[Saturday Reads] #SurvivalStories2021 – Decolonizing Our Bookshelves: A Reading Plan – Part 2 of 2

Myra here.

Every Saturday we hope to share with you our thoughts on reading and books. We thought that it would be good practice to reflect on our reading lives and our thoughts about reading in general. While on occasion, we would feature a few books in keeping with this, there would be a few posts where we will just write about our thoughts on read-alouds, libraries, reading journals, upcoming literary conferences, books that we are excited about, and just book love miscellany in general.

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Last week, I shared Part 1 of my reading plan to “decolonize our libraries” as we celebrate stories of survival. This quote from a recent article by Publishers Weekly signifies our reading intention:

Decolonizing is not meant to exclude. When we talk about decolonizing a syllabus, or our libraries, publishing houses, or our professions, what we are talking about is decentering whiteness, and being more inclusive to voices of color and to voices that represent diverse perspectives.

Hence, we are featuring narratives of people of color and stories of marginalized and indigenous communities whose existence were/are nearly wiped out by colonizers, tyrants, oppressors.

#SurvivalStories2021 [Decolonizing Our Bookshelves] Reading List – Part 2 of 2

Some of these books I have just recently received for Christmas, while other titles have been waiting patiently in my shelves to finally be cracked open. Hopefully, I do get to all of them this year. Regardless, good intentions still count for something, right? Right.

(01) Palestine’s Children by Ghassan Kanafani (Amazon | Book Depository)

(02) Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz (Amazon | Book Depository)

(03) Possessing The Secret Of Joy by Alice Walker (Amazon | Book Depository)

(04) Love In Colour by Bolu Babalola (Amazon | Book Depository)

(05) The Other Side Of Truth by Beverley Naidoo (Amazon | Book Depository)

(06) Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black by Nadine Gordimer (Amazon | Book Depository)

(07) The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (Amazon | Book Depository)

(08) The Mothers by Brit Bennett (Amazon | Book Depository)

(09) The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (Amazon | Book Depository)

(10) When The Doves Disappeared by Sofi Oksanen (Amazon | Book Depository)

(11) A Case Of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif (Amazon | Book Depository)

(12) That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott (Amazon)

(13) The Book Of My Lives by Aleksandar Hemon (Amazon | Book Depository)

(14) The Last King Of Scotland by Giles Foden (Amazon | Book Depository)

(15) The African Trilogy: Things Fall Apart | No Longer At Ease | Arrow Of God by Chinua Achebe (Amazon | Book Depository)

(16) Six Memos For The Next Millennium by Italo Calvino (Amazon | Book Depository)

How about you? What’s your must-read for 2021?