Sometimes I feel like life is too busy to enjoy reading as much as I did when I was younger, I always enjoyed it. I loved going to Barnes and Noble (or Borders, when it existed) and coming home with a few books to read for hours, or on my way home on the bus. In the past few years, I've really been enjoying reading more from writers of color writers, whether those are stories of triumph, heartbreak, or humor, it's always good. There's a list of some of my favorite pieces of work by them.

1. Black White and Jewish by Rebecca Walker

I read this a few years back and it was beautiful. Rebecca Walker is the daughter of Alice Walker, a famous black author who wrote the critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple, and also the daughter of Mel Leventhal, a white Jewish civil rights lawyer. Walker talks about her experiences growing up racially mixed and LGBTQ and finding her identity in an area where she was seen as "so different" from her peers. This is a favorite.

2. Warsan Shire

I'm obsessed with this woman, to say the least. Warsan Shire is a Somali born, British bred poet and writer who has written dozens of poems and a couple novels about love and family. Her poems in include, "For Women Who Are Difficult To Love" and "34 Reasons For Why We Failed At Love" and one of her novels is titled "Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth." You may recognize her writing if you follow it on Tumblr, where she got her start and her work was included in Beyonce's Lemonade visual album. She writes with raw emotion, and her words will still with you.

3. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I couldn't just mention one book from this writer, but you may have heard of her if you're ever watched her Ted Talk titled, "We Should All Be Feminists" which was sampled and put in a verse in Beyonce's Flawless. Her novels include Americanah, (which I will be buying very soon!) which talks about a young Nigerian woman who emigrates to the U.S for higher educations. She has many other novels and is regarded as one of the greatest "new" African writers.

4.In the Country We Love: The True Story of a Family Divided by Diane Guerrero

You may recognize her from Netflix's Orange Is New Black and Jane The Virgin, and just this year, American-born Diane Guerrero published her first book and she talks about her struggle with her family's deportation back to Colombia and America's immigration problem.

5. I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban

I'm pretty sure in 2016 we all know who Malala Yousafzai is, but just in case you don't, let me refresh your memory. She spoke out against the treatment of the Taliban concerning education on a blog and in other writings, and one day when she boarded her school bus, she was shot in the head. Malala survived the attack and moved to England, where she received care, and has since been an outspoken advocate for education and even won a Noble Peace Prize in 2014.

6. Why Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling

This is one of the funniest books I've ever read in my whole life. It's written by Mindy Kaling, who was in The Office and has her own show The Mindy Project. In this book she gives us a humourous look into her childhood as one of the few Indian kids at her school and excelled in her academics, and talks about her start writing for The Office and hitting twists and turns in her everyday life.

If those writers aren't enough for you, I'd suggest checking out the works of Sherman Alexie and Nayyirah Waheed.