Reading Material

I read an online article recently about a black middle school student who complained that she was tired of reading books about white boys and their dogs so she advocated for a more diverse list of books for students. As someone who was an English major twice, I fully understand this student's complaint. When I was a student, it wasn't necessarily books about white boys and their dogs, but white boys and men in general that seemed to dominate the reading list, particularly when I was in college and graduate school. Henry James, James Joyce, Graham Greene, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Melville...and the list goes on. I read a lot of books about white guys going on a journey while I was in school because the powers that be decided these tales constituted "great" literature. By the time I was near the end of my master's program, I'd had enough and longed for the day when I would be able to go back to reading what I wanted rather than what someone else wanted me to read. I couldn't wait to be done with Billy Budd and The Canterbury Tales and Beowulf. This doesn't mean that I hated everything I had to read. I actually enjoyed some of the literature, but the bulk of it was just not my cup of tea.

In an effort to push back against the promotion of books by and about straight white men, some people have pledged to read only books by non-white female writers for a year (or something like that). While I'm all for people expanding their reading horizons by moving away from the literary canon and the literary darlings (who tend to be white guys also), I don't like the idea of segregating your reading based on an author's race and/or gender. I believe in people reading what they want to read. The race or gender of the author does not make me read a book. I read a book because the plot or the subject matter is interesting to me.