Recs if you like All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake...

Fictional stories about families spanning across multiple generations. Books that focus on the life of a matriarch or patriarch (roots) and continue along their blood lines (branches) in an epic tale. Please feel free to recommend any fictional stories that fit within this description.

Books you SHOULD be reading all year

A list of books about how we remember, or avoid remembering history.

Commemoration, memorials, monuments, narratives, and rhetoric.

Philosophical, creative and social justice themes. Decolonization focused.

Considering statues, museums, journalism, books, etc. with nuance and depth.

Understanding the love we received and needed, and the loving we do. Love as tradition preserved through mothering.

These books encourage new ways of thinking, help you see the world differently, and offer possibility.

These Diverse Baseline Challenge was created by @bookish.millennial & @themargherita.s (on instagram). In 2025, the goal is to read 1 book by a racialized author each month. 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.

This is a mix of recommendations by the challenge organizers and myself.

Women in Microhistories mainly - but some other notable ones!!!

Nobel, Pulitzer, National Book Award, Booker Prize, International Booker Prize, Women’s Prize, Lambda Literary Award, etc. winners

Shortlisted books

The Cundill History Prize is an annual Canadian literary award for history writing in English. The prize is awarded to an author whose book, published in the past year, demonstrates "historical scholarship, originality, literary quality and broad appeal".