After coming across the link on Eva’s blog,  I ran down my own TBR list checking out what books might fit this interesting challenge. And the answer, sadly, was not that many. At least not those I added in recent months. And while I read more books by women than men last year, many of these women were of European descent. To be specific, out of the 114 books written by women that I read in 2012, only 23 were by women of colour. So I’m excited to join the Global Women of Color challenge, which Marilyn is hosting.

Here’s what the challenge says:

Subscribe or follow this challenge or blog.
Choose your level of commitment:

Structured: Read ten books by Global Women of Color, six of them from six different continents or regions.

Free Form: Read as many or as few books by Global Women of Color as you choose.

Blog: Simply follow and comment.

Leave a comment on the SIGNUP PAGE saying you are signing up. If you have decided on books to read, you may include them.

DEFINITIONS:
Women of color are descended from indigenous, non-European peoples everywhere.  No test of proportion of “native blood” or genealogy.

I’ll be joining at the ‘Free Form’ level, and hope to read more than ten books.

Read:

1. Three Strong Women – Marie NDiaye

2. Forget Sorrow: An Ancestral Tale – Belle Yang

3. The Song of Everlasting Sorrow – Wang Anyi

4. Malinche – Laura Esquivel

5. Red Scarf Girl – Jiang Ji-li

6. Sky Burial: An epic love story of Tibet – Xinran

7. Zeina – Nawal El Saadawi

8. Empress – Shan Sa

9. A spy in the house (The Agency #1) – YS Lee

10. Real World – Natsuo Kirino

11. Revenge – Yoko Ogawa

12. Funny in Farsi – Firoozeh Dumas

13. Late for Tea at the Deer Palace – Tamara Chalabi

14. Maya’s Notebook – Isabel Allende

15. The Red Chamber – Pauline A Chen

16. A Different Sky – Meira Chand

My pool:

The Lies That Build A Marriage: Stories of the Unsung, Unsaid and Uncelebrated in Singapore – Suchen Christine Lim (Singapore)

Bombay Time – Thrity N. Umrigar (India – US)

The Pleasure Seekers – Tishani Doshi (India)

Forgotten Country – Catherine Chung (Korea – US)

Inheritance – Lan Samantha Chang (China – US)

Evening is the whole day – Preeta Samarasan (Malaysia)

The song of everlasting sorrow : a novel of Shanghai – Wang Anyi (China)

Grotesque – Natsuo Kirino (Japan)

Zeina – Nawal El Saadawi (Egypt)

Mornings in Jenin – Susan Abulhawa (Palestine – US)

The sand fish : a novel from Dubai – Maha Gargash (Dubai)

Nervous conditions : a novel – Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe)

So Long a Letter – Mariama Ba (Senegal)

Mr Fox – Helen Oyeyemi (Nigeria – UK)

Three Strong Women – Marie NDiaye (Senegal – France)

Silver Sparrow – Tayari Jones (African-American)

Lima Nights – Marie Arana (Peru – US)

Malinche – Laura Esquivel (Mexico)