Queer Australian Women Writers month at AWW

I didn't know until this morning's post that the AWW challenge is having a focus month on queer Australian women writers.

As a queer (part-)Australian woman who reads (and writes), this is awesome!  (I just wish I'd known about it sooner.)

I am, as usual, in the middle of multiple books right now.  (Goodreads shows the following:

• Passage to Pontefract
• Sarah's Key
• Joanna: the notorious Queen of Naples
• Three Strong Women
• Four Queens: the Provencal sisters who ruled Europe
• Crown of Slaves
• The Kingmaker's Daughter
• Where the Streets Had a Name
• Little Black Bastard)

But: in the light of AWW's focus, I'm going to put a few of these onto my "On Hiatus" list where they belong (the bottom four listed above), and pick up a few others I've been meaning to read by queer Australian women:

• Ghost Wife, by Michelle Diconowski - I picked it up last year but didn't read it.
• Her Sister's Eye, by Vivienne Cleven
• something by Katherine Howell (whatever I'm up to in her series right now)
• something by Melissa Lucaschenko 
• Act of Faith, by Kelly Gardiner - which I've been meaning to read absolutely for ever.  Like, since before it was published when Kelly Gardiner was telling us about it at a YA librarians event at the State Library.

I certainly can't guarantee to get all of these read this month - hopefully we'll be moving house during March.  But I'd love to get through a few of them.

Top Ten Tuesdays - 7 Jan 2013

Sandra at Fresh Ink Books began following me on Twitter, so I started reading her blog.  And from her, I was linked to Top Ten Tuesdays at The Broke and the Bookish.

Top Ten Bookish Goals for 2013

1.  Get *my* book published.  This involves a lot of work on my part.  I absolutely acknowledge that I have been driving my editor mad with my lack of work.
2.  Goodreads Challenge 2013
3.  Australian Women Writers 2013
4.  Global Women of Colour challenge
5.  Rainbow Reads
6.  The rest of the books on my To Read in 2013 shelf
7.  Clear down my On Hiatus shelf
8.  Blog regularly here at Heidi Reads (hoping that Top Ten Tuesdays will help me.)
9.  Maintaining diversity in my reading
10.  Complete reading the Bible (without deutero-canonicals) from beginning to end.

Reading Diversity - Divers thoughts

Back in 2008, the particular corner of the interwebs that I inhabited exploded.  It exploded over issues of diversity in television and fandom, and that was when 50books_poc started.  And ever since then, I've been far more aware of what I'm reading, and the authorship of what I'm reading.  And as horrible as 50books_poc eventually became, it's been incredibly important to the way that I read.

So.

Here I sit at the end of 2012, noticing how UN-diverse my reading has actually been.  Despite my supposed attempts at diverse reading, when I finally get around to posting my relevant statistics, you'll see that I didn't really succeed.

In 2013 I want things to be different.  I want to make sure that my reading is diverse, isn't just meant to be so.  I never have much of an issue making sure I read female authors over male: as far back as I can remember I've read more women than men.  But reading even close to equal numbers of non/other-than-white authors to white authors, and something around 20% queer authors to straight is something I'd like to be able to say I'd done at the end of this year.  I don't know that I'll manage it (although between my Rainbow Reads challenge, plus intentionally choosing at least a couple of queer authors for the other challenges, I should be okay for 20% for the year if not more) but I want to try.

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

Another 2013 challenge - Global Women of Colo(u)r

M D Brady is running a Global Women of Colo(u)r challenge for 2013, and I'm in the process of signing up.  I've signed up for the "Structured" challenge, which involves:

reading (and reviewing) ten books by Global Women of Color, six of them from six different continents or regions.

Although eight out of my ten planned reads for the Australian Women Writers Challenge would also count for the GWC challenge, I'd like to avoid overlap if I can.  So far my one difficulty in covering regions is finding an author from continental South American (as distinct from the Carribean, which is counted as part of South America for the purposes of the challenge).

In any event, this is my tentative list (alphabetically by author):

1.  Where the Streets had a Name, by Abdel-Fattah - Palestinian/Australian (Middle East/Australia)
2.  That Thing Around Your Neck, by Adiche - Nigeria (Africa)
3.  The Pirate's Daughter, by Cezair-Thompson - Jamaica (South America)
4.  The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, by Erdrich - Ojibwe (North America)
5.  Lovers in the Age of Indifference, by Guo - China (Asia)
6.  The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf, by Kwaymullina - Palyku (Australia)
7.  Small Island, by Levy - Jamaica/Black British (UK)
8.  Dead Aid, by Moyo - Zambia (Africa)
9.  Her Father's Daughter, by Pung - Cambodian/Australian (Asia/Australia)
10.  The World Unseen, by Sarif - South Africa/India (Africa/Asia/Global)
 

Australian Women Writers Challenge 2013

So - my plan for the Australian Women's Writers Challenge 2013 is thus:

I have signed up for the Franklin level (read ten, review at least six) with a focus on intentional diversity including Indigenous writers.  I've picked out ten goal books

1. The Boundary, by Nicole Watson - I bought it a while ago and haven't yet read it..  Must.  Unaipon Winner, Crime/Mystery
2. Miles Off Course, by Sulari Gentill. Historial, Crime/Mystery
3. Exile, by Rebecca Lim, YA/Paranormal
4. Black Glass, by Meg Mundell. Dystopia
5.  El Dorado, by Dorothy Porter.  Crime, Queer, Verse novel
6.  Unpolished Gem, by Alice Pung.  Biography,
7.  Whitening Race, edited by Aileen Moreton-Robinson. Essays
8.  Manhattan Dreaming, by Anita Heiss.  Chick/Choc-Lit
9.  The Glory Garage, by Nadia Jamal and Tagreb Chandab.  Non-fiction, Religious, Cultural.
10.  This is Shyness, by Leanne Hall.  YA/Paranormal

8/10 by non-white Australian women
3/10 by Indigenous Australian women
4/10 by Asian Australian women
1/10 by Queer-identified Australian women


(Dammit - please tell me about non-white identified queer Australian women other than Vivienne Cleven.  Triple threats are awesome.)

All but three of these are already in my possession.

I sincerely hope that I'll read more books by Australian women than just these, but as per my plan to be as intentionally diverse as possible (and the fact that I've really fallen behind in a few series by white British women and white men this year), I'm only going with a challenge of ten books.  I'd rather not be sitting here at the end of next year trying desperately to finish my last few books.

Speaking of which...  better get back to it.

Last ditch efforts

Oh, boy - how did it get to be December already?

The good thing is, I'm (mostly) on track to successfully complete two challenges - assuming that I read a lot during the Christmas-New Year break.  Which, by the way, I'm planning to do.  Unfortunately I have to accept that two other challenges simply will not be met this year (and I'm beginning to re-think how I attempt to maximise diversity in my reading next year, but that's for another post later this month.)

Anyway.  The state of the challenges is as follows:

Goodreads 2012 challenge: 69 books read of 80 goal
Australian Women Writers Challenge: 33 books read/25 reviewed of 40 read/30 reviewed goal.

50booksPOC: a rather miserable 13 books read of 50 goal.
Queerlit50: 15 (possibly 16) books read of 50 goal.

It was rather ambitious of me, in a year where my number of books read was 80, to also hope to read 50 books by queer authors and 50 by authors who are not white.  Especially as this year I have found only one queer, non-white Australian female author (Vivienne Cleven) and have so far read only one of her books.  There's still a month, right?

In that month, to complete the two challenges that are mostly on track, I need to complete a minimum of eleven books total, seven of which must be by Australian women.  The review goal won't be a problem as I have reviews outstanding from books already read, but it does mean I need to also complete at least five reviews by New Year's Eve.

In my currently reading Goodreads list there are eight books.  Four are by Australian women.  I have to finish Anita Diamant's The Red Tent by this Thursday so it can go back to book club headquarters, but other than that it shouldn't be difficult at all to have all the other ten books completed be by Australian women, just as long as I put aside the white men (David Weber and Mark Bowden) and don't get distracted by them.  (I do find it somewhat ironic that I'd kind of like to finish "War of Honor" just because it would mean that David Weber, rather than Stephanie Laurens, would be my most read author of the year, although admittedly Laurens is currently in a tie between Weber, Suzanne Collins, Gabrielle Wang and Radclyffe for most-read author.)

Goodreads to the contrary, I have also started Anita Heiss' memoir Am I Black Enough For You? although I can't get back to that one until I recharge my Kobo.  Or go home and read my newly signed tree-book copy.

But anyway - I now know what I'm up against.  Eleven books.  At least seven by Australian women.  And five reviews.  By 11.59pm on December 31.*

*I was also hoping to have read the Bible all the way through by that time/datestamp, but that's seriously unlikely to happen.  See this post on the Discernment blog, since which I have read very little.