The Diverse Baseline 2025 - Information and Reflections
EDIT 12/1/2024: Thank you to the following folks (their Instagrams are linked if you want to give them a follow for book recs & more!) for dialoguing with us about verbiage and clarity regarding the challenge’s goals, prompts, and more.
We have moved away from the language of “nonwhite and mixed race” towards “racialized authors” instead. We provide an explanation of what that means below, but we recognize that "nonwhite and mixed race" was not the best or most accurate term to use to describe the authors we aimed to uplift.
We thank yall for the space and grace to adjust and move forward intentionally. This is actually kind of a cool example of how language continues to evolve, and so do we. Thank you to the following folks for being brave with us!
Ruthie - Ruthie has author service offerings here (audiobook narration, diversity consulting), and a Patreon here, where she offers stories (she’s an author too!) as well as ethical branding and DEI educational materials for business owners. Ruthie was the person to bring “racialized” to Brittany as an alternative to the previous verbiage.
& a few other folks who do not want to be in a public spotlight <3 (my friends who are not public bookstagrammers or booktokers, but I want to give them credit, even if only they know lol, for the emotional labor they constantly do in graciously giving our content a lookover)
We read through every single survey answer (over 100!!!) and decided to make a few changes to the challenge: to (attempt to mindfully and intentionally) make it less overwhelming for people, but maintaining our core message and call to action. This newsletter update is long, so buckle up, and please read thoroughly (forcing bookstagrammers to read a long post, how dare we!?! lol) :P
Here’s the 2025 version, with the updated guidelines and prompts:
Goal
Read 1 book by a racialized author every month, for the entirety of 2025, for a total of 12 books. This challenge is meant to encourage readers to try genres they historically don’t reach for, find new-to-them racialized authors, and to encourage reflection on our reading habits. We want to read inclusively across genres and identities.
What does "racialized" mean?
“The term ‘racialized’ is a sociological concept closely related to racism. People seen as belonging to racialized minorities are people who could be perceived as being socially different from, for example, the racial or ethnic majority. […] The word ‘racialized’ stresses the fact that race is neither biological nor objective but is a concept which is societal in origin. Categorizations other than ‘racialized’ include ‘people of colour’ or BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour).”
With racialized we mean folks who are racialized under a U.S. lens, as we are creating this challenge from a U.S. lens, with alarmingly white lists like Goodreads and NYT in mind. We are focusing on authors who descend from the global majority: Black, Indigenous, Brown, Latinx, Pacific Islander, Arab, West Asian, North African, Southeast Asian, South Asian, East Asian, African, biracial, and multiracial people who are mixed with one or more of the above, and other people and groups who cannot access white privilege in the U.S.
The term "global majority" refers to the ethnic groups that make up the majority of the world's population, which is approximately 80%. The term "global majority" was coined by educator and activist Rosemary Campbell-Stephens. It's intended to disrupt white supremacy culture and ideology.
You can read more here:
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/racialized-minorities
Guidelines
Each month, there will be one prompt.
Each book you choose needs to fit one of the prompts from our list.
You’re welcome to read more books fitting additional prompts if you can and want to.
All books need to be written by racialized authors. Books with racialized main characters written by white authors do NOT fit the brief. Make sure you double check with at least a web search to make sure that the authors and books you’ve chosen fit the challenge. DO NOT ADD WHITE AUTHORS TO THE STORYGRAPH PROMPTS!
Readers are welcome and encouraged, to share recommendations, and to add those books to the Storygraph Challenge.
Note: research your authors/books before adding them to the prompts, as we can only “hide” books that don’t fit and don’t actually have the ability to take them off the lists for everyone. We will not be providing a comprehensive list of authors, as there are thousands of authors out there, and we do not consider ourselves “experts” on anything. We encourage you to do your research to ensure your books fit the brief, and when mistakes are made, that’s totally fine. No challenge or person will ever be perfect, and we should let go of that expectation. We believe in you.
Community
Co-creators will be sharing their own picks for each month. Margherita hosts a monthly Fable book club where xe focuses on romance and chooses books that fit the prompts, and Brittany will be hosting a StoryGraph read-along each month with her choice. Margherita also often posts round ups around different tropes, identities, and more. Brittany posts book reviews on Instagram and StoryGraph all year long.
Join our Discord to share book recommendations and updates with other participants and the challenge co-creators!
Subscribe to the newsletter to make sure you don’t miss important updates throughout the year.
We loved being tagged in your monthly wrap ups and reflections, and hope to see this momentum continue into 2025. We can’t wait to read your reviews once you’ve completed the prompt for each month, whether it’s on Goodreads, StoryGraph, Instagram, TikTok, or any other avenue you post reviews!
Call-Ins
While we are hosting this challenge with passion and thoughtfulness, we recognize that we are ultimately two fallible humans who can and will miss the mark. With that being said, we both are open to being called in and having 1:1 dialogues with yall. We care deeply about this challenge and want to do it with immense love and care.
If you have any comments, concerns, or feedback regarding the challenge, we encourage you to reach out to us.
Ways to reach out to us:
Email us at thediversebaseline@gmail.com
DM Brittany, Margherita, or our lovely moderator Mylynn @hyperfixatedreader in the Discord server
DM us on Instagram
We are asking the following as a shared community agreement: though this challenge will be shared across StoryGraph, Discord, Instagram, TikTok, and GoodReads, and is not just one centralized “community.”
If you are in the Discord server, we ask that you don’t share or screenshot the Discord conversations, to respect those in the server. You can absolutely share general lessons or reflections, but we ask that you not repeat what others disclose (sometimes very vulnerably) in the Discord. We obviously cannot and will not police this, but are hoping you honor this.
Reminders & Reflections
Remember: this is an optional challenge. If it does not feel motivating and is instead causing more harm to you than helping, you are not required to participate, you are not looked down upon for not participating, and/or you are not being judged for tapping out of this challenge. The co-creators feel similarly about running this challenge; we want to keep it fun and of course, as a tool for growth for those open to it.
This challenge is meant to encourage readers to reflect upon their reading habits, and to move forward intentionally to be mindful about the “baseline” of what we should be reading if we are going to call ourselves “well read”. It is not meant to be a comprehensive checklist; it’s a starting point for inward reflection that informs future reading & purchasing.
We are simply asking, “Whose voices am I leaving out? Have I made a concerted effort to diversify across genres, identities, and more?” This challenge will look and feel different for everyone, and that is a beautiful display of diversity of thought and lived experience :)
To be abundantly clear, there is no prize for completing the challenge 100% and there is no punishment for not. This is OPTIONAL and should be FUN! If not, we encourage you to seek other challenges (there are plenty from such amazing creators) that do fit what you are seeking for your 2025 goals.
There are no value judgments placed upon folks who join or do not join a challenge. If the challenge is not fun, exciting, or motivating to you, that’s okay. No one is pressuring you or forcing you to do anything you do not want to do—if you feel pressured, we invite you to interrogate that, but the co-creators of TDB are not policing anyone on how they go about a challenge. Our only guideline is that you choose racialized authors for our challenge.
Our challenge is meant to encourage you and to inspire reflection. Some folks don’t need a challenge to do that, while others may be newer in their reading journeys, and do! Both are valid. No matter what, we are rooting for you in your reading journey ahead!
A note from Brittany on reflection: I don’t think of reflecting on reading habits as something inherently negative, as if it is a “chore”; I believe reflection is simply part of the human experience. I do it in almost every aspect of my life, from monthly reading wrap ups, to book reviews (I am ultimately sharing reflections in these book reviews), when I talk about the music I love to friends, when I fill out my annual performance evaluations and think about what I want my career to look like, when I think about the relationships in my life, checking in on how my body feels, talking about how my day went or what’s ahead of me, and more!
Every part of our lives will be reflected upon, so why not our reading habits? It also doesn’t mean my life is not fun, or the actions I’m participating in are not fun. I just had a jam-packed week full of cup-filling moments, and the act of reflection actually caused me to dig deeper for gratitude and I felt even more loved.
Art can absolutely be utilized as dissociation or escapism, but let’s be clear: it’s never JUST that. Art helps us to make sense of and live in this world. Let’s not reduce it to solely being for entertainment that never warrants reflection. Even telling your friend, “Wow, that was just what I needed. I laughed so hard throughout that entire film,” after watching an unserious goofy movie that truly entertained you is an act of reflection.
Reflection is a gift, and I’d almost call it a privilege. It’s what makes us human, and I actually have a lot of fun reflecting on my reading habits, and thinking about which genres or identities I was pulled towards in a certain month or time in my life. It’s a great exercise in re-getting to know myself and my taste, so I hope you can view reflection and challenges in a much more exciting, hopeful, encouraging, and fun light, because it really can be. I’m gonna leave you with my former people pleaser canned response to keep it light: If not, no worries!
List of Prompts
Disclaimer: This is NOT meant to be a comprehensive list of every single identity and genre out there. This is meant to guide you to reflect upon the baseline of YOUR reading habits. The countries are listed out under the respective prompts in the Storygraph challenge.
Black Diaspora author
Northern African author
Central/Middle African author
Southern African author
East African author
West African author
Latine Diaspora author
Caribbean author
Mexican author
Central American author
South American author
Indigenous/First Nations author
Jewish representation
Muslim representation
Buddhist representation
Hindu representation
Book about colonization
Asian Diaspora author
West Asian author
East Asian author
South Asian author
Southeast Asian author
Hawai’ian author
Pacific Islander author
Middle-age main character (35-59)
Older main character (60+)
Gay representation
Bi/Pan representation
Trans representation
Ace/Aro representation
Lesbian representation
Queer/Questioning representation
Sensory disability representation
Psychiatric disability representation
Invisible and/or undiagnosed disability representation
Cognitive and intellectual disability representation
Physical disability representation
Young Adult Book
New Adult Book
Middle Grade Book
Picture Book
Indie author
Real people on the cover
Biracial or multi-racial author
Historical Fiction
Historical Romance
Contemporary Romance
Romantic Suspense
Holiday Romance
Novella
Anthology
Fat main character
Found family
Poetry
Retelling or re-imagining
Fantasy/Science Fiction
Memoir or Biography
Horror
Thriller
Mystery
Literary Fiction
Speculative Fiction
Surrealism, Magical Realism, or Fabulism
Graphic novel or comic book
Cyberpunk
Steampunk
Dystopian
Dark Fiction
Genre-Bending
Satire/Comedy
History
Alternative History Fiction
Collection of Essays
Genre Fiction
Erotica
Slice-Of-Life
Translated work
A book originally written in a non-European language
Nonfiction about intersectional feminism
Nonfiction about fat liberation
Book about abolition
An author who comes from a country where genocide or conflict is taking place (Congo, Sudan, Palestine, Armenia, etc.)
A book about Time Travel and/or Parallel Universes
Fiction or Nonfiction about Climate Change
A sequel to a book (finish that series!)
A new-to-you author
Book of your choice
A book off your TBR
A book recommended by a friend
A book with less than 200 reviews on Goodreads/Storygraph
Templates and Stickers
All the guidelines mentioned here will also be included in the official carrd, as it was in 2024. In that carrd, you will also find links to Canva templates for your Instagram feed and Instagram stories, as well as some fun stickers you can use in your posts.
Where the Challenge will Be
Like in 2024, there is a StoryGraph challenge. It’s already active and accessible to everyone. In 2025, let’s all ensure we are adding authors and books that fit the prompts, as this is incredibly helpful for people to find books for each prompt.
There is now also a discord server, where you can connect with others who are participating in the challenge. Please be mindful that it is just us two and another moderator overseeing the virtual space, so we appreciate your patience and understanding. Some channels are on slow mode to ensure we are thoughtfully engaging in discussions online.
Survey Reflections
As mentioned at the start, we have read all the feedback from the anonymous survey we asked you to fill out. Many answers were very insightful and useful, while others pointed to individual preferences and habits. There were a few points that were repeated that we want to specifically address to ensure you that your concerns did not simply disappear into the ether.
Some people expressed feeling out of the loop with updates. We understand the confusion since the newsletter came in late—we didn’t think at the start that so many people would be participating in our challenge, and we also hadn’t thought there would be the need for so many updates (especially about books that didn’t fit being added to the challenge). Now that you know about the existence of this newsletter, make sure you subscribe and spread the word about it, because this is the central place where all the important updates will be shared. Some stuff might be shared on our socials too, but it’s so easy for those posts to get lost, so following us here on Substack is the best option.
Many expressed disappointment in seeing books that didn’t fit the criteria being added to the prompts on StoryGraph. About this, we want to point out that it was nothing we could control. We set clear guidelines and it’s the readers’s duty to look up authors and do their due diligence. We mentioned it multiple times outside of our specific posts, as well as directly on the Google survey. We tried to hide the books from the lists when we found them, but StoryGraph doesn’t have the option to take the books off the lists completely, so our hands were tied beyond that. We have contacted StoryGraph to ask for different types of features to be added or edited, but that doesn’t seem to be something they will do. This is not shade towards StoryGraph, who we know work super hard and are so cognizant of participant feedback. We recognize not every request or suggestion can be fulfilled. We are simply providing context to these concerns.
Because of the aforementioned disappointment, many of the people who filled out the survey asked to be given “a list to choose from that's been vetted and verified with accurate authors by the co-creators”. The point of the challenge we created is to build sustainable habits to pick up, read, and review racialized authors. Both co-creators often share reviews of books we loved or hopeful TBRs (Margherita shared monthly TBR lists with 5 books that fit each prompt), but that’s for our own enjoyment and desire to share, not as guides for you to follow. We also did not want to only then spotlight a few books, influencing the majority of folks to read what we were reading, and then inevitably cause you to miss out on others. We all should be putting in the effort to find books we want to read, or in general books that fit the prompts we want to fulfill.
While we love to talk about books we’ve read, this is not our full-time job. It is a volunteer, optional hobby for us too, and while we maintain mindfulness and intention in building the challenge, we also want it to remain fun for us too. That is a nonnegotiable, because this is a hobby we love :) We will not hand-pick books or vet out lists of thousands of authors for participants—this practice would be the opposite of what we wanted to achieve with this challenge. By asking that of us (just a gentle reminder, we are also chronically ill and navigate mental health issues), it feels like we are losing sight of the challenge’s mission.
The point of the challenge is for all of us (co-creators included) to reflect upon our own reading habits, and to move forward intentionally. Part of that is the realization that yes, it can be difficult to find books that fit certain prompts. What does that tell us about publishing? About marketing for racialized authors? About visibility and representation of certain identities and genres? Ruminate on that. A reading challenge should be (not to be corny but… Brittany is writing this sentence if that’s not obvious lol)… a bit of a challenge. It’s meant to be fun, but also meant to operate as an avenue of reflection, not just about us, but about the industry and virtual bookish spaces as a whole too. Let that guide you and fuel you in your search for diversifying your bookshelf.
We also are not responsible for checking if the books fit a prompt or not. A web search goes a long way, and will likely take a few minutes. Maybe you might not be able to find all the info about that one author you really wanted to include, but who didn’t feel like sharing about their identity online (totally valid), but there are likely hundreds more authors you could choose instead. Many of them may write similar books to the one you originally had in mind (make sure you check out the indie and self-published authors too if that’s accessible to you! There’s so many amazing niches to discover there).
We encourage you to try, amidst discouragement and roadblocks. And again, if this is not fun or helpful for you, don’t do it. We’re not being facetious when we say this; we genuinely mean it. We recognize a challenge is not the optimal or only way for folks to participate in a hobby. Totally valid :) We promise we are rooting for you regardless!
Last, but not least, to help with the people expressing concern over not being able to find free books that they could use for the challenge (for the people who can’t financially support these authors), Margherita has a blog post about 20 ways to find free books. Hopefully some of them can work for you.
Co-host’s Recommendations
We now both have official recommendation lists, as well as general lists of books we’ve read for the challenge, on libro.fm and bookshop.org. If you would like highly recommended books from us, check out our links and support local/indie bookstores in the process (if it’s an accessible option for you).
Brittany’s Libro FM playlist | Margherita’s Libro FM playlist
Brittany’s Bookshop.org list | Margherita’s Bookshop.org list
About the creators
Brittany is a reader and educator from the San Francisco Bay Area. She can be found on substack and has resources here.
Margherita is a reader and indie author from Italy. Xe can be found on instagram, tiktok and substack.
the discord link doesn't seem to be working? it says it's "invalid or expired" when i click it, just wanted to let y'all know!