#tagore

Rabindranath Tagore

Lately, I’ve seen more people trying to “read diversely.” Which is great! But too often, that just means reading authors of color from the US or UK — and calling it a day.

👉 Yes, even if you include James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, or Zadie Smith.

👉 Yes, even if you’re reading “diaspora” voices.

And don’t get me wrong, those books matter.

But that’s not decolonial reading. That’s still Western reading.

Same publishing houses, same literary gatekeepers, same market logic — just with more melanin.

Real diverse reading means stepping outside of that Western framework altogether.

It means reading stories written in Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, Japanese, Arabic, Swahili, Turkish, Tagalog — whether in translation or in the original. It means reading authors who aren’t writing for a New York Times audience.

And let’s be honest: many of us (myself included) grew up reading American bestsellers far more than books from our own regions. In India (my origin country), many readers know Colleen Hoover but haven’t read Ismat Chughtai. In France and Belgium (where I live), fantasy shelves are dominated by American titles. Even in the global South, publishing is still largely shaped by Western market forces.

Reading diversely also means decolonizing what we consider “literature.”

That includes:

Reading more books written outside of Western publishing circuits,

Engaging with translated works that aren’t already international hits,

And questioning why some stories get more global attention than others.

I’m not saying this to guilt anyone — I’m saying it because I also want to do better.

It’s not about being morally superior. It’s about being curious in multiple directions.

Reading outside the Western lens expands your imagination. It’s part of decolonization. It’s part of unlearning.

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

📚 These are authors I personally recommend — not because I claim to know “world literature,” but because I’m grounded in my own heritage. I’m still learning to read more globally, and I try to follow recommendations from people rooted in their own cultures.

Here are a few books and authors from the Indian and Pakistani literary landscape that I love or find important:

Saadat Hasan Manto – Kingdom’s End and Other Stories or Bombay Stories (partition, sexuality, violence, social critique)

Ismat Chughtai – The Quilt and Other Stories or A Life in Words (feminism, class, taboo, women’s interiority)

Arundhati Roy – The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (queerness, caste, Kashmir, grief and resistance)

Raza Mir – Murder at the Mushaira (historical fiction, Urdu poetry, colonial politics)

Rabindranath Tagore – Gitanjali, The Home and the World (poetry, anti-colonial thought, mysticism, women and politics)

Nimra Ahmed – Jannat Kay Pattay (Leaves of Paradise) (faith, espionage, love, identity)