Diverse Books Tag

Again, stealing a book tag from Sharon. Here are the guidelines:

The Diverse Books Tag is a bit like a scavenger hunt. I will task you to find a book that fits a specific criteria and you will have to show us a book you have read or want to read. 

If you can’t think of a book that fits the specific category, then I encourage you to go look for one. A quick Google search will provide you with many books that will fit the bill. (Also, Goodreads lists are your friends.) Find one you are genuinely interested in reading and move on to the next category. 

Everyone can do this tag, even people who don’t own or haven’t read any books that fit the descriptions below. So there’s no excuse! The purpose of the tag is to promote the kinds of books that may not get a lot of attention in the book blogging community.

Find a book starring a lesbian character:

This one has been on my TBR list a long time: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters. Dickension Historical Fiction with con artists and lesbian romance. It sounds awesome.

Find a book with a Muslim protagonist:

I'm going to plug a comic here: Ms. Marvel by G. Willow Wilson and various artists. Kamala is such a great character, so strong and gutsy and conflicted and honorable, and respectful of her culture while chafing against it. All while being, y'know, a superhero.

Find a book set in Latin America:

One of my all-times favorites: Eva Luna by Isabel Allende, a tale beautiful enough to be a fable, but strongly characterized enough to be Literary Fiction. It's set in an unnamed South American country that I'm 97% sure is supposed to be Venezuala.

Find a book about a person with a disability:

Among Others by Jo Walton. This is a book about a lot of things: grief, family, English boarding school, fairies, and a passionate love for Science Fiction. But it's also about disability. The protagonist is a 15-year-old girl whose leg was crushed in an accident. She can still walk using a cane, but has limited mobility and stamina and lives with constant pain. Her attempts to come to terms with her new reality after her accident is a thread woven throughout all the other plotlines of the book.

Find a science fiction or fantasy book with a POC protagonist:

Another one that's been on my list for a while: A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar. A Fantasy novel that's been compared to LeGuin's writing, which is a huge plus for me. I'm planning to read this for the A More Diverse Universe challenge this fall.

Find a book set in (or about) any country in Africa:

Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor. A first contact with aliens story set in Nigeria. I read Okorafor's The Book of Phoenix earlier this year, and am now on a mission to work my way through the rest of her backlist.

Find a book written by an Aboriginal or American Indian author:

I know Joseph Bruchac mainly as an Abenaki author of children's fiction about various American Indian groups, but I've recently stumbled across his YA novel Killer of Enemies, about an Abenaki and Apache teenage girl in a post-apoc Southwest fighting genetically altered monsters. Hell, yes. Added it to my TBR list, obvs.

Find a book set in South Asia:

Another LitFic favorite: Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. The story of modern India told through the family history and life story of a boy born at the moment of India's independence.

Find a book with a biracial protagonist:

One of my Middle Grade favorites: The Kane Chronicles by Rick Riordan. (First book: The Red Pyramid.) Riordan is best known for his Percy Jackson/Heroes of Olympus books, but I have a lot of love for this trilogy about Egyptian gods running amok in modern times. The protagonists are a brother/sister pair who alternate first-person POV's. They have been raised apart and are very different, and also have very different experiences of being biracial (one "reads" as African-American, while the other is much lighter-skinned and reads as white).

Find a book starring a transgender character or about transgender issues:

Annabel by Kathleen Winter. This is a former Canada Reads finalist, and keeps getting considered but then not chosen by my book club. I think I'm going to have to just go ahead and read it.