📗 "This is the Canon: Decolonize Your Bookshelf in 50 Books" by Joan Anim-Addo, Deirdre Osborne & Kadija Sesay
This is pretty straightforward. It's a book that discusses 50 books published between 1943 and 2019. It aims to give a spotlight to more diverse reads, away from the European empire and its colonization of land and literature.
Every chapter is about one novel. There's a summary of the story, a little background on the book and the author, and a 'if you liked this, you might also like' paragraph that gives even more recommendations to come back to. The novel summaries are quite long and spoilery, so I'd recommend just reading one page and then skipping to the rest if you don't want to know everything about a potential read.
I would love to see more projects/books like these, because one is simply not enough. I liked the book and …
📗 "This is the Canon: Decolonize Your Bookshelf in 50 Books" by Joan Anim-Addo, Deirdre Osborne & Kadija Sesay
This is pretty straightforward. It's a book that discusses 50 books published between 1943 and 2019. It aims to give a spotlight to more diverse reads, away from the European empire and its colonization of land and literature.
Every chapter is about one novel. There's a summary of the story, a little background on the book and the author, and a 'if you liked this, you might also like' paragraph that gives even more recommendations to come back to. The novel summaries are quite long and spoilery, so I'd recommend just reading one page and then skipping to the rest if you don't want to know everything about a potential read.
I would love to see more projects/books like these, because one is simply not enough. I liked the book and found interesting titles to read. But I also had some disappointments, like the US being quite overrepresented in this list, and South-America being very underrepresented. The authors express their limitations in their introductions, and there's not really any way around it if you try to smash the world in 350 pages. It's up to us to keep exploring and to share even more books.
If you're curious about all the books mentioned, I found a full list online here:
https://www.listchallenges.com/this-is-the-canon-decolonize-your-bookshelves
