Brief reflections on my bookcase and the system that produced it

O hey there insomnia, really missed you. I swear, I haven't been this mentally restless since sophomore year of college.

So my bookshelf sits across from my bed and after staring at it for a while, I decided to inspect it further.

A rough and unscientific survey of the contents:

Poetry: 4 volumes. All male. 2x communist womanizer Pablo Neruda
Music: The Rough Guide to Jazz. This is the only book I have that remotely deals with the African American experience. Embarrassing.
Literature:
So many dudes. Whiny dudes.
"I want 'my' desert back" Edward Abbey- Desert Solitaire
"Being wealthy during the Pinochet Years is such a drag that all I can do is get high "Alberto Fuguet- Mala Onda
"I just got a noble prize for coopting Mayan imagery" Hombres de Maíz- Asturías (to be fair, he wrote unbelievably well)
"Let's have a cross continental bohemian romp" Rayuelas- Julio Cortázar
Economics: 4 volumes. If you count the Euro-enamored"Wealth and Poverty of Nations" and "Small is Beautiful."
Latin America: This part of my collection has a lot of breadth. But all expat academics, minus a lone Chilean author, Manuel Antonio Garretón.
South Asia/Middle East: All written by outsiders. 1 book about the Shi'ia, 1 about Islamic art & 1 alarmist/ing? view of Pakistan's nuclear program
Africa: According to my book shelf, Africa is nothing more than child soldiers & the legacy of Belgian genocide in the Congo. Cue the sad music and NGO pleas for money. Shameful.
Europe/Former USSR: Chernobyl. What a downer. 
Asia: Huh? Where's that?

I was shocked to realize I only own 2 books written by women. "Wasted" is about a woman's struggles with anorexia. The other is a male voiced narrative of spiritual journey in Spain.

Using my bookcase as a metric, it's visually apparent that the university does some things well: expose us to a wide variety of topics and shape more specific interests. What it doesn't do well: expose us to non-white, non-western, non-male views. Or let the inhabitants of different regions speak for themselves. To a certain extent, this isn't really academia's fault as much as it is the myriad legacies that led to disparities in education and investigation of the problems of the other rather than engagement with one's own society.

But it does really explain why I am only becoming more truly aware of my white privilege 3 years into my college education (a lack of consciousness that of itself represents tremendous privilege).

I/we have a long long way to go.