Diversity Spotlight Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by the wonderful Aimal @ Bookshelves and Paperbacks. Every week, you come up with one book in each of three different categories: a diverse book you have read and enjoyed, a diverse book on your TBR, and one that has not yet been released.

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A BOOK I HAVE READ

“Lies We Tell Ourselves” by Robin Talley

“In 1959 Virginia, the lives of two girls on opposite sides of the battle for civil rights will be changed forever.

Sarah Dunbar is one of the first black students to attend the previously all-white Jefferson High School. An honors student at her old school, she is put into remedial classes, spit on and tormented daily.

Linda Hairston is the daughter of one of the town’s most vocal opponents of school integration. She has been taught all her life that the races should be kept separate but equal.

Forced to work together on a school project, Sarah and Linda must confront harsh truths about race, power and how they really feel about one another.

Boldly realistic and emotionally compelling, Lies We Tell Ourselves is a brave and stunning novel about finding truth amid the lies, and finding your voice even when others are determined to silence it.”

Goodreads Link

I talk about this book a lot but somehow it still isn’t enough. I’m not someone who usually reads historical fiction but I think everyone should read this book, or at least try it. Lies We Tell Ourselves follows two girls right after the court case of Brown v. the Board of Education that desegregated schools. Sarah is one of the first black kids sent to a former all white school, Linda is the daughter of one of the most vocal opponents of desegregation. The girls also develop feelings for each other so the novel also focuses on what it meant in that time to not only develop feelings for someone of another race but also of the same sex.

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A BOOK ON MY TBR

“Girl in Translation” by Jean Kwok

“When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life like the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family’s future resting on her shoulders, or her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition. Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles.

Through Kimberly’s story, author Jean Kwok, who also emigrated from Hong Kong as a young girl, brings to the page the lives of countless immigrants who are caught between the pressure to succeed in America, their duty to their family, and their own personal desires, exposing a world that we rarely hear about.

Written in an indelible voice that dramatizes the tensions of an immigrant girl growing up between two cultures, surrounded by a language and world only half understood, Girl in Translation is an unforgettable and classic novel of an American immigrant-a moving tale of hardship and triumph, heartbreak and love, and all that gets lost in translation.”

Goodreads Link

The premise of this book caught my eye. I know how hard immigrating to America can be, especially if you’re older and have to start to work in a country you barely know. And I’m also going to try to read more cultural contemporary and this seems like a good place to start.

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A BOOK RELEASING SOON

“Iron Cast” by Destiny Soria

“It’s Boston, 1919, and the Cast Iron club is packed. On stage, hemopaths—whose “afflicted” blood gives them the ability to create illusions through art—captivate their audience. Corinne and Ada have been best friends ever since infamous gangster Johnny Dervish recruited them into his circle. By night they perform for Johnny’s crowds, and by day they con Boston’s elite. When a job goes wrong and Ada is imprisoned, they realize how precarious their position is. After she escapes, two of the Cast Iron’s hires are shot, and Johnny disappears. With the law closing in, Corinne and Ada are forced to hunt for answers, even as betrayal faces them at every turn.”

Release Date: October 11, 2016 | Goodreads Link

Ooo, a diverse historical Fantasy! I’m so in. Other than the summary and the fact that one of the main characters is biracial, I don’t know much about this book.

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