Before college, I didn't read books at all. Despite taking both AP Language and AP Literature in my junior and senior years of high school, I had never really read an entire 12-point font book; I was fortunate enough to be born in 1997, which made the internet readily available for me to look up synopses of the books I was required to read for class. Reading did not interest me in the slightest. When I came to college, this quickly changed. Recommended by my French professor in my freshman year, I read through Le Petit Prince from cover to cover and then I was hooked. In my college career, I've read over 100 books. I literally, went from 0 to 100.
Here are (most of) the books I've read; I was planning on placing a star next to the books I recommend, but that's about all of them:
~2016~
Le Petit Prince- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Picture of Dorian Gray- Oscar Wilde
Black Skin White Mask- Franz Fanon
Wretched of the Earth- Franz Fanon
A Dying Colonialism- Franz Fanon
Season of Migration to the North- Tayeb Salih
Devil on the Cross- Ngugi wa Thiong'o
L'Ètranger- Albert Camus
Animal Farm- George Orwell
Purple Hibiscus- Chimamanda Adichie
Women at Point Zero- Nawal El Saadawi
Beloved- Toni Morrison
Le Monde S'Effondre (Things Fall Apart)- Chinua Achebe
God Dies by the Nile- Nawal El Saadawi
All Strangers are Kin- Zora O'neall
The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears-
Heart of Darkness- Joseph Conrad
Lolita- Vladamir Nabokov
Sabriya- Ulfat Idilbi
Understanding Asexuality- Anthony Begaert
Nervous Conditions- Tsitsi Dangarembga
Empire, Architecture, and the City- Zeyneb Çelik
City of Oranges- Adam LeBor
The Beautyful Ones are not yet Born- Ayi Kwei Armah
Homegoing- Yaa Gyasi
The Ethics of Teaching- Kenneth Strike
Open City- Teju Cole
Colonialism/Postcolonialism- Ania Loomba
Lord of the Flies- William Golding
L'Enfant Noir- Camara Laye
The Great Arab Conquest- Hugh N. Kennedy
In the Land of Magic Soldiers- Daniel Bergner
The Brothers Karamazov- Fyodor Dostoevsky
Invisible Man- Ralph Ellison
Maroc, éclats instantanés- Maati Kabbal
The Watsons go to Birmingham- Christopher Paul Curtis
The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy- Douglas Adams
L'arabe comme un chant secret- Leila sebbar
Equiano's Travels- Equiano
1984- George Orwell
Catch 22- Joseph Heller
Red Badge of Courage- Stephen Crane
Witness- Karen Hesse
Hidden Faces of Eve- Nawal El Saadwi
Decolonizing the Mind- Ngugi wa Thiong'o
Wuthering Heights- Emily Brontë
Song of Solomon- Tori Morrison
The Trial- Franz Kafka
Madame Bovary- Flaubert
~2017~
How Does it Feel to be a Problem?- Moustafa Bayoumi
Moi, Tituba Sorcière- Maryse Condé
Crime and Punishment- Fyodor Dostoevsky
Bleu-Blanc-Rouge- Alain Mabanckou
L'Incendie- Mohammed Dib
The Translator- Leila Aboulela
Born a Crime- Trevor Noah
So Long a Letter- Mariama Bâ
The Art of War- Sun Tzu
Xala- Ousmane Sembène
The Circling Song- Nawal Sadawi
Salvation Army- Abdellah Taïa
The Fault in Our Stars- John Green
Jerusalem- Guy Delise
King Leopold's Ghost- Adam Hochschild
A Bend in the River- V.S. Naipaul
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Ain't I a Woman?- Sojourner Truth
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
The Bluest Eye- Toni Morrison
Dreams of Trespass- Fatema Mernissi
~2018~
Candide- Voltaire
Les Lettres Persanes- Montesquieu
Une Vie de Boy- Ferdinand Oyono
La Grève des Bàttu- Aminata Sow Fall
Without a Doubt- Marcia Clark
Assata: An Autobiography
The Souls of Black Folk- W.E.B. Du Bois
Servants of Globalization: Migration and Domestic Work- Parreñas, R. S.
Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam- Chouki El Hamel
Born out of place: Migrant mothers and the politics of international labor- Costable, N
Women and Migration: The Social Consequences of Gender- Pedraza, S.
Ghana Must Go- Taiye Selasi
~2019~
L'Armée du Salut- Abdellah Taïa
La Chatte- Colette
Empowering Migrant Women: Why Agency and Rights are not Enough- Briones, L. D.
Doing Feminist Theory- Susan Archer Mann
Americanah- Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
Global Critical Race Feminism: An International Reader- Adrien Katherine Wing
We Should All be Feminists- Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
Half of a Yellow Sun- Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
The Diary of Clotee, a Slave Girl- Patricia C. McKissack
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings- Maya Angelou
Culture and Imperialism- Edward Said
If you see somewhat of a pattern in these books, I'm really interested in reading fictional and non-fictional books revolving around themes of feminism, colonialism, post-colonialism, Orientalism, race, gender, slavery in the Americas, black history, or just culture in general. If you have any book recommendations revolving around these themes, let me know.