Decolonize the Classics started from a dream I had of seeing myself in the old familiar stories I loved. As a kid, I read 19th century novels by Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters as I waited for the bus to school. I watched classic films from the 1930-60s on Sundays with my grandmother. As I got older, Ovid’s The Metamorphoses (8AD) indelibly shaped my view of life and its unpredictability. Yet despite my love and attention to all things old, I rarely saw myself, my family, the working class immigrant communities I grew up among. It felt as if storytelling was made for and by too small a group.

Decolonize the Classics is a resource for those of us looking to see the totality of history and rethink the stories that shape it.