Decolonize Your Bookshelf

 I like this idea. It sums up something I wrote over the years at Fort Dix FCI, that we have to read outside our comfort zones. Consider now what Juan Vidal writes in Your Bookshelf May Be Part Of The Problem:

Books, when people come to them early enough or at the right time, have the power to be transformative. And for a lot of readers, this is the right time — witness the many anti-racist book lists circulating on social media. We must recognize the inherent value that good literature has, and the ability of language to strike an emotional chord. But someone, at some point, has to get down to the business of reading — as Lauren Michele Jackson writes at Vulture. Simply handing someone a book cannot automatically make them care. This is something I remind myself whenever anti-racist lists start to make the rounds online.

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If you are white, take a moment to examine your bookshelf. What do you see? What books and authors have you allowed to influence your worldview, and how you process the issues of racism and prejudice toward the disenfranchised? Have you considered that, if you identify as white and read only the work of white authors, you are in some ways listening to an extension of your own voice on repeat? While the details and depth of experience may differ, white voices have dominated what has been considered canon for eons....

American literature is more than white male writers, and I say that being a white male wanting to be a writer. If we want to understand America, we need to read further and wider.