Last year I participated in a year long challenge to read more diversely. Specifically to read books from women of color. Check out the original challenge in Daily Kos here. There were plenty of awesome titles highlighted by Barbee that I think you will love.

At first I was not sure how I was going to put this challenge into practice. Did I have to always have a book by a woman of color in my hands? For 365 days of the year? Did I have to finish one title each week? Or was it enough to just complete 52 books by the end of the year? In the end I decided that each week I would complete a book by a woman of color.

So how did I do?

2020 Statistics

• 49 weeks
• 93 books
• 26 countries
• 68 “New to Me” Authors

Even though there were 3 weeks that I did not finish a title, I would say that overall it was a success. By the time that I started blogging about my challenge I just had too many titles to cover in the last weeks of the year and was overwhelmed at the prospect of doing so during finals. Here it is a fresh start, a new year, my favorite challenge.

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My Goals For 2021

• Complete Margaret Busby’s Daughters of Africa Volumes 1 and 2.
• Read books from women of color across all 7 continents. (For Antarctica use Decolonized map that indicates closest indigenous populations.)
• Read more books in translation.
• Read more books from small presses.

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January 2021

Daughters of Africa

This is an anthology that not only includes excerpts of writing, but also gives historical background on each author. In part I will be using these volumes to discover more incredible authors of color and read more books from the classic Afro/Caribbean/American canon.

Read 93 out of 1089 pages

I am definitely learning a lot from this book. There were some familiar names but many fascinating women that I had never heard of. Here is a partial list of the biographies and extracts that I have read so far.

• Queen Hatshepsut
• Makeda, Queen of Sheba
• Lucy Terry
• Phillis Wheatley
• Old Elizabeth
• Mary Prince
• Zilpha Elaw
• Sojourner Truth
• Nancy Prince
• Maria Stewart
• Mary Seacole
• Harriet Adams Wilson
• Harriet Jacobs
• Ann Plato
• Harriet Tubman
• Henrietta Fullor
• Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

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Week One (1/2)

Week Two (1/9)

Week Three (1/16)

Progress Report

So far I am on target to complete Daughters of Africa by year’s end. I have read 3 new authors: Ruhi Choudhary, Glynis Guevara and Danielle Geller. Of the 9 authors, four are African-American, one is Indigenous United States, two live in Canada and three hail from the Caribbean (The Moulite family is from Haiti and Glynis Guevarra is from Trinidad & Tobago)

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Meet the Queens that Have Brought All of this Awesomeness

Queen Mahogany L. Browne

Queen Ruhi Choudhary

Queen Danielle Geller

Queen Glynis Guevara

Queen Ladee Hubbard

Queen Bernice L. McFadden

Queens Maika & Maritza Moulite

Queen Angie Thomas