Reading Better and Diversity 2021 Challenge

Posted on by Brenda~Traveling Sister

Happy Friday my friends!!! Well it’s halfway through January and I finally got organized enough to come up with my Better reading and Diversity Challenge prompts. Because I like to fly by the seat of my pants I am not sure how I will go about tackling these prompts and probably will just picks the books as I go or read them. My main goal is to find books that fit the prompts I have decided on and I might not know that till after I read the book. I also would like to look at the books I have read in 2020 and find some that fit the prompts as well. So kind of look at 2020 and then challenge myself to read more in 2021. I hope this will help me get to those books I have that I picked up in 2020 in my quest to challenge myself to read better.

This is a combined challenge for reading better and reading more diverse books. My goal is to read at least one for each prompts however I am setting my goal to read half my reading challenge amount of 80 books from the list below. So here are my prompts.

  • Books that explore racial social justice by a black author
  • Books that explore social justice for women
  • Books that explore social justice for black women that challenge white feminism
  • Books with a theme for a cause or movement I believe in
  • Books that implores an immigration experience
  • Books by an author of color that explores their challenges and social justice
  • Books that explores a character of color and their challenges and social justice
  • Books that explore sexual identity
  • Books that explore gender identity
  • Books that explore poverty and wealth or classism
  • Books with a good representation of mental health
  • Books that explore loss/grief
  • Books with a character with a physical disability
  • Books that explore women’s health or concerns
  • Books that exposure uncomfortable realities or things we don’t like to talk about
  • Books with an older character or explores generation gap or aging
  • Books with unseen characters that explores loneliness
  • Books with a strong female character using her voice
  • Books that challenges gender expectations and roles
  • Books that challenges toxic male masculinity
  • Books that avoid harmful tropes while exploring multiply themes
  • Books that explore rape culture
  • Book by an author of color set in a country I would like to visits
  • Books that challenge or explore women gender oppression
  • Books that help the environment or explores the concerns for our environment
  • Books that explore a part of history
  • Books that teaches something about the past that is still relevant today
  • Memoir on a subject I feel strong about
  • Books of essays on a subject I would like to challenge my thoughts on and see society do better with

That’s it for now! I might add more as the year progresses. I hope to keep track of my journey through my challenge here on our blog. Have any suggests? Read any that you think might fit my prompts? Want to cheer me on? Want to join in? Drop me a comment below!!

Published by Brenda~Traveling Sister

16 thoughts on “Reading Better and Diversity 2021 Challenge”

  2. I am proud of you to have a list like that! I think it’s great to write a list like you have because I am sure much of those are not the ones that pop up and say read me. Which is why I love what you do. It sounds like a list to be inspired by and opening of the mind. Well done!

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    1. Thank you, T! I think I have a challenge to finds some of them but I also think some I will find just by reading. I think the list also help me be more aware of books that explore the prompts I have. You inspired me with your comments to find books like this!! Thank you for your support T!

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  3. Great list Brenda!! Looking forward to seeing how many you can tick off. Nice to set these goals to give us some reading direction! 💛

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    1. Thank you, Lindsay! I think we need to be picker so I am hoping these prompts will help us find more books we love that we might of missed. I look forward to knocking some of these prompts off with you!

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    1. Thank you, Gemma! I am so glad to see that. Hood Feminism is one I have wanted to read for awhile now. Sounds like I need to get to it! I hope Caste is a good one for you!

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  6. I absolutely love this list! One of my favorite 2020 reads was a novel called A Lifetime of Men, by Ciahnan Darrell. It would be great for a bunch of these categories, particularly the ones related to gender, like strong female characters and challenging gender oppression. It’s a debut novel from an indie press, so it’s not on everyone’s radar yet, but it was really fantastic!

    Can’t wait to see all the books you choose for this! I bet I’ll gain more than a few new reads for my TBR list!

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    1. (And yes, full disclosure, as you might notice from our last names, A Lifetime of Men is my husband’s novel. But I’m a very critical reader – I teach literature at the college level – and wouldn’t recommend it if I didn’t think it was truly a special book. Just ask him how the early rounds of edits went! 🙂 )

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    2. Lindsay and I have it on our upcoming list. I look forward to seeing which boxes it ticks!

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  7. Oh, and for books exploring the immigration experience, two of my favorite reads are The Book of Unknown Americans, by Cristina Henríquez (fiction, tells the story of a community of immigrants living in Delaware and how their life in the US compares to what they had thought it would be before coming. Absolutely spectacular, another one of my 2020 favorites!) and Enrique’s Journey, by Sonia Nazario (investigative journalism, Nazario retraced the steps of a boy who was making the trip to the US as an unaccompanied minor to try to find his mother, who had come over when Enrique was 5. A gutting read, but so, so important.)

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