Bookstagrammer Corina Richards, @corinarichards
Corina Richards is an artistic virtuoso who is reading, illustrating and making cool stuff out in Arizona and has roots in Tonga and Belau.
Read more about Bookstagrammer Corina Richards below:
Island(s) you're from? I am American and my mother is from Tonga and my father is from Palau. I would love to visit both islands one day. I still feel really honored to be featured on your blog! Being a Pacific Islander in the diaspora often brought me feelings of inadequacy like I couldn’t take up space in the PI community at large, but I am so pleased to be here combating my own imposter syndrome. 1
Name? Corina Richards
Bookstagram handle: @corinarichards
Why did you start an IG for your books or reading? Who or what inspired you?
Representation. I initially started my IG for myself as an artist and to share my work, but then it became stressful trying to create content around my art. My art medium is printmaking which takes a long time to create. I didn’t appreciate this new pressure to constantly crank out art for social media and so I switched to focusing my IG on a lifestyle around books—which could easily involve reading books or drawing books thus encapsulating all of my interests.
When I first heard of Bookstagram I didn’t see anyone on the platform that looked like me nor were they showcasing books in a way that felt meaningful to me. It is a heavily white-dominated industry. Thankfully over the last year with movements like reading black stories, diversifying your bookshelves, and amplifying marginalized voices, there was a big push to showcase BIPOC bookstagrammers which made it way easier for me to find them.
Anyway I also wanted to be part of a community. Everyone else on IG seemed to be grouped by some particular feature like geographic region, levels of obsession with coffee, or traveling.
I just didn’t seem to fit in so I thought, “I’ll just start my own account and see where it goes. Why not?”
After creating my IG and featuring my interests— like books, babies, and botany— I realized there were folks out there who resonated with my content and me. Sometimes you just gotta put yourself out there and manifest to the Universe what you’re looking for and she will answer.
What has it been like to join the Bookstagram community?
Honestly, bookstagram is pretty specific in their community behavior and it bothers me. When I first joined I started noticing patterns of bookstagrammers acknowledging “correct bookstagram ettiquette.” For example, it is common to post a picture of a book and add a review. This gets you a bunch of engagement (likes and comments) but if you show your face with a book or show your face too much in your feed your engagement levels go down.
To me this feels counterintuitive —I thought Bookstagram was a place to see readers WITH their books. I wanted to see what other readers looked like and sometimes you see this but most often you don’t!
I expected to see more of an online community that showed what readers looked like— we come in every color, shape, size, socioeconomic status, age, etc.— to encourage more reading participation because anyone can be a reader and readers do a lot of different things.
Instead it is literally a focus on books, which, don’t get me wrong, I do love seeing books but it was becoming a repetitive space where only the new releases or best sellers were being showcased. After a while, everyone’s feed looked the same and I couldn’t tell who was posting unless I read their IG handle and it lacked the human part.
So in my IG I try to push back on that standard by showing my face a lot and what I do as a person who loves reading. Maybe it means I should be in a different IG industry, but I’ve still been able to make meaningful connections and have impactful experiences by following my own methods.
This is pretty specific lol but what other Micronesians/Pacific Islander bibliophile accounts or websites do you recommend that people should follow?
I think folks should join a bookclub.
I love talking with other readers and @PasifiVirtualBookclub was a space I found last year. They’ve got Micronesian author @julianaguon’s book “The Properties of Perpetual Light” for the month of June which I’m so excited about because I just picked up his book for the #pasifikareadathonchallenge.
I also enjoy following @thisislanderreads. We met online and Mara creates a lot of insightful posts about our Micronesian and Pacific Islander bibliophile community. I’ve been able to find a beautiful Pasifika bookstagram community through her efforts of bringing us together.
Do you have a favorite Pacific Islander author?
I have two —a Micronesian poet and a Polynesian poet—which also beautifully resonates with my ethnic heritage.
I follow Marshallese poet and climate activist @kathyjetnilkijiner who wrote “Iep Jaltok: Poems From A Marshallese Daughter.” And I also follow Samoan queer poet and activist @terisasiagatonu who wrote a collection of poems called “Remember We Have Choir Practice.” I got to meet both of them through @pasifivirtualbookclub.
Their poetry is powerful and beautifully enhanced through their performance art. I’ve been so inspired by their works. They’ve changed my life and expanded my perspective.
What's your favorite part about having an Instagram account just for your books/things you're reading?
I love the conversation and discussion that comes with introducing a book with other folks. It is also a space where I give myself permission to be all about the written/spoken word and show how it has impacted my life and continues to impact me every day.
What was your favorite book as a kid?
I have several but the most impressionable book was the Chronicles of Narnia series that I came across in 6th grade. It was a magical world filled with so many different creatures and stories that the adventures seemed endless. It really opened up my imagination beyond all the other books I had read and brought me to a new level of reading acuity.
I found out that Corina and her husband worked on a book together too! It’s called The Blue Jewel: A Riveting Space Opera. The Kindle edition is $2.99 on Amazon and you should just get it. It’s about the same price as 2 or 3 Mr. Brown coffees which are great but I mean it doesn’t go toward supporting our fellow Pasifika creatives in the same way.
Also, I will always I recommend Dr. Emelihter Kihleng’s “My Urohs” poetry collection. If you’re in the shopping mood, why not get both!
Corina also has a Bookshop where she shares books by BIPOC authors and others.
She explained she started her bookshop because she wanted to spotlight stories by BIPOC authors.
“Summer of 2020 really brought to light the disparity and gap of reading material with BIPOC representation. I felt I had a voice and a platform and wanted to further amplify those #ownvoices stories for folks to find, so I opened up my Bookshop ‘Read with Corina.’ I do also throw in a bit of reading about art and gardening as those are my personal interests,” she said.
Corina learned about the site from her husband who read an article about Bookshop competing with Amazon as a book distributor. Part of Bookshop.org’s mission, according to the website, is to financially support local, indepdendent bookstores.
Corina’s local bookclub also used Bookshop. She looked up BrunchBabesReads’ Bookshop page online and looked up Bookshop’s affiliate program.
“Anyone can start their own Bookshop Bookstore. You get to choose what you want to specialize in and which books you want to showcase,” she said. “When someone shops with your store and goes to check out, Bookshop calculates and displays how much of their purchase is being distributed to independent bookstores. It’s a really cool process.”
Be sure to follow Corina on Instagram, @corinarichards, and keep her bookshop in mind when you’re hunting for your next read. (Also, Telbong, another bookstagrammer featured previously here on The Husk, has a bookshop.)
Thank you, Corina, for your time! Everyone follow Corina on Instagram here and here.
I am so glad you started your bookstagram account and I know I am one of your followers who finds your content resonates with me.
I appreciate you!
This past month on The Husk, we learned more about authors, illustrators and bookworms with Micronesian roots as part of Get Caught Reading Month. We started a Little Free Library, too.
One takeaway for me after learning about these creators was how far the Micronesian ancestry extends. We all come from these islands and our people conquer oceans and lands to live in places thousands of miles away from the islands. And we all still have connections to and we seek connection to these lands.
When we learn about the land and the culture and our people who came before us, it connects with something within us. When I hear people speak Palauan or when I read about Pohnpei or see photos of my ancestors, the knowledge, the awareness doesn’t register in the same place where I keep knowledge of my math equations or grammar rules or other learned things. It registers in another part of me. It is equal parts affirmation, acknowledgment, awe. It’s equal parts identity and history. It’s hard to explain. (And THEN for me, being part of the diaspora adds this layer of doubt on top of that. 2Surely, another newsletter for another day. )
I have to thank all the wonderful people who agreed to allow me to pry a bit into their minds and answered my questions this month. I cannot thank you all enough.
Thank you, reader, for continuing to open these emails. Write to you again soon.
Cheers,
Jasmine
I am so happy you agreed to this! We love a Pacific Islander American badass.
How could I feel so strongly tied to this culture, this identity and yet also feel so disconnected? Y’know?etc. etc. etc.