The Free Black Women’s Library Reading Challenge 2025
As we continue the 2025 Read Harder Challenge, I like to feature other reading challenges happening across the internet. I know many of you have multiple reading goals and challenges this year, with Read Harder being just one of them. One I learned about recently is The Free Black Women’s Library Reading Challenge 2025. This is the sixth year of the challenge, which invites readers to finish at least 24 books by Black women and Black nonbinary folks by the end of the year, choosing from 40 different prompts.
If you’re attempting both of these challenges, I have six books that will check off at least one The Free Black Women’s Library Reading Challenge 2025 prompt and one 2025 Read Harder Challenge task at the same time. Some of these overlap neatly, like “A hybrid or genre blending text” and “Read a genre-blending book,” while others just happen to be both relevant to the same book. In this list, I’ve included the Free Black Women’s Library Reading Challenge prompt and then the Read Harder Challenge task for each book.
“A nonfiction book that features LGBTQIA characters or content or an exploration of gender and sexuality”
“Read a book about little-known history.”
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman
In this illuminating history, Hartman explores the radical lives of young Black women in New York and Philadelphia during the early 20th century. She shares stories of women who broke away from expected racial and gender norms, creating queer and creative networks of kinship and support. It’s a hefty, thoughtfully researched, and moving work of scholarship that reexamines the prevalent, simple story about early 20th-century Black life and tells a much more nuanced and complicated one. —Laura Sackton
“A book that uses nature or the environment as theme or topic (fiction or nonfiction)”
“Read a nonfiction book about nature or the environment.”
Wild Life by Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant is a wildlife ecologist who has studied carnivores, including grizzly bears, African lions, and black bears. Wild Life is her memoir about her life, growing up in California and falling in love with the natural world. She decides to become a scientist in a field not known for its diversity. Tracking her adventures in her fieldwork and childhood, she makes the case that we are connected to everyone and everything and need to better care and share with the world. —Elisa Shoenberger
“A romance or erotic novel”
“Read a romance book that doesn’t have an illustrated cover.”
Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
It’s hard to determine the best when you’re talking Tia Williams, but there is just something about Seven Days in June. It grabs your heart and flings your body around with it until it lovingly settles you back on the ground, and the love story is definitely at its core. While A Love Song For Ricki Wilde is a gorgeous love story, Ricki’s growth is as much a central element to it. Seven Days in June introduces us to Eva and Shane, both authors who have a shared past. Through an alternating timeline, we see them come to love each other as teenagers and have to navigate trauma and misunderstandings as adults. Every sentence is a revelation, and you want these two very broken people to win. —Jessica Pryde
“A book of Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Afrofuturism or Fantasy”
“Read a standalone fantasy book.”
Even Though I Knew the End by C. L. Polk
Elena sold her soul to the devil 10 years ago. Their bargain runs out in three days, at which time the devil will collect what’s due. With the clock ticking down to her untimely death, Elena’s granted an 11th-hour opportunity: catch a serial killer to win back her soul. This job is the only hope she has of growing old with her beloved Edith, but can she solve the case before the devil comes to call? —K.W. Colyard
“A banned book”
“Read a banned book and complete a task on Book Riot’s How to Fight Book Bans guides.”
The Bluest Eye has been one of the top 10 most challenged and banned books every year since 2020 and often made the top 10 list before that.
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
In The Bluest Eye, I found my blackness. It was an intimate study of who these characters are as individuals and how I can see my reflection within each and every one of them. Not to mention, I felt intimidated by reading this novel. Morrison writes in such a way that she uses verbs that you would not think would go together with certain actions and situations, but they miraculously work. She is able to tie together every element of the story from the agriculture and farming habits to beauty, ugliness, and tumultuous family dynamics. There was never a dull moment. Each sentence moved the story forward with such energy that I devoured more than I intended each time I picked up the book to read another chapter, and I was still begging for more afterwards. —Morgan Jerkins
“A hybrid or genre blending text”
“Read a genre-blending book.”
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
Sci-fi meets historical fiction: this classic of science fiction is about a young Black woman in the present day who is disrupted when she inexplicably travels back in time. There she saves the life of a young white man, who turns out to be a relative, and she’ll return many more times to the past, but the danger grows each time. —Liberty Hardy
Are you doing any other reading challenges in addition to Read Harder? Let’s chat in the comments!
Check out all the previous 2025 Read Harder posts here.
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