In 2014, Joanna Walsh created the Twitter movement #readingwomen to challenge the shelves of bookstores and publishers around the world dominated with male writers. Since then, the trend has been successful, with the hashtag already including thousands of posts on Twitter and Instagram.
I am always avidly looking for the next new book or author. To me, books have never just been as simple as a story — I see them as a tool that allows insight into the language that decorates the author’s identity. Unfortunately, with each new wave, I tend to notice that books written by authors of colour– especially women– are often underrated, dismissed, and, to this day– silenced. As I perceive books as both a cultural tool and as an identity, I feel it’s equivalent to silencing a whole person, and at times, a whole culture. To honor Walsh’s movement and women of colour with empowering voices all around, I’d proudly like to share my favourite books written by women of all kinds of intersectionalities who represent women the right way.
“Ru” by Kim Thúy
Vietnam and Saigon-born amidst a ruthless communist war, Kim Thúy deflects part of her story into a fictional tale about Anh Tinh, a girl who was born into a life among wealth in Vietnam. She has her identity stripped away when she must suddenly leave the glamour behind for a mud-filled refugee camp in Malaysia, and finally onto the unfamiliar land of white that is Québec. I was never much of a fan of war stories, but I fell in love with Thúy’s beautifully intricate structure that she mixes with soft paced poetry and prose. Anh Tinh started off as a timid girl, too afraid to go on errands by herself, but after developing her character through a journey of loss and failed attempts to reclaim a life of her own again, Thúy’s loud words evidently represent the silent tenacity of Vietnamese women during that time of calamity. With the subtlety of patience, love, and endurance, Thúy paints a gentle image of how women can also become brave soldiers of strength.
“For Today, I am a Boy,” by Fu Kim
Fu Kim’s coming of age story is about the young Chinese Canadian teen, Peter Huang, who is treated like the King of the family, the one to take his Father’s traditional dominant, masculine, breadwinner role only because Peter is the sole boy in a group of sisters. But being treasured as such only conflicts Peter, because she identifies as a woman and can only truly feels like one when she is alone, dressed in her sister’s clothes and makeup. Fu Kim’s book is representative of how many innocent youths become trapped victims within their own bodies, and how sociocultural norms force one to internalize how they are to live and who they will become before they are even born.
“Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I fell in love with Adichie’s Ted Talk “Why we should all be Feminists,” and fell for her even more in Americanah. The story follows a young woman named Ifemelu, who leaves Nigeria to study at a university in America. This book does not just fall under the category of your typical romance story with clueless girls and too-handsome, smooth liner guys– but it is a beautiful tale of immigration, racism, natural hair discrimination, and interracial relationships all taking place in Nigeria, America, and England. The characters are flawed, human, but despite that find a love that is true. Although I am living in Toronto, one of the most diverse cities in Canada, I don’t know much about certain cultures and countries such as Nigeria and what immigrants face when they leave their homes. This is why I encourage reading books such as Americanah — they continue to educate about an experience others have not lived, but is still very real within our society.
“The Book of Unknown Americans” by Cristina Henriquez
Too often do people travel far to gain a better life either for themselves or their family, but their dreams are silenced from racial discrimination. This is the case for the family in Henriquez’s book, a union that departs from their wealthy lifestyle in Mexico to find hope for their daughter, Maribel, disabled from a tragic accident. They live modestly in an apartment complex in Newark, Delaware along with the Toro family from Panama whose narratives are shared in the story as well. The title itself is powerful in it that it speaks about a reality that is universal. It touches on how far Latin Americans have come for their family, but also how far Western society still has to go in terms of acceptance of race and ability. As quoted in the book, “We’re the unknown Americans, the ones no one even wants to know, because maybe if they did take the time to get to know us, they might realize that we’re not that bad, maybe event that we’re a lot like them.”
“Freshwater” by Emezi Akwaeke
Akwaeke’s dark and lyrical prose touches on sensitive topics of mental illness, rape, abuse, and gender through her non-binary character, Ada. After a traumatic sexual experience, she develops multiple personalities– or spirits– becoming a “fractured self” that leads to an internal crisis journey of self-destruction and constant attempts to regain balance. What I found interesting was that Akwaeke allowed the spiritual selves to take over in narration, utilizing the pronoun ‘we’, and at times with the voices colliding with one another. The book challenges what constitutes a person being mentally ‘ill’, and if science can ever truly fit others into a single category.
Many people, such as American author and literary critic Jakubowski, have also attempted to change their reading habits by including women and people of color into their list due to Walsh’s movement. Jakubowski told Guardian, “If we don’t decide to do the work it sometimes takes to find valuable, important books by women and underrepresented authors, we will continue to miss them and the loss will be ours.”
If you want to continue or check out the trend, search up #readingwomen on any social media outlet or read about Walsh’s movement here. You can help support your fellow female authors across the globe by making their amazing voices louder. Just reading about their stories and sharing them, we are supporting these women by promoting a greater understanding of untold female experiences everywhere.