2013 Rainbow Reads

The third (fourth if you count the overall Goodreads challenge) and final challenge I'm "signing up" for is one of my own devising.  As I will be noting in an as yet unfinished post that is part of the chain of unready posts, I want my focus in 2013 to be on diversity in my reading.  Within my AWW reading in 2012, although I thought I was aiming for diversity, I ended up defaulting to a predominantly straight, white selection of writers.  Between this challenge and the Global Women of Colo(u)r Challenge I'll be keeping a focus on non-white writers - plus my AWW reads this year are also predominantly non-white.

2013 Rainbow Reads

"Rainbow" can refer to a lot of things.  Diversity, queerness, a mix of colours, the promise by God to Noah after the great flood.  My Rainbow Reads are ten books by LGBTQQI writers "of colour".  In other words, not white, not Anglo-European authors who identify in some way as "not straight".  Admittedly, my non-straight authors mostly identify as either lesbian or gay.  I don't know of any trans authors at the moment, and the bi authors who are on my to-read list are white.  Plus, in order to make the challenge do-able, I need to be able to source all the books I chose, so I needed to keep to books I either own or have library access to.  (I'm taking a gamble on the Ihimaera, but my library is about to join a large consortium, which will make sourcing books by non-white, non-straight authors easier than it is now.  In fact, that's the only one on this list that isn't already in my collection, and I almost bought it when we were in Sydney a couple months ago.)  This list is equally balanced in terms of gender identification, and I might add that I found it more difficult to find titles by men than women for this challenge.

My Rainbow Reads (in alphabetical order by author) are:

1.  Her Sister's Eye, by Vivienne Cleven - Indigenous Australian
2.  Nights in the Garden of Spain, by Witi Ihimaera - Maori
3.  Gaysia, by Benjamin Law - Chinese Australian
4.  Huntress, by Malinda Lo - Chinese American
5.  Talking Black: Lesbians of African and Asian Descent Speak Out, edited by Valerie Mason-John - Black British women
6.  The God Box, by Alex Sanchez - Latino American
7.  Little Black Bastard: A Story of Survival, by Noel Tovey - Indigenous Australian
8.  The Same River Twice, by Alice Walker - African American
9.  Miracle's Boys, by Jacqueline Woodson - African American
10.  Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Human Rights, by Kenji Yoshino - Japanese American