Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge discussion

Our members asked for diversity-related prompts and Popsugar sure delivered this year.

A book where the main character is a different ethnicity than you will also allow us to choose fiction or nonfiction. I think I am leaning toward The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League.

I have several for this category.

Snow flower and the secret fan by Lisa see
The Sari Shop Widow by Shobhan Bantwal
Daughters of the River Huong by Uyen Nicole Duong
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
The kite runner by Khaled Hosseini

I will probably go with the first. This is a genre I love!!

I am going with Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell.

I'm going to go with Born a Crime for this. Anyone who enjoys Trevor Noah should check this out. Just by the synopsis alone, I can tell this isn't your usual celebrity memoir.

I had no idea about his early life before finding this.

Lindi wrote: "I'm going to go with Born a Crime for this. Anyone who enjoys Trevor Noah should check this out. Just by the synopsis alone, I can tell this isn't your usual celebrity memoir.

I had no idea about ..."

I highly recommend this book. Highly.

I think I am going to read Moloka'i for this. I have never really read anything about the Hawaii culture

I found this one that looks interesting and I think it fits the category:
The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan by Jenny Nordberg

I've had Pointe on my TBR list for quite awhile, so that's what I'll be reading.

I'd like to read The Mothers by Brit Bennett.

If you have not read The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan I do recommend that.

Rachal wrote: "I'll be reading The Corpse Exhibition and other stories from Iraq by Hassan Blasim."

I really should read something by him. Before moving I lived within a walking distance from him (a longish walk but still). Now it's more of a biking distance. (This wouldn't be much of a challenge to me anyway, probably more than half the books I read have main character who is of a different ethnicity than me.)

I have several books I want to read that would fit this prompt

Underground Airlines
The Sellout
Darktown
Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
The Librarian of Basra: A True Story from Iraq
Sachiko: A Nagasaki Bomb Survivor's Story
The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts
The Adventurer's Guide to Successful Escapes

Memoirs of a Geisha. :D

If anyone is looking for YA/urban fantasy- Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older might be a good option. The main character is American born, of Cuban ancestry, and is mixed Latina/African (and ethnicity plays a fairly big role)

A Thousand Splendid Suns
A Tale for the Time Being

Now I don't really know how to take this prompt. Technically my ethnic background is Italian and American. I am going to read Can You Keep a Secret? as Sophie Kinsella is British.

Marisa wrote: "Now I don't really know how to take this prompt. Technically my ethnic background is Italian and American. I am going to read Can You Keep a Secret? as Sophie Kinsella is British."

Those are nationalities, not ethnicities.

Juanita wrote: "Our members asked for diversity-related prompts and Popsugar sure delivered this year.

A book where the main character is a different ethnicity than you will also allow us to choose fiction or non..."

I have read that book. It is very good.

I was thinking The Year of the Runaways but I'm wondering if there is one main character or several?

I also plan on rereading both Wild Swans and A Suitable Boy this year, which I am allowing myself as rereads as I read them over 10 years ago and don't much remember them.

I just finished the Golden Son. Beautiful story set in India and the US that takes us on one man's journey to discover his own path devoid of familial obligations. It's a window into the life of being torn between two cultures, two homes, never feeling fully accepted or understood by either. As the child of an immigrant, this story resonated with me on many levels. Highly recommend!

I've just finished lies we tell ourselves by Robin Talley

Emma wrote: "I was thinking The Year of the Runaways but I'm wondering if there is one main character or several?

I also plan on rereading both Wild Swans and A Suitable Boy this year, which I..."

I've seen several people mention Wild Swans but no one has linked it. Can you tell me who the author is so I can look it up as there are several books called Wild Swans? Thanks

Cindy wrote: "Those are nationalities, not ethnicities."

They are ethnicities, too, or at least Italian is. If they are not, then I don't know what you mean by the term.

Tytti wrote: "Cindy wrote: "Those are nationalities, not ethnicities."

They are ethnicities, too, or at least Italian is. If they are not, then I don't know what you mean by the term."

Nationality is the connection between the person and where they live. Italian is a nationality. I'm American, that's my nationality but my ethnicity is caucasian. Someone who lives in Puerto Rico has a nationality of Puerto Rican, but their ethnicity is hispanic.

"It is easy to confuse nationality and ethnicity, but there is a major difference between them. Nationality (noun) is the relationship between a person and the political state to which he belongs or is affiliated. Ethnicity (noun) is the identification of a person with a particular racial, cultural, or religious group."

Italians are a cultural group, it is an ethnicity. Caucasians are another cultural group, they are made of several ethnic groups who live in the Caucasus region.

Also Europeans don't usually really understand the hispanic "ethnicity", what's the point of it, especially when sometimes it seems to include ALL Spanish speaking people, even Spaniards. Besides, I have a very white skin, just like most people in my ethnic group, but it didn't save us from being discriminated against or even from the ethnic cleansing during the 1930's and 1940's.

Marisa wrote: "Now I don't really know how to take this prompt. Technically my ethnic background is Italian and American. I am going to read Can You Keep a Secret? as Sophie Kinsella is British."

Basically what we are looking to do is with this task is engage in an ethnic experience that is different from our own. If you are of Italian & American heritage, I will assume (forgive me if I'm wrong) that you are Caucasian (white). I, too, am Caucasian. That is our ethnicity. So for this task, we might try to read something where the main character is, for example, African/Black, or South Asian (think India, Pakistan, etc). I hope this helps clarify just a little! Happy reading!

Arundhati Roy, God of Small Things.
One chapter in so far and I can tell it will be slow going! Beautiful language though, reminds me rather of Garcia Marquez so far.

Ashley wrote: "I, too, am Caucasian. That is our ethnicity."

So basically "ethnicity" means race in the US? Coming from a country that has several ethnic groups, all of whom are more or less white (though the majority actually are not "Caucasians" according to the people who came up with these categories), I find that quite weird.

Tytti wrote: "Ashley wrote: "I, too, am Caucasian. That is our ethnicity."

So basically "ethnicity" means race in the US? Coming from a country that has several ethnic groups, all of whom are more or less white..."

To be clear, I am by no means an expert in this area, I am merely putting my understanding and rationale up here for reference. If anyone has a more accurate or factual understanding of the concept of "ethnicity" vs "nationality" I am happy to learn!

Comparison chart

From diffen.com:

"Ethnicity versus Race
Ethnicity: An ethnic group or ethnicity is a population group whose members identify with each other on the basis of common nationality or shared cultural traditions.

Race: The term race refers to the concept of dividing people into populations or groups on the basis of various sets of physical characteristics (which usually result from genetic ancestry)."

Does this help any more? I am still kinda working it out for myself too :)

Ashley wrote: "Ethnicity: An ethnic group or ethnicity is a population group whose members identify with each other on the basis of common nationality or shared cultural traditions."

Exactly. Italians are an ethnic group. And Spaniards are not "hispanic" even though they speak Spanish.

If one wants to follow the old groupings, these people singing in this video are Caucasians (or white), they could even be called Aryans (they are Romani people who speak an Indo-Aryan language), while most of the people watching, all those non-tanned blond people (except for the women dressed like the singers, that's their everyday outfit) are not white, but Mongoloid because they don't speak an Indo-European language. So it's very difficult to determine their "race" but it's easy to see that they belong to different ethnic groups, even though they have the same nationality and have lived in the same country for maybe 500+ years

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9V54...

Ashley wrote: "Comparison chart

From diffen.com:

"Ethnicity versus Race
Ethnicity: An ethnic group or ethnicity is a population group whose members identify with each other on the basis of common nationality or..."

So technically, my *race* is Caucasian, and therefore I would identify my ethnic background as Norwegian, Irish, and British?
I'm confused lol

Not gonna lie, Megan; I'm still a little confused myself. Basically I am just going to pick a book where the main character is neither white nor American. Shouldn't be too hard; I've got a bevy of books with PoC protagonists just waiting for me. I figure that will save me either way!

There seems to be a popular belief in the US that all Europeans belong to the one and the same ethnic group. That is not the case. According to one study, there are 87 different peoples in Europe.

But on the other hand, if you are not a first or maybe second-generation American and you speak only English (or even Spanish) as your mother tongue, your "ethnicity", for the lack of a better term and to the rest of the world, is American. Your skin colour doesn't make much difference, either, unless of course you are Native American, because you are no longer seen as a member of some other ethnic group. African-Americans are not African unless they were actually born there, and there are several different ethnic groups in Africa, too, even in the same country (because the borders are not "natural"), they are not the same, either.

I think this is going to be a highly individualized prompt. I'm so white I'm translucent, and I was raised in the rural Midwestern US, but my father's family -- despite having come to the US in the 18th century -- still has active ties to the family who remained in Germany, and my mother's family arrived from Sweden only a few generations ago. I belong to organizations that celebrate both of these heritages, and one of them was even started as an attempt to fight discrimination against Swedish immigrants, so I firmly believe that Swedish, much like Irish and Italian, is an ethnicity above and beyond just "white."

So if I wanted, I could count a book with a protagonist from any "white" ethnicity that I don't identify with or have any personal cultural experience with. I'm reading Uprooted right now, and its protagonist is Polish. She belongs to an Old-World fairytale version of Poland, but the author is clear that she based the story on Polish folktales. Nieshka is probably just as pale as I am, but we are of distinctly different ethnicities, and her underlying culture is foreign to me.

Should I stretch my reading horizons more and read something with a "colored" protagonist on a continent I've never visited? Maybe. It certainly wouldn't be a bad thing, and given the various challenges I have set for myself this year, it's quite likely I will. But for this prompt, it's not a requirement.

The Graveyard Apartment by Maiko Koike was good, for anyone who enjoys a creepy story. Maiko is Japanese.

I was going to read, 4000 Days: My Life and Survival in a Bankok Prison, however I can't get a copy. Therefor I will pick, The Undomestic Goddess.

OK, I forgot I already pick, The Undomestic Goddess, therefore I have chosen, The Sellout instead.

I read 33 Revolutions for this one. The main character is a black Cuban man.

I read Rivers of London for this prompt. The protagonist is mixed race, father British, mother Sierra Leonian, he views himself above all as a Londoner. Plus the whole series is rather great concerning diversity.

My local library runs a program (One Book, One Michiana) where they pick a book for the whole city/region to read together over the Spring and Summer. This year they have chosen Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley. I have decided to read it and will slot it in this prompt.

Mike wrote: "My local library runs a program (One Book, One Michiana) where they pick a book for the whole city/region to read together over the Spring and Summer. This year they have chosen [book:Devil in a Bl..."

I really like Easy Rawlins - I hope you enjoy it too!! I like how he used a color in each title too (except for Gone Fishin - that one didn't fit the pattern in many ways). I need to pick that series up again and read the rest, I stalled at Yellow.

I'm reading Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. It's the fist book in the Earthseed series.

I read Moloka'i, its about a Hawaiian girl who is sent to a leprosy colony on the island of Moloka'i

Just finished reading The Star-Touched Queen, if anyone is looking for a good Fantasy read featuring Indian Mythos and beautiful prose.

Unfortunately, for the most part, Americans are sorely lacking in world view (I'm American, I'm not knocking people, just stating an unfortunate reality).

For example, I could write, "I'm fulfilling this by reading a story about an African American! I'm going to read about Charlize Theron or Elon Musk!"

Most people would scoff, "But they are white americans!" Wrong, they were both born in South Africa!

Now of course for me personally that would still be a poor choice since the whites in SA are generally of Germanic lines and I have German on one side of my family, but the point still remains. Africa also has "Middle Eastern" peoples (Morocco, Libya, Egypt, etc.). Africa is incredibly diverse, it isn't just black people (Even the blacks in Africa have crazy amounts of varying ethnicities, same as Europeans).

So for this prompt, I suggest just googling ethnicity and figuring out something that is different than where you fit now, and avoid your descendants background (I won't read Irish or German stuff despite being fully born and raised in the US and never even having gone to Europe). Here is a decent "guide" from Wikipedia on contemporary ethnic groups:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...

Sharmon wrote: "I think I am going to read Moloka'i for this. I have never really read anything about the Hawaii culture"

I read Moloka'i for this prompt too!

I read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao for this one. Audiobook was good, narrated by Lin-Manuel Miranda!

poshpenny wrote: "The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts..."

Oh man this sounds great!

Kite Runner for anyone who hasn't read that yet