Woven in Books // Diverse Books which make you feel like home ||Must read books you should check out

Hello everyone! We are back with another Woven In Books post and I am so glad to have Sahi from My World Of Books on the blog today sharing her favourite diverse reads. Sahi is a dear friend and writes some of the best reviews so make sure to follow her!

If you want to read the first Woven In Books post then check it out here. You can also find out more about this feature HERE and sign up through this FORM to recommend and spread the love about your favourite diverse books!

Now onto Sahi!!

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Hello everyone !!! My name is Sahi and I’m so happy Krisha is giving me a chance to talk about my favorite diverse books with you all. 

As I tried to participate in YARC 2019 and read more books by Asian authors, I discovered how much beauty there was in reading books from different cultures, how much we can learn from all kinds of experiences and also just that there’s so much world out there that we get to enjoy. While I have a huge list of such books I would love to talk about, I’m gonna mention some of my favorites here:

Steel Crow Saga by Paul Krueger 

On paper, this is like many adult fantasies – the war is over, the rebels won and are trying to rebuild. But this so much more than that. The first thing that really impressed me was how each of the kingdom in this world is inspired by a different Asian country and the author highlights in very subtle ways that we might all belong to the continent, but we are also diverse and multitudinous. And there is so much excellent commentary on war and colonialism and discrimination that we all can find something in it we can relate to or learn from. 

You Bring the Distant Near by Mitali Perkins

This book felt like home and I still can’t describe all my feelings about it coherently. It’s a family saga spanning decades – three generations of women of an Indian immigrant family trying to make a life in the US and the way the author depicts the generational divide, the clash between culture and modernity, and the interpersonal relationships between the family members is poignant and beautiful and extremely relatable. If you are an immigrant, I promise you’ll find something of yourself in this book. 

How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones

This is a memoir of the author’s life told through the most significant moments in his life with an underlying thread about his relationship with his single mother. You can clearly see Jones is a poet because even his prose is stunningly beautiful and evocative – literally brimming with feelings like desperation, confusion, longing, fear and grief – and his very particular fear about the ramifications of being both Black and gay in Southern US was very palpable in his words and it really broke my heart. I found this book to be an important read because it just highlighted how much privilege I’ve grown up with. 

Good Talk by Mira Jacob 

This is another memoir /graphic novel and probably one of those books that I know will stay with me for a long time. As a queer woman of color from an immigrant family, the author’s growing up experiences touch on many important issues which are only amplified in her conversations with her young biracial son. In such a short book, the author manages to capture so many of the fears and questions about their future in America that many POC have been pondering since the election season of 2016.

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 Sahi has been an avid reader since she can remember and even when she couldn’t afford to buy a lot of books, she just reread the ones she had and enjoyed the experience. And now, she would choose sitting on her couch and curling up with a book over going out any day. Reading helps her get out of her head and worry less about everything in her life, and becoming a blogger has also opened her up to this wonderful community and lots of great friends. She is very thankful that she gets to do this everyday and she hopes to remain a reader all through her life.

You can also find her on Twitter.

Have you read any of these books ?

Which diverse non fiction and memoirs are your favourite ? Would you recommend any of them ?

Tell me about it!!