50 Books By POC Suggested Reading: Updated 2014 & An Evolving Work in Progress

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50 Books by POC Challenge

1-10

Nikki Giovanni, Racism 101.
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart.
Shobhaa Dé, Bollywood Nights.
Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist. (recommended by DarkFantasy.org POC in Fantasy Roundtable)
Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Zarah the Windseeker. (recommended by DarkFantasy.org POC in Fantasy Roundtable)
Nikki Giovanni, Sacred

Comments

[rocza]

Hrm. Not my favourite of the Butler books. (I think Parable of the Sower is probably my favourite.)

Have you read Tayeb Salih's A Season of Migration to the North? This was a routine "teach" in my undergrad, almost always paired with Said's Orientalism.

I'm not sure Country of my Skull "counts" for this; a white South African woman writing about the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. It's a fascinating, if awful, read, though.

*flips through other CHID readings*
Arjun Appadurai wrote one of my favourite books on globalization and the global flow of information and culture, called Modernity at Large. I especially liked this book for giving us a way out of the binarism of Other/Occidental that can be so common in academic thinking about race, culture, and colour

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I loves books, so white academics aren't out of the question, but don't go to the scope of this particular project...so we don't clutter up this space with non-POC authors and get me confused, can you PM me? And thanks for the other recs!

[rocza]

My undergrad department was well known for saying "mmmrm,.. no, not enough pigment, let's go find other authors" and importing obscure academics from all over the globe to teach with/by. I'm not at home til Sunday night, but when I am I'll go through my shelves and see what other books I can find/recommend. (Or long-ass academic papers, for that matter.)

I'll send you my syllabus for CHID 390, tho - have that with me on the computer. It's an entire class designed around getting people to think outside the box, as it were. Covers feminism, gender, othering, etc and so forth. (I think you'll get the point quickly, just flipping through it.)

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wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee and this is one of the many reasons I love you!

[rocza]

Sent. :-)

Oh hey - are you a Buffy fan? (This is related to this topic. Honest.)

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No, not really - I missed the hoopla over that show, and while I have friends that LOVE IT LOVE IT, one who wrote her thesis on it, and have read some of the fandom material surrounding it on critical subjects, I've never seen the show. :d

[rocza]

Oh, man. That's way too bad. I missed the hoopla on the show, too, but got sucked into a class on it (loooong story, academic blackmail), and then devoured the show in a few months.

There's a pretty famous philosophy book that has an essay in it about racism in the show, arguing that vampires are the symbol of race and how "dirty" white people view people of other colours. A lot of people f'love the essay - I hated it, so I wrote against it. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much you would get out of it if you're not familiar with the show.

Still, the article is "Buffy? She’s Like Me, She’s Not Like Me - She’s Rad!” by Vivian Chin.

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Win! I have been meaning to allow my buddies to take me over to the dark side, it's just that I don't watch a lot of TV anyway because HELLO MY LIFE IS BUSY AND I BARELY HAVE TIME TO WIPE MY OWN ASS, and I don't pay attention to TV very well.

[rocza]

Hah! Here is that course syllabus. It's how I got into the show - having the academic focus helped a lot.

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super bonus and wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin