15 books for The Diverse Baseline ; September 2024

The Diverse Baseline is a reading challenge created by Brittany and me. The mission is to read a minimum of 3 books by BIPOC authors per month, for the entirety of 2024 (to make a minimum of 36 BIPOC books), in order to help form the habit of reading and supporting books by nonwhite and mixed race authors.

Every month has three prompts. You can choose which books to read, as long as they each fit one of the prompts. You can’t use one book to fit two prompts — they need to be three different books.

All books need to be written by nonwhite and mixed race authors. Books with BIPOC main characters written by white authors do NOT fit the brief.

The challenge is pretty flexible, so if you’re a slow reader you can read as much as you’re able, and if you want to do the prompts in different orders that’s also fine. What we care about is the effort.

For more info on the challenge and all the rules, you should check out the official carrd. You can also subscribe to the newsletter (also linked in the carrd) to stay updated with announcements and clarifications about authors.

In this article I will be listing 5 books for each prompt that I want to read during this month, because I like to have multiple options. I will mark which ones are available via Kindle Unlimited subscription (if there are some) and I will list genre and tropes, as well.

Disclaimer: for your own safety and comfort, always look up trigger warnings online before picking up a book.

The magical island of Chynchin is facing conquerors from abroad and something sinister from within in this entrancing fantasy from the Grand Master Award–winning author Nalo Hopkinson.Veycosi, a scholar of folklore, hopes to sail off to examine the rare Alamat Book of Light and thus secure a spot for himself on Cynchin’s Colloquium. However, unexpected events prevent that from happening. Fifteen Ymisen galleons arrive in the harbor to force a trade agreement on Cynchin. Veycosi is put in charge of the situation, but quickly finds himself in way over his head.Bad turns to worse when malign forces start stirring. Pickens (children) are disappearing and an ancient invading army, long frozen into piche (tar) statues by island witches is stirring to life—led by the fearsome demon known as the Blackheart Man. Veycosi has problems in his polyamorous personal life, too. How much trouble can a poor scholar take? Or cause all by himself?

[ Available on Kindle Unlimited ✔ ]

She’s been called from her place in the darkness to aid the side of good in the last place she wants to be...Dani, groomed by Lilith herself, has long been spreading horror in the murk of purgatory. She never asked to be summoned to Heaven’s Gate and never expected to be charged with the stubbornly attractive angel Nicholas as her partner. Though, with a face like his to look at, Dani isn’t about to complain. The lines between good and evil are shifting. Dani discovers that, lurking in her familiar darkness, are secrets she would never have guessed at and doesn’t understand. Now she must ask herself, who is a demon supposed to trust?He’ll have to join forces with the last entity he expected… but sometimes true loyalty lies in the most unexpected places.Nicholas is a sentry angel yet to see actual combat, so it comes as a surprise when he’s summoned by the highest angelic executive. The bigger shock is being forced to rally together with an alluring demon he can’t get out of his head. But as allegiances are tested, Nicholas discovers a lot is hiding between the boundaries of good and evil. Side by side, Nicholas and Dani must fight the unknown… in whatever form it takes.

Shantiport was supposed to be a gateway to the stars. But the city is sinking, and its colonist rulers aren’t helping anyone but themselves.Lina, a daughter of failed revolutionaries, has no desire to escape Shantiport. She loves her city and would do anything to save its people. This is, in fact, the plan for her life, made before she was even born.Her brother, Bador, is a small monkey bot with a big attitude and bigger ambitions. He wants a chance to leave this dead-end planet and explore the universe on his own terms. But that would mean abandoning the family he loves―even if they do take him for granted.When Shantiport's resident tech billionaire coerces Lina into retrieving a powerful artifact rumored to be able to reshape reality, forces from before their time begin coalescing around the siblings. And when you throw in a piece of sentient, off-world tech with the ability to grant three wishes into the mix… None of the city's powers will know what hit them.

Shula Azzarh is Fae……in a world where it’s illegal to be.Working at Piriguini’s Circus keeps her hidden in plain sight, but when a vicious accident exposes the truth of what she is, her safe game of hiding comes to an end. Taken by the emperor’s soldiers, Shula is forced into the hands of a mysterious Brotherhood, a group of humans hell-bent on eradicating her race completely.The Fae Resistance needs her. Their healer hates her. And the Emperor of Illyk will stop at nothing to possess her. The secrets of the empire run deeper than she knows, and Shula will have to rely on the magic she’s suppressed for years to save herself from the emperor’s malicious plans.Because Shula is an Elemental.And her fire might be the only thing that can make or break their world.

MiariHere's what I know: aliens invade our colony every three years, hunt and claim the most beautiful of our women, then leave. Here's what I don't know: why the king of them is here this time, and why his black, glittering eyes are trained on me.A hybrid with red alien skin and brown human eyes, I'm not pretty. I've got no family and no plans to ever have one – least of all with this monster of a male. I'm an inventor, a mechanic, a tinkerer. The alien king wants me for reasons I can only guess at, but I'm not about to be taken for a slave and his response to me is something I know I can engineer my way out of.He plans to come back for me when I'm of age, but he'll have to find me first. Our little colony is a scary, desperate place and I'm less afraid to face it, than to face him or the strange, alien sensations he stirs...RakuShe is my Xiveri mate, yet she runs from me – straight into the horrors of her small, savage moon colony. Slaughtering in her defense is easy, while gaining her trust will be the true challenge.She fears my kind and the horrors my treacherous general has inflicted on her humans. Does she not know that it is my blood rite to keep her safe against him and his even more dangerous off-world allies? No, she thinks herself my slave and in place of acceptance, offers me only pacts and bargains. Shamed by her pacts, I still take them all gluttonously, because though she knows only hate, I know only need.Eventually, we will need more than just these pacts between us if I am to convince her that she is my Xiveri mate and if she is to take her place at my side, not as my slave, but as Voraxia's queen.

Growing up on the south side of Chicago, Sesali Bowen learned early on how to hustle, stay on her toes, and champion other Black women and femmes as she navigated Blackness, queerness, fatness, friendship, poverty, sex work, and self-love. Her love of trap music led her to the top of hip-hop journalism, profiling game-changing artists like Megan Thee Stallion, Lizzo, and Janelle Monae. But despite all the beauty, complexity, and general badassery she saw, Bowen found none of that nuance represented in mainstream feminism. Thus, she coined Trap Feminism, a contemporary framework that interrogates where feminism and hip-hop intersect.Notes from a Trap Feminist offers a new, inclusive feminism for the modern world. Weaving together searing personal essay and cultural commentary, Bowen interrogates sexism, fatphobia, and capitalism all within the context of race and hip-hop. In the process, she continues a Black feminist legacy of unmatched sheer determination and creative resilience.Bad bitches: this one’s for you.

As a young femme in 1990s Manila, Geena Rocero heard, “Bakla, bakla!,” a taunt aimed at her feminine sway, whenever she left the tiny universe of her eskinita. Eventually, she found her place in trans pageants, the Philippines’ informal national sport. When her competitors mocked her as a “horse Barbie” due to her statuesque physique, tumbling hair, long neck, and dark skin, she leaned into the epithet. By seventeen, she was the Philippines’ highest-earning trans pageant queen.A year later, Geena moved to the United States where she could change her name and gender marker on her documents. But legal recognition didn’t mean safety. In order to survive, Geena went stealth and hid her trans identity, gaining one type of freedom at the expense of another. For a while, it worked. She became an in-demand model. But as her star rose, her sense of self eroded. She craved acceptance as her authentic self yet had to remain vigilant in order to protect her dream career. The high-stakes double life finally forced Geena to decide herself if she wanted to reclaim the power of Horse Barbie once and for all: radiant, head held high, and unabashedly herself.A dazzling testimony from an icon who sits at the center of transgender history and activism, Horse Barbie is a celebratory and universal story of survival, love, and pure joy.

When Walela is diagnosed at twenty-three with advanced stage blood cancer, they're suddenly thrust into the unsympathetic world of tubes and pills, doctors who don’t use their correct pronouns, and hordes of "well-meaning" but patronizing people offering unsolicited advice as they navigate rocky personal relationships and share their story online.But this experience also deepens their relationship to their ancestors, providing added support from another realm. Walela's diagnosis becomes a catalyst for their self-realization. As they fill out forms in the insurance office in downtown Los Angeles or travel to therapy in wealthier neighborhoods, they begin to understand that cancer is where all forms of their oppression Disabled. Fat. Black. Queer. Nonbinary.In Bless the A Cancer Memoir , the author details a galvanizing account of their survival despite the U.S. medical system, and of the struggle to face death unafraid.

‘When you are someone that falls outside of categories in so many ways, a lot of things are said to you. And I have had a lot of things said to me.’In None of the Above, Travis Alabanza examines seven phrases people have directed at them about their gender identity. These phrases have stayed with them over the years. Some are deceptively innocuous, some deliberately loaded or offensive, some celebratory; sentences that have impacted them for better and for worse; sentences that speak to the broader issues raised by a world that insists that gender must be a binary.Through these seven phrases, which include some of their most transformative experiences as a Black, mixed race, non binary person, Travis Alabanza turns a mirror back on society, giving us reason to question the very framework in which we live and the ways we treat each other.

Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe has always longed for a sense of home. When she was a child, her family moved around frequently, often staying in barely habitable church attics and trailers, dangerous places for young Sasha.With little more to guide her than a passion for the thriving punk scene of the Pacific Northwest and a desire to live up to the responsibility of being the namesake of her beloved great-grandmother—a linguist who helped preserve her Indigenous language of Lushootseed—Sasha throws herself headlong into the world, determined to build a better future for herself and her people.Set against a backdrop of the breathtaking beauty of Coast Salish ancestral land and imbued with the universal spirit of punk, Red Paint is ultimately a story of the ways we learn to find our true selves while fighting for our right to claim a place of our own.Examining what it means to be vulnerable in love and in art, Sasha offers up an unblinking reckoning with personal traumas amplified by the collective historical traumas of colonialism and genocide that continue to haunt native peoples. Red Paint is an intersectional autobiography of lineage, resilience, and, above all, the ability to heal.

Our ancestors say our hair is our memories,our source of strength and power,a celebration of our lives.Mom never had long hair—she was told it was too wild. Grandma couldn’t have long hair—hers was taken from her. But one young girl can’t wait to grow her hair for herself, for her family, for her connection to her culture and the Earth, and to honor the strength and resilience of those who came before her.

The story of a Palestinian family's ties to the land, and how one young girl finds a way to care for her home, even as she says goodbye.It's 1967 in Nablus, Palestine.Oraib loves the olive trees that grow outside the refugee camp where she lives. Each harvest, she and her mama pick the small fruits and she eagerly stomp stomp stomps on them to release their golden oil. Olives have always tied her family to the land, as Oraib learns from the stories Mama tells of a home before war.But war has come to their door once more, forcing them to flee. Even as her family is uprooted, Oraib makes a solemn promise to her beloved olive trees. She will see to it that their legacy lives on for generations to come.Debut author-illustrator Aya Ghanameh boldly paints a tale of bitterness, hope, and the power of believing in a free and thriving future.

An Indigenous legend about how four extraordinary individuals of dual male and female spirit, or Mahu, brought healing arts from Tahiti to Hawaii, based on the Oscar Award-contending short film. In the 15th Century, four Mahu sail from Tahiti to Hawaii and share their gifts of science and healing with the people of Waikiki. The islanders return this gift with a monument of four boulders in their honor, which the Mahu imbue with healing powers before disappearing.As time passes, foreigners inhabit the island and the once sacred stones are forgotten until the 1960s. Though the true story of these stones was not fully recovered, the power of the Mahu still calls out to those who pass by them at Waikiki Beach today. 

Set in an internment camp where the United States cruelly detained Japanese Americans during WWII and based on true events, this moving love story finds hope in heartbreak.To fall in love is already a gift. But to fall in love in a place like Minidoka, a place built to make people feel like they weren’t human—that was miraculous.After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Tama is sent to live in a War Relocation Center in the desert. All Japanese Americans from the West Coast—elderly people, children, babies—now live in prison camps like Minidoka. To be who she is has become a crime, it seems, and Tama doesn’t know when or if she will ever leave. Trying not to think of the life she once had, she works in the camp’s tiny library, taking solace in pages bursting with color and light, love and fairness. And she isn’t the only one. George waits each morning by the door, his arms piled with books checked out the day before. As their friendship grows, Tama wonders: Can anyone possibly read so much? Is she the reason George comes to the library every day? Beautifully illustrated and complete with an afterword, back matter, and a photo of the real Tama and George—the author’s grandparents—Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s elegant love story for readers of all ages sheds light on a shameful chapter of American history.

In her debut picture book, professional Indigenous dancer Ria Thundercloud tells the true story of her path to dance and how it helped her take pride in her Native American heritage.At four years old, Ria Thundercloud was brought into the powwow circle, ready to dance in the special jingle dress her mother made for her. As she grew up, she danced with her brothers all over Indian country. Then Ria learned more styles--tap, jazz, ballet--but still loved the expressiveness of Indigenous dance. And despite feeling different as one of the only Native American kids in her school, she always knew she could turn to dance to cheer herself up.Follow along as Ria shares her dance journey--from dreaming of her future to performing as a professional--accompanied by striking illustrations that depict it while bringing her graceful movements to life.

These are only some of my picks for the month. I won’t be able to read them all this month, but I need to have options since I’m a mood reader.

What will you be reading this month for the challenge?

On the bookclub “Reading Diverse Romance” on Fable, we will be reading The Truth According to Ember by Danica Nava. Everyone is welcome to join us.

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