I have a friend who only reads writing by people of colour. ONLY. She once remarked that there are so many great POC writers out there that we have yet to discover, so why are we wasting time reading white people?
This reminded me of John and Maggie Anderson, a Black couple who spent a year buying exclusively Black. They chronicled how this changed their lives in their book, “Our Black Year.” This made me think about how just changing what we consume and who we consume it from can have such a deep impact on our lives. So the first part of this challenge is a pledge to not spend money or time and energy on any white writers in 2021.
I truly believe this will change our lives.
Consuming with intention is so important in the age of social media where people are inundated with content. I’ve been wanting to cut out white authors ever since my friend made that comment but one of the problems I had been having was that even though there’s loads of POC literature and non-fiction, we have not seen a lot of Black and POC romance and fantasy, which are both genres I read a lot of.
This had thankfully changed in the last five years. There’s still so much work to be done, but we have had an explosion of POC fantasy and romance writing such that I know there is enough work out there for me…
