Welcome!
Our collection of decolonizing literature
What is Decolonization? … and in literature?
Decolonization can be interpreted differently by each person, but for our project Decolonizing Literature we have chosen to understand the action of “decolonizing” to be the act of refocusing centers of power that are portrayed in stories. We can see this in our collection of novels by de-centering and removing ideologies set in center-stage by colonial powers, and bringing to the forefront stories that center on indigenous, non-english speakers, and diasporic stories.
It is unrealistic and colonialist to assume that all stories must be told in English and through a eurocentric lens. Identities are not always limited to one language or even within modern national borders. Rather than discussing complicated concepts and academic writing about decolonization or “transnationalism”, we chose everyday rom-com novels, horror stories and more that can be easily understood by a wider audience, of all ages.
We hope this small collection of novels can be the starting point for decolonizing your bookshelf and exploring transnational literature!
Project Description
Documentary Focus
The primary focus of this archive is on the collection of novels that center indigenous, non-English speaking, and diasporic narratives. Instead of centering literature that is more academic in nature, we wanted to focus on a broader range of literature and genre such as rom-coms, horror, fantasy, and more. The collection is compiled of a mix of photographs of book covers and the authors, as well as links to associated resources for further exploration.
We do not own the materials depicted in this archive.
Consideration of Archival Practice
Our archive takes a more open, casual approach to its documentation of largely modern and contemporary materials. This was largely in part due to our target audience being readers of a variety of ages, rather than a more niche group.
In addition, our archive would like to consider the input of our audience as well. We chose to implement the function where viewers of the archive can leave their own comments of potential items and recommendations of items we could add to the archive in the future, if we were to take our project further. This was implemented in consideration of the limited perspective that two creators bring to our archive.
Criteria For Record Selection
The novels we selected are stories that are created by indigenous, multilingual or non-english speaking, and diasporic authors whose stories center characters also from these identities. We decided to center our archive around modern literature that spans a variety of genres, however excluding more academic works. In the case of this archive, modern literature spans from the early 1990s to the present. As all of the records within the archive were released relatively recently, all books are still in copyright. In creating the archive, we took into consideration not to use any original records and instead incorporated information from publicly available platforms such as Wikipedia and Goodreads. Even with these steps, we do understand that there is some risk involved, but feel that as this is an educational project we are protected under fair use.
Target User Group
Our primary user group are open and curious minded, avid readers of all ages - especially those who are perhaps looking to expand their reading list. Our goal with this archive was to create a record of stories that could start individuals off on their journey of expanding their reading experience. Additionally, we hope that this archive could create a space of belonging for any young readers who may find themselves represented within these stories. As Caswell et al. (2016) mention, an archive has the ability to "assert identities in the present". Reading is not only an individual experience in which one can escape into another world, but also an experience that allows someone to feel heard and seen. Because this user group expands across generations and experiences, we have designed this archive to be easily navigatable with a mix of short text and descriptive information accompanying the images provided.
Potential secondary users of the archive include: librarians looking for books to add to the collection and literature teachers looking to diversify their required reading lists.
Perspectives
While we did aim to maintain diversity within our records, this archive is not reflective of all indigenous, non-English speaking, and diasporic identities and experiences. In particular, under our Indigenous books section, the perspectives highlighted are those of First Nations and North American Indigenous individuals. With more time, we hope to incorporate more stories pertaining to a broader range of experiences and identities. Additionally, the inclusion of items within the record were limited to the perspectives of the two creators, as we incorporated books that we had on our own reading lists. There are many more stories out there and we encourage any users of this archive to seek out other stories through their local libraries!