Books with PoC/Female Authors/Protagonists: Counting and a Recs Request

[rsadelle]

As I mentioned, I've been reading a lot about race, racism, and anti-racism, and one of the communities I came across was 50books_PoC. Reading some books by people of color seems like a good idea, but 50 in a year seems like setting myself up to fail. To get a good sense of what would be a reasonable challenge, I decided to look at both the books I own and

Comments

[norwich36]

You know about verb_noire, right? Not that it's publishing anything yet, as it is still getting off the ground, but I expect it will be a great place to look in the future.

Some lists of fic with POC characters I've found helpful:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pRyxp56fZaFExx5LJ6BO1DA [This one is not all POC--it's POC and/or female protagonists]
http://theyayayas.wordpress.com/booklists/asian-american-protagonists-in-ya-fiction/
http://carmarthen.livejournal.com/309864.html and http://oyceter.livejournal.com/750324.html

[rsadelle]

Thanks! I'll browse the lists to see if there's anything I want to read. Is there anything you've read personally that you would recommend?

[norwich36]

Well, outside of what I emailed you, looking over those lists, I have read shockingly few of those authors, but I do love Sherman Alexie.

[rsadelle]

One of his books is definitely already on my to read list!

Off the top of my head...

[archivecats]

Will you include graphic novels? I can't remember if I've recommended American Born Chinese to you before (I lose track of who I said what to), but it's pretty awesome - and it's got the Monkey King in it!

Not a PoC author, but Shannon Hale's Book of a Thousand Days is set in a kind of Mongolia.

checking the web for information on Shaun Tan to see if his last name indicates Asian heritage ... oh, good, he qualifies! He wrote The Arrival (well, drew - it has no words), and his Tales from Outer Suburbia just came out - again, really, really awesome. Also, points for the websiteWow, I can think of a lot of graphic novels - there's also Skim by Mariko Tamaki, which I don't think I liked so much, but tastes differ. The female protagonist has a relationship with a female teacher

Re: Off the top of my head...

[rsadelle]

Graphic novels count, but I'm less likely to read them. I really don't read very many of them.

I've read Book of a Thousand Days.

I haven't read anything by Laurence Yep. I know he's well-known, so maybe I'll try him.

I just did a quick count of the YA I read last year, and it seems to be pretty evenly split between sci fi/fantasy and not, so other things are totally okay!

The Alexie book is totally on my to-read list! I just read someone's rec for it, and it sounded interesting.

...

[archivecats]

Okay, now I'm cheating and using NoveList, which allows you to search by "national identity" and "cultural identity" - how sweet is that?

Melissa de la Cruz, author of the Blue Bloods series. Maybe a couple of people on the YALSA listserv have said those were a cut above Twilight in terms of vampire books, or maybe not.

Hmm. Kalpa imperial by Angelica Gorodischer - I have never heard of that book, but it looks interesting. Translated by Ursula Le Guin. Does Argentinian count as PoC? I don't know if the author considers her ethnicity to be Hispanic or non-Hispanic.

...I am totally going to scroll through this whole giant list, and then maybe look up Russian authors to see if there's anyone interesting I don't know about. Thank you for asking things that inspire me to practice using NoveList! (Your public library may subscribe to it, too - worth checking.)

Re: ...

[rsadelle]

Hmm. The Blue Bloods series has never looked very interesting to me. I do read vampire books, but, well, I'm picky about them.

My public library does subscribe to NoveList. Maybe I'll have to do some investigating.

Re: ...

[sanguinity]

:: Does Argentinian count as PoC? I don't know if the author considers her ethnicity to be Hispanic or non-Hispanic. ::

Hispanic and Latin@ are both language/cultural identities; neither one identifies race. So it's possible to be white and Hispanic, or black and Hispanic, or indigenous and Hispanic, or mestizo and Hispanic... Same with Latin@.

And then there's the thing where people who are perceived to be white in their home country aren't necessarily perceived to be white in another -- that can confuse matters quite a bit.

As far as I've ever been able to tell, Angelica Gorodischer is white, but I'm quite willing to be corrected on that.

...

[archivecats]

Here's the list of subject headings for Into the Dark Lands by Michelle Sagara West (Japanese-Canadian):

Women healers
Women warriors
Heroes and heroines
Good and evil
Quests
Men/women relations
Visions
Mind control
Magic
Warlocks
Fantasy fiction, Canadian
Canadian fiction
Fantasy romances

So that's just an example of how, if you want to search NoveList, you can look for something REALLY specific. "Do you have any books by Canadians that are about mind control and have romance in them?" :)

Re: ...

[rsadelle]

Michelle Sagara! Maybe she'll come out with a new Elantra book this year. I was browsing the fantasy paperbacks at the library (which I almost never do because I know more or less what's on there and am not particularly interested in the ones I haven't read), and they randomly have the third Dark Lands novel. I wasn't in the mood for it at the time, but I'll keep it in mind for future reading!

[ee970]

So I heard there was some "racewar09" or some such clusterfuck in sci-fi/fantasy fandom going on, but I don't really care much about the genre so I hadn't really known what it was all about (not that I would expect many non-whites messing with SF anyway)

The only thing I can possibly recommend is the Tales of Earthsea series, which is by a woman with an interesting name (that I've forgotten) and is apparently all about brown people. But I can't tell you if it's any good or not--most fantasy is not my thing.

[rsadelle]

RaceFail 09, yes. And actually, one of the ongoing points of contention is people saying "poc don't do sci fi/fantasy" and poc sci fi/fantasy fans saying, "uh, yes, we do."

I just checked out the first Earthsea book (Ursula K. Le Guin is the author) from the library this week! I've always been resistant to reading them because my rebellious streak is not into classics of any sort, but I figured it would be worth a try.

[norwich36]

Jumping in to say that what I find most interesting about Earthsea is that the first three novels really are "classic" in the sense that they follow a very traditional quest pattern, but the 4th novel, which she wrote a lot later, completely upends the standard narrative pattern and kind of retells the story from a feminist perspective.

(LeGuin herself isn't a POC, though, I don't think. And those lists I gave you above, I just noticed, are mostly lists of novels with POC main characters, not necessarily by POC authors).

[rsadelle]

Huh. Interesting. I'll have to watch for that.

(Yeah, I think she's white.)