This article was written by Sorcha DeHeer
Whether you like the classics or not, consider giving these ones a try. I have compiled a shortlist of foundational texts that weren’t written by white men. Those exist, despite the education systems insistence that they don’t. I will obviously miss a lot of authors but this list is a good start for your summer reading.
- Save Me The Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald
- The Last Man by Mary Shelley
- The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- Middlemarch by George Eliot (also known as Mary Ann Evans)
- The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
- The Secret History by Donna Tart
- White Teeth by Zadie Smith
- Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- America is in the Heat by Carlos Bulosan
- The Hanging on Union Square by H. T. Tsiang
- East Goes West by Younghill Kang
- The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- Life and Times of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglas
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
- Narrative of Sojourner Truth by Sojourner Truth
- Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup
- The Curse of Caste by Julia C. Collins
- Wynema: A Child of the Forest by S. Alice Callahan
- A Chinese Ishmael and Other Stories by Sui Sin Far
- Hawai’i’s Story by Hawai’i’s Queen by Queen Lili’uokalani
- The Souls of Black Folk by WEB Du Bois
- I Am a Cat by Natsume Sōseki
- The Souls of the Indian by Charles Alexander Eastman
- The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore
- A Dark Night’s Passing by Naoya Shiga
- Chaka by Thomas Mofolo
- The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes
- Quicksand by Nella Larsen
- Home to Harlem by Claude McKay
- My People the Sioux by Luther Standing Bear
- Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang
- Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
- Where There’s Love There’s Hate by Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Bioy Casares
- The President by Miguel Ángel Asturias
- The Living is Easy by Dorothy West
- Nisei Daughter by Monica Sone
- The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola
- In the Country by Mia Alvar