I don’t know about you, but my college reading was filled with, mostly, dead white people, with an occasional PoC sneaking in. Also, most of my lit classes were boring. Later American Lit? Dead white men. Early British lit? Dead white men. Shakespeare? Okay, I like Shakespeare, but he’s a dead white dude. And so’s Marlowe, for that matter– the other “choice” we English majors had in our “focused author class requirement.”
But my classes weren’t all bad! Some of the best classes I had were in the upper levels, where profs had a bit more leniency in picking a topic and a corresponding reading list. I especially liked ones that focused on an unusual topic, like my Utopias/Dystopias class. We had authors of all colors, genders and lifestyles in that class, and it was a lot of fun! It was also really rare, as even the other “fun” classes were full of the same lit canon as the “non-fun” classes. It made me realize that I was missing out on a lot of great literature because the majority of my profs were so used to sticking to the dead white guys standard.
After graduating from college this past December, I got to thinking. What great non-dead white guy literature have I missed out on? What new genres or authors or stories could I be learning about? And who can help me get introduced to these books? Continue reading »
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