around I also found a bunch of works written by white ethnographers/anthropologists/etc. about people of color and their traditions and folklore that I am actualfax afraid to read for fear of poisoning my mind, but if you want a peek at those, here they are too:
Barker William H. West African Folk Tales.
Grinnell, George Bird. Blackfeet Indian Stories.
Larned, William Trowbridge. American Indian Fairy Tales.
Parker, K. Langloh. Australian Legendary Tales of the Noongahburrahs as Told to the Piccaninnies.
Bompas, Cecil Henry. Folklore of the Santal Parganas.
Also, for the multi-lingual among us, there are works recorded in other languages. You can search for recordings in languages other than English by typing the name of that language in English in the title box on the search search page.
Did I miss something? What other works by people of color are public domain?
Librivox.org, which is partnered with Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive, is a non-profit organization that recruits volunteers to create public domain recordings of public domain works.
In layman's terms: free audiobooks. And if you ever wanted to make a techno remix of Shakespeare's sonnets but didn't know where to go in order to get samples, well now you do.
As you can imagine, Librivox is dominated by English-language works as written by white men. There are however works by people of color on the site. Some of the works I found include...
Works by People of Color:
Baldwin, James. Fifty Famous Stories Retold. (version 2)
Baldwin, James. Four Great Americans.
Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk.
Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano.
Hasan, Shayk. Persian Self-Taught.
- (this should probably be read along with the text (link))
Williams, William Carlos. Selected Early Poems of William Carlos Williams.
Various. African-American Collection.
Zitkala-sa. Old Indian Legends.
Works by People of Color Translated by People of Color:
Goldberg, Isaac. Brazilian Tales.
Ozaki, Yei Theodora. Japanese Fairytales.
Works by People of Color Translated by White People:
Confucius. The Sayings of Confucius.
- they don't actually give the translator where I can find it, but I'm assuming he's white, considering it's a Harvard Classic published in 1909.
Lao Tzu (trans. James Legge). Tao Teh King
Pu, Sung-ling (trans. Herbert Allen Giles). A Selection from Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, Vol. 1.
Sun Tzu (trans. Lionel Giles). The Art of War. (version 2)
While I was looking around I also found a bunch of works written by white ethnographers/anthropologists/etc. about people of color and their traditions and folklore that I am actualfax afraid to read for fear of poisoning my mind, but if you want a peek at those, here they are too:
Barker William H. West African Folk Tales.
Grinnell, George Bird. Blackfeet Indian Stories.
Larned, William Trowbridge. American Indian Fairy Tales.
Parker, K. Langloh. Australian Legendary Tales of the Noongahburrahs as Told to the Piccaninnies.
- gives side-eye to that title.
Bompas, Cecil Henry. Folklore of the Santal Parganas.
Also, for the multi-lingual among us, there are works recorded in other languages. You can search for recordings in languages other than English by typing the name of that language in English in the title box on the search search page.
Did I miss something? What other works by people of color are public domain?