Amplifying the voices of black and underrepresented minority authors.
What an eventful time we are living through. As the wrongful death of George Floyd led to nation-wide protests and greater awareness of the daily injustices black people face, I began asking myself what I could do to help. Let my friends and acquaintances know they are seen – yes. Educate myself – yes. Use my voice to push back against those making light of the issue at hand – yes.
I have to admit I haven’t been one of the voices marching and protesting, and I feel kinda bad about that. It’s hard to explain or maybe to admit to myself why not.
We all have to help in our own ways. One thing I realized I can do, is do what I can to amplify black voices, to support black authors. They have a harder time getting published and a harder time getting readers. So I made an offer in the IngramSpark author community on Facebook: if black authors would share their books, I’d buy them and post honest reviews. About a dozen authors took me up on this. IngramSpark themselves took my lead and made their own post inviting black authors to reply with their books.
So I’m going to start posting book reviews here, on Goodreads, and on Amazon about books by black authors. My first dozen books or so are a rather varied assortment of books, from children’s books to self-help to fiction. As I get through my backlog of books from the initial IngramSpark replies, I’d love to keep going with books from minority authors – any underrepresented minority. I would *especially* like to focus on the intersection of minority voices and the STEM field – to keep trying to encourage underrepresented youth to enter STEM and tech professions.
If you’re an underrepresented minority author, I invite you to submit a review request for your book via my contact form, linked on the left side of all pages of my site.
If you happen to know a great book by a minority author, you’re welcome to propose it to me too. Send me a link via my contact form – along with a link to your own review of the book. 😉 (I don’t really need to read your review, but I’m trying to encourage YOU to write one as well!)
And I encourage you to read my reviews and buy the books that sound good to you!
P.S. the feature image is courtesy of #WOCinTechChat https://www.wocintechchat.com/blog/wocintechphotos
who shared stock photos of women of color in tech. You should make good choices when you need stock photos, too!
