I finally got around to looking over the books I read during the first 6 months of the year, and it was interesting to see the breakdown. One of my bookish resolutions was to read more non-white authors, and I‘d say I‘m doing pretty well. The 5 POC authors are female, and the Black authors are a mixture of male and female, so I‘m still reading a whole lot of white female authors. If you decide to do this, too, use the hashtag #audityourshelves
#audityourshelves @Merethebookgal
This was a great idea! I could only do audiobooks and ebooks as my books are all over the place. Pretty stark to see. I think of myself as actively trying to read black writers and that got me up to... 12%.
According to a website I found (weirdly hard to get data on this?) 11.5% of the world is white. Oh dear.
If you have time I really recommend crunching the numbers - I would have estimated veeery badly.
A friend on IG was auditing their bookshelf to see how many books by Black authors they own, so I did it, too. The spines facing forward are those by Black authors. (Not all of them in photo) Here‘s my breakdown: (Type/Total/Total by Black Authors)
Hard copy/294/22. Ebook/114/12. Audiobook/55/9.
Total: 43 out of 463 (about 9.5%). I definitely have room to improve. What about you? If you want to participate, use #audityourshelves in the post!
