I try to take on a new project every off-season, photography related or otherwise. In my 6-month off-season in 2017, I set a personal goal to read as many books by women of color as possible. Here’s why:

Look at the media we most consume on a personal level, the artists we support. Are we working to make up the deficit of women of color in the creative areas we love most? What about queer, trans, or non-binary women of color? How many of the musicians we listen to are WOC? Filmmakers? Photographers? Authors? Fine artists? Moreover, when we have a creative job we need completed, how many women of color are we hiring for this work? How much effort are we putting forth to improve in these areas where we know we fall short? 

No matter how much work you put in, it is far more important to be constantly seeking ways in which you can improve, learn, and grow – not just to be a better, more informed ally and activist, but to be a better person. Hell, I am actively involved in anti-racist action and organizing, and I am always searching for ways to be better – yet I still wonder why this has taken me so long. Celebration of self has no place in intersectionality. On this journey, I learned so much and felt so fulfilled, I wanted to share my findings with you. 

It’s no secret that my book problem is pretty out of control. The first place I looked to make up for my own lack of representation was my bookshelf. In the literary world, we still overwhelmingly celebrate the writings of straight white men (to the surprise of no one). The gender imbalance is fucking real, with female or femme writers of color faring even worse. Worse yet, male writers win more literary awards and still dominate book reviews and critic jobs, some outlets covering four times more books by men than women, which only continues the cycle of oppression and supremacy, maintaining the status quo of silencing and marginalizing. When I realized I had more work to do when it came to reading, celebrating, sharing, and discussing the written works by women of color, I dove in hard. 

I wanted to read a little bit of everything – fiction, non-fiction, essays, cookbooks, young adult novels, humor – and did my best to find something in as many genres as possible. The most rewarding part of this process was forcing myself out of my comfort zone to read things I normally don’t, such as poetry, fiction, and short stories. 

I’m not great at writing about the books I consume, so I’ll let GoodReads do a lot of the talking for my favorites from last year in no particular order necessarily (with the exception of the final few). I wholeheartedly recommend any of the books on this list, and I’ve got another massive list in the works. If you’ve read any of these, I’d love to talk to you about them! In the meantime, do the work, show up, be accountable, and learn some shit. You’ll be better for it.

Some great organizations to follow and support: VidaWeb.org, HurstonWright.org

More statistics: The Gender Balance of The New York Times Best Seller list, Women Authors Need Your Support

25. Eat Up! Food, Appetite, and Eating What You Want by Ruby Tandoh

I realize I’m biased as shit, because I love this gal, but honestly, everyone should read this book. It’s a true love letter to food and a pretty eye-opening look into how diet culture and myths around food have created an unhealthy relationship with what and how we eat. An ED survivor herself, Ruby Tandoh has made it a point to educate others how to eat with joy and relish, rather than anxiety and fear. She covers everything from the intersections of race and class and gender with food and culture and expectations. Plus, her writing quality is top notch. If you’ve ever in any way struggled with food – and that makes a lot of us – this book is for you. 

“In Eat Up, Ruby Tandoh celebrates the fun and pleasure of food, taking a look at everything from gluttons and gourmets in the movies, to the symbolism of food and sex. She will arm you against the fad diets, food crazes and bad science that can make eating guilt-laden and expensive, drawing eating inspiration from influences as diverse as Roald Dahl, Nora Ephron and Gemma from TOWIE. Filled with straight-talking, sympathetic advice on everything from mental health to recipe ideas and shopping tips, this is a book that clears away the fog, to help you fall back in love with food.” Read More.

24. I’m Judging You: The Do-Better Manual by Luvvie Ajayi

This book is a fucking riot. No one is fucking safe; this entire book is a callout, no matter who you are. But it’s cool; Luvvie is only saying what we’re all thinking. You’ll find a dozen ways to be better, and you’ll laugh your ass off, too. Win/win, IMO. 

“Comedian, activist, and hugely popular culture blogger at AwesomelyLuvvie.com, Luvvie Ajayi, serves up necessary advice for the common senseless in this hilarious book of essays.” Read more.

23. The Leavers by Lisa Ko

The Leavers is fictional, but its story of immigrant life and the American Dream is all too familiar. A love story to the complex and complicated ways that we love our families and the sacrifices make to succeed and survive, definitely read this is you enjoy narratives told from multiple perspectives and tenses. 

“One morning, Deming Guo’s mother, an undocumented Chinese immigrant named Polly, goes to her job at the nail salon and never comes home. No one can find any trace of her. With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left with no one to care for him. He is eventually adopted by two white college professors who move him from the Bronx to a small town upstate. They rename him Daniel Wilkinson in their efforts to make him over into their version of an “all-American boy.” But far away from all he’s ever known, Daniel struggles to reconcile his new life with his mother’s disappearance and the memories of the family and community he left behind.” Read more.

22. Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Brittney Cooper

A testament to her life thus far that requires you to bear witness and keeps us all honest and accountable. Brittney Cooper gives us the privilege of both educating us and being vulnerable and open. 

“So what if it’s true that Black women are mad as hell? They have the right to be. In the Black feminist tradition of Audre Lorde, Brittney Cooper reminds us that anger is a powerful source of energy that can give us the strength to keep on fighting. Far too often, Black women’s anger has been caricatured into an ugly and destructive force that threatens the civility and social fabric of American democracy. But Cooper shows us that there is more to the story than that.” Read more.

21. Crumb: The Baking Book by Ruby Tandoh

This is not the only book from Ruby Tandoh to grace this list, but it is the only cookbook. Unlike many other cookbooks, Crumb is written lovingly and supportively, encouraging mistakes and failure. Tandoh is publicly candid about her struggles with anxiety and depression, and Crumb is clearly written with these issues in mind for her readers. The recipes are tasty but minimal, the perfect place to start if you’re a novice baker. I’m not much of a cook, let alone a baker, but this book is so encouraging and supportive, she’s helping me get there.

“In a delicious blend of practicality and creativity, Ruby encourages novices and seasoned bakers alike to roll up their sleeves and bake – even if they don’t have the proper equipment or know-how. From Lemon & Marzipan Cupcakes and Rye Caraway Bagels, Rose & Burnt Honey Florentines, Croissants and Custard Doughnuts, to Butternut Squash & Mozzarella Tartlets and Sticky Toffee Pudding, these are recipes that will quickly become some of your best loved. With writing to be savoured as much as the recipes, tips and techniques to guide you and plenty of ideas for variations, this is baking book to be inspired by, to read and cherish.” Read more.

20. The Man Who Shot Out My Eye is Dead by Chanelle Benz

Chanelle Benz’s stunning use of language is the true star here. Every story feels wholly different and freshly original. There’s something for everyone here. These stories are deep, dark, warped, hopeful. This is the perfect collection if you highly value variety from story to story.

“A stunningly original debut collection, The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead is about lives across history marked by violence and longing. In ten stories of impressive range, Chanelle Benz displays a staggering command of craft as she crisscrosses through time and space to create a complex mosaic of humanity.” Read more.

19. Rest In Power by Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin

We all know that Trayvon Martin’s story doesn’t have a happy ending. Rest In Power is an exhaustively documented chronicle of the entire case of their son’s death, from the original 911 call to the police investigation to the painful and long process in court. Their exhaustion and the heartbreak feels visceral and real, but putting their faith in the building movement behind their son is keeping them afloat. 

“Rest in Power, told through the compelling alternating narratives of Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, answers, for the first time, those questions from the most intimate of sources. It s the story of the beautiful and complex child they lost, the cruel unresponsiveness of the police and the hostility of the legal system, and the inspiring journey they took from grief and pain to power, and from tragedy and senselessness to meaning.” Read more.

18. Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong

This book treats illness and family dynamics with nuance and understanding, and reminds us that grief is complicated and suffering takes many shapes and forms. As funny as it is heartbreaking, it approaches relatable yet difficult subject matter with warmth and sweetness.

“Goodbye, Vitamin is the wry, beautifully observed story of a woman at a crossroads, as Ruth and her friends attempt to shore up her father’s career; she and her mother obsess over the ambiguous health benefits – in the absence of a cure – of dried jellyfish supplements and vitamin pills; and they all try to forge a new relationship with the brilliant, childlike, irascible man her father has become.” Read more.

17. Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions by Valeria Luiselli

This is a nice short political essay, so this is a great one for you if you’re short on time. Be warned, though – it’s an emotionally tough one.

“Structured around the forty questions Luiselli translates and asks undocumented Latin-American children facing deportation, Tell Me How It Ends (an expansion of her 2016 Freeman’s essay of the same name) humanizes these young migrants and highlights the contradiction of the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants with the reality of racism and fear both here and back home.” Read more.

16. A Separation by Katie Kitamura

It’s an easy read, but it doesn’t hold your hand, either. And it isn’t afraid to shock you without warning, a narrative risk that truly pays off in this case. This book is straight up style and substance, and what it lacks in grandiose details and over-the-top descriptors it makes up for with crisp straightforwardness.

“A story of intimacy and infidelity, A Separation is about the gulf that divides us from the lives of others and the narratives we create for ourselves. As the narrator reflects upon her love for a man who may never have been what he appeared, Kitamura propels us into the experience of a woman on the brink of catastrophe. A Separation is a riveting stylistic masterpiece of absence and presence that will leave the reader astonished, and transfixed.” Read more.

15. One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul

I nearly woke up my entire family when I first started reading this one. It was 5:00 a.m. and I was having a bad bout of insomnia. Everyone was asleep, but I was cracking up in the other room. Sorry, guys. If you read this, you’ll understand.

“Scaachi deploys her razor-sharp humour to share her fears, outrages and mortifying experiences as an outsider growing up in Canada. Her subjects range from shaving her knuckles in grade school, to a shopping trip gone horribly awry, to dealing with internet trolls, to feeling out of place at an Indian wedding (as an Indian woman), to parsing the trajectory of fears and anxieties that pressed upon her immigrant parents and bled down a generation. Alongside these personal stories are pointed observations about life as a woman of colour, where every aspect of her appearance is open for critique, derision or outright scorn. Where strict gender rules bind in both Western and Indian cultures, forcing her to confront questions about gender dynamics, racial tensions, ethnic stereotypes and her father’s creeping mortality–all as she tries to find her feet in the world.” Read more.

14. The Vegetarian by Han Kang

Not my only book by Han Kang on this list. This is a weird one, but you welcome the emotional discomfort pretty quickly. We don’t often get surreal contemporary fiction this good. Do yourself a favor; just sink into the abyss, okay?! 

“Before the nightmare, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary life. But when splintering, blood-soaked images start haunting her thoughts, Yeong-hye decides to purge her mind and renounce eating meat. In a country where societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye’s decision to embrace a more “plant-like” existence is a shocking act of subversion. And as her passive rebellion manifests in ever more extreme and frightening forms, scandal, abuse, and estrangement begin to send Yeong-hye spiraling deep into the spaces of her fantasy. In a complete metamorphosis of both mind and body, her now dangerous endeavor will take Yeong-hye—impossibly, ecstatically, tragically—far from her once-known self altogether.” Read more.

13. Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? by Kathleen Collins

This is a collection of previously unpublished short stories by an author and filmmaker we did not fully appreciate when she was still around. Released posthumously, It is very clear that the pieces herein are very much a product of their time, but it isn’t a bad thing: her takes on the black experience and class struggles still ring true years later, as one could probably guess.

“Humorous, poignant, perceptive, and full of grace, Kathleen Collins’s stories masterfully blend the quotidian and the profound in a personal, intimate way, exploring deep, far-reaching issues—race, gender, family, and sexuality—that shape the ordinary moments in our lives.” Read more.

12. Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

A fierce and painful collection of poems about the black experience. I was not a fan of poetry until I read this. I consider it mandatory reading at this point, so pick it up. 

“Claudia Rankine’s bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV-everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person’s ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named “post-race” society.” Read more.

11. Difficult Women by Roxanne Gay

Everything Roxanne Gay touches is fucking golden, so it’s no surprise this book is no exception. If short stories aren’t your thing, there are plenty of her other works you’ll love. There are few writers living as fiercely and vulnerable as Gay. 

“The women in these stories live lives of privilege and of poverty, are in marriages both loving and haunted by past crimes or emotional blackmail. A pair of sisters, grown now, have been inseparable ever since they were abducted together as children, and must negotiate the marriage of one of them. A woman married to a twin pretends not to realize when her husband and his brother impersonate each other. A stripper putting herself through college fends off the advances of an overzealous customer. A black engineer moves to Upper Michigan for a job and faces the malign curiosity of her colleagues and the difficulty of leaving her past behind. From a girls’ fight club to a wealthy subdivision in Florida where neighbors conform, compete, and spy on each other, Gay delivers a wry, beautiful, haunting vision of modern America.” Read more.

10. Savage Theories by Pola Oloixarac

I was a bit intimidated to read this book. A bitter review on Goodreads accused this book of being too smart for its own good, and too intelligent to be comprehended by even advanced readers. While many reviews praised the book, his review wasn’t the only one to call it too obtuse to be completed. Thankfully, this won’t be the last time the internet is wrong. I loved this one. It has an incredibly masterful translation by Roy Kesey.

“Rosa Ostreech, a pseudonym for the novel’s beautiful but self-conscious narrator, carries around a trilingual edition of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, struggles with her thesis on violence and culture, sleeps with a bourgeois former guerrilla, and pursues her elderly professor with a highly charged blend of eroticism and desperation. Elsewhere on campus, Pabst and Kamtchowsky tour the underground scene of Buenos Aires, dabbling in ketamine, group sex, video games, and hacking. And in Africa in 1917, a Dutch anthropologist named Johan van Vliet begins work on a theory that explains human consciousness and civilization by reference to our early primate ancestors–animals, who, in the process of becoming human, spent thousands of years as prey. Savage Theories wryly explores fear and violence, war and sex, eroticism and philosophy. Its complex and flawed characters grapple with a mess of impossible, visionary theories, searching for their place in our fragmented digital world.” Read more.

9. The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur

This is a great introduction to poetry if you’re unfamiliar. It is simple and approachable, positive and optimistic, with a supportive structure and a focus on self-love and perseverance. 

“A vibrant and transcendent journey about growth and healing. Ancestry and honoring one’s roots. Expatriation and rising up to find a home within yourself. Divided into five chapters and illustrated by Kaur, the sun and her flowers is a journey of wilting, falling, rooting, rising, and blooming. A celebration of love in all its forms.” Read more.

8. The Song and the Silence by Yvette Johnson

This book explores the rarely seen interpersonal side of historical nonfiction. In the midst of struggling with her own identity, author Yvette Johnson discovers that the grandfather she never knew was a civil rights icon in the Mississippi Delta. 

“In this moving memoir, Yvette Johnson travels to the Mississippi Delta to uncover true the story of her late grandfather Booker Wright whose extraordinary act of courage would change both their lives forever. “Have to keep that smile,” Booker Wright said in the 1966 NBC documentary Mississippi: A Self-Portrait. At the time, Wright spent his evenings waiting tables for Whites at a local restaurant and his mornings running his own business. The ripple effect from his remarks would cement Booker as a civil rights icon because he did the unthinkable: before a national audience, Wright described what life truly was like for the Black people of Greenwood, Mississippi.” Read more.

7. What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah

These stories are dark and weird and surreal and amazing. You’re sad when you see yourself approaching the end of a story. Magic realism and contemporary fantasy run wild here in ways you wouldn’t expect. The real star, though, is the common theme of loss, and the many, many ways the human mind processes grief. 

“A dazzlingly accomplished debut collection explores the ties that bind parents and children, husbands and wives, lovers and friends to one another and to the places they call home. Evocative, playful, subversive, and incredibly human, What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky heralds the arrival of a prodigious talent with a remarkable career ahead of her.” Read more.

6. There are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce by Morgan Parker

Rad modern poetry. Morgan Parker approaches everything in this collection with humor and vulnerability. 

“There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé uses political and pop-cultural references as a framework to explore 21st century black American womanhood and its complexities: performance, depression, isolation, exoticism, racism, femininity, and politics. The poems weave between personal narrative and pop-cultural criticism, examining and confronting modern media, consumption, feminism, and Blackness. This collection explores femininity and race in the contemporary American political climate, folding in references from jazz standards, visual art, personal family history, and Hip Hop. The voice of this book is a multifarious one: writing and rewriting bodies, stories, and histories of the past, as well as uttering and bearing witness to the truth of the present, and actively probing toward a new self, an actualized self. This is a book at the intersections of mythology and sorrow, of vulnerability and posturing, of desire and disgust, of tragedy and excellence.” Read more.

5. Homesick For Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh

From the weird and discomforting to the disgusting and utterly unlikable, this is an awesome collection of stories that paint no one in a positive light, and it’s all the more interesting for it. These characters are desperate for better, even if they may not deserve it.

“There’s something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh’s stories, something almost dangerous, while also being delightful, and even laugh-out-loud funny. Her characters are all unsteady on their feet in one way or another; they all yearn for connection and betterment, though each in very different ways, but they are often tripped up by their own baser impulses and existential insecurities. Homesick for Another World is a master class in the varieties of self-deception across the gamut of individuals representing the human condition. But part of the unique quality of her voice, the echt Moshfeghian experience, is the way the grotesque and the outrageous are infused with tenderness and compassion. Moshfegh is our Flannery O’Connor, and Homesick for Another World is her Everything That Rises Must Converge or A Good Man is Hard to Find. The flesh is weak; the timber is crooked; people are cruel to each other, and stupid, and hurtful. But beauty comes from strange sources, and the dark energy surging through these stories is powerfully invigorating. We’re in the hands of an author with a big mind, a big heart, blazing chops, and a political acuity that is needle-sharp. The needle hits the vein before we even feel the prick.” Read more.

4. Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin

This book is written entirely in dialogue and totally grips you from start to finish. Trust me when I say this book is truly best when consumed in one sitting. Mostly though, trust me when I say you won’t forget this book. Seriously.

“A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She’s not his mother. He’s not her child. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family. Fever Dream is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story and a cautionary tale. One of the freshest new voices to come out of the Spanish language and translated into English for the first time, Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange psychological menace and otherworldly reality in this absorbing, unsettling, taut novel.” Read more.

3. Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez

Only a few pages into this book, I was already sad for my future self: I knew I’d never get to read this book for the first time ever again. Such a badass collection of frightening, horrifying, jaw-dropping short stories that take place in her home country of Argentina. In these stories, she manages to cover something from just about every horror / thriller / drama area you could possibly hope for. It’s a collection that’s infinitely re-readable and sharable with folks you love. I’ve never read anything like it.

“In these wildly imaginative, devilishly daring tales of the macabre, internationally bestselling author Mariana Enriquez brings contemporary Argentina to vibrant life as a place where shocking inequality, violence, and corruption are the law of the land, while military dictatorship and legions of desaparecidos loom large in the collective memory. But alongside the black magic and disturbing disappearances, these stories are fueled by compassion for the frightened and the lost, ultimately bringing these characters—mothers and daughters, husbands and wives—into a surprisingly familiar reality. Written in hypnotic prose that gives grace to the grotesque, Things We Lost in the Fire is a powerful exploration of what happens when our darkest desires are left to roam unchecked, and signals the arrival of an astonishing and necessary voice in contemporary fiction.” Read more.

2. Human Acts by Han Kang

For much of my life, historical non-fiction was my favorite genre to read. That said, I kept historical fiction far away from me. But sometimes, it’s really fucking good to be wrong. This book was an absolute journey from start to finish. I quite literally couldn’t put it down. 2 days and a dozen unread texts later, I finished the book, sobbing and shaking my way through the last few pages. I recognize this book appeals specifically to my unique interests, like history, political unrest, and organized uprising in protest, so I recognize I’m biased, but trust me on this one. As the story unfolds, you quickly begin to realize that the line between fact and fiction is quite a bit blurrier than you had thought all along.

“The story of this tragic episode unfolds in a sequence of interconnected chapters as the victims and the bereaved encounter suppression, denial, and the echoing agony of the massacre. From Dong-ho’s best friend who meets his own fateful end; to an editor struggling against censorship; to a prisoner and a factory worker, each suffering from traumatic memories; and to Dong-ho’s own grief-stricken mother; and through their collective heartbreak and acts of hope is the tale of a brutalized people in search of a voice. An award-winning, controversial bestseller, Human Acts is a timeless, pointillist portrait of an historic event with reverberations still being felt today, by turns tracing the harsh reality of oppression and the resounding, extraordinary poetry of humanity.” Read more.

1. Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

This book profoundly moved me. The moment it was over, I wanted to scream about it from the rooftops. I wanted everyone I love or have ever loved to read it, this very instant. But instead, I finished crying my eyes out and curled up in a ball. I felt depleted and renewed at the same time. I won’t begin to describe this book, so please, just fucking read it. And PM me when you’re done; we have much to discuss.

“An intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle, Sing, Unburied, Sing examines the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power – and limitations – of family bonds. Rich with Ward’s distinctive, lyrical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first century America. It is a majestic new work from an extraordinary and singular author.” Read more.