Summer Reading 2015

I've been reading a lot of cultural novels as well as novels written by women and minority authors. I'm trying to diversify my reading experience from high school. Last semester, one of my favorite professors asked us as a class to name as many books as we could remember from required reading for high school. We realized that only a few out of more than forty authors were women. Of the more than forty, only James Joyce was nonwhite. Even though authors like Mark Twain wrote about nonwhite experiences, I hardly read anything from the point of view of someone who identified as anything besides white. I realized how much I was missing out on due to this homogeneous makeup of authors. So, I've started seeking authors like Junot Diaz and Toni Morrison, trying to read books and poetry from perspectives different than mine. I just finished The Sleeping Dictionary by Sujata Massey and In the Time of Butterflies by Julie Alvarez. I loved both novels, especially the political climate of Alvarez's Dominican Republic setting. If you need a summer read, pick up something new! Don't fall prey to an easy read. Challenge your ideas and conventions, and read a book by someone different than you. And if you have a favorite novel written by an author of color, I'm hungry for suggestions!

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