If you’re white, it can be all too easy to normalize your whiteness. The powers that be put whiteness at the dead center of our politics and culture, and you, a white person, could go through your life thinking that’s an accurate reflection of the world around you. It’s not. But it’s on us white people to try to undo that in our own lives, and culture can be a key part of that, a way to stretch beyond simple opposition to overt racism or dutiful nods to diversity.
Let’s be clear here that structural racism is far more important than whether you as an individual white person personally listen to or watch or read culture produced by people of color. But the two issues aren’t completely detached, either. For one thing, there are industries involved here. The publishing industry is superwhite. In film, diversity is increasing on screen, but it’s still not great, and diversity behind the camera and in decision-making roles remains extremely weak. These are multibillion-dollar industries, and they need to be pushed to do better.
On an individual level, how do you know where structural racism is erasing vast swaths of life in the U.S. from your view if you don’t look? Nonfiction is of course invaluable here, but many of us take in more art and culture, and the latter can offer shades of feeling and experience that nonfiction won’t. (You can also try talking to your nonwhite friends, but you’re going to want to be really careful not to force them to be your teacher and absorb your ignorance out of friendship.)
So, white people: What books by people of color have you read in the past year? What movies have you seen? What music have you listened to? Here’s where I confess that the music I listen to is suuuuuuper white—interesting, since so many white people who ignore other forms of culture produced by people of color do listen to music by black artists. That’s not me. Obviously I’m aware of musicians of color and happy to listen in a casual way to their music, but the music I’ve hooked onto in an emotional way has overwhelmingly been by white artists.
Since I’ve had a toddler in my life, my adult movie-watching has gone from a few times a month to basically never, so it’s not worth doing an accounting there.
Books, on the other hand, are easy. There’s a matter of finding authors who may not be advertised to me or circulated among many of my friends, but the thing is, I like romance novels, and there are a lot of great romance novelists of color. Ever since I found out how to find those books, I’ve raced through dozens of them, thrilled to have found books that have the elements I enjoy in the romance genre, but, as I wrote in 2018, “make the genre feel fresh and unexpected again, and in ways that illuminate our politics without intensifying the sucking vortex of Trump-related despair.”
And, of course, there’s nonfiction—and especially sociology—so essential to digging into structures of power in our society.
Let me be clear again: These are books I like. I’m not suggesting that white people read books by people of color as a dreadful chore. I’m suggesting that other white people, too, can go out and find books (or movies, or music) that you like that will provide you with a lens onto how the world you inhabit is shaped by your whiteness. Now, if you can’t find any art or culture created by people who aren’t just like you that you enjoy, that might be a conversation to have with yourself.
So here’s a rough list of the books I read in the past year by authors of color, not counting little-kids’ books and books I didn’t finish. Because many of these are books I greatly enjoyed. Because there’s stuff here you should read, too, and because it’s worth white people holding ourselves accountable to not putting whiteness at the center of everything and then pretending that whiteness is naturally and obviously primary. Because if we make whiteness our litmus test for culture, it’s hard to figure how we’re not doing it in politics and the economy, too.
Jasmine Guillory’s The Proposal came out in late 2018, but I read it in 2019, and then followed it with her 2019 releases The Wedding Party and Royal Holiday. The Proposal is my favorite of her four books so far.
Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick and Other Essays and Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy (I was very late to the latter). Thick was a finalist for the National Book Award, personal essays written by someone for whom the personal is a subject for academic consideration. The title refers not only to a body seen as thick but also to ethnography, to “thick description,” and that double meaning is present throughout the book: “No one quite knows what to make of the work that represents the intellectual journey I took from little black girl to black woman who thinks for a living,” Cottom writes in the first essay. Lower Ed will make you think differently about for-profit colleges specifically but also more broadly about labor markets, inequality, and higher education as a whole.
Anthony Abraham Jack, The Privileged Poor. Jack studied the experience of poor college students, but draws a distinction between the “privileged poor,” who come to elite colleges from elite high schools, already having experience navigating such institutions, and the “doubly disadvantaged,” who are not only poor but “are not adequately integrated into the norms that govern student life at an elite institution.” Jack's book also helped draw attention to food insecurity among poor college students.
Helen Hoang, The Bride Test and The Kiss Quotient. These books are about immigrant life and class and people on the autism spectrum, and they are also terrifically fun, funny romance novels.
Daniel José Older, Freedom Fire (Dactyl Hill Squad #2)
Alyssa Cole, A Prince on Paper and Once Ghosted, Twice Shy and Can’t Escape Love and An Unconditional Freedom. Of these, Can’t Escape Love is the one I’ve reread already.
Courtney Milan, Mrs. Martin's Incomparable Adventure
Roselle Lim, Natalie Tan's Book of Luck and Fortune is a delightful, food-filled, magic realism-inflected romance about reviving a Chinatown neighborhood in the face of encroaching gentrification.
Ruby Lang, Playing House and Open House—this time, the gentrification is in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood of Manhattan rather than in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Vanessa Riley, The Bittersweet Bride and The Bashful Bride and The Butterfly Bride and The Bewildered Bride
Nicole Falls, Shots Not Taken
Kevin Kwan, Crazy Rich Asians and China Rich Girlfriend
Shaila Patel, Soulmated