The Importance of Diverse Reading + A 2025 Reading Challenge

Trigger Warning: This episode contains discussions of addiction, overdose, and mental health that may be upsetting to some listeners.

Are you ready to break free from the algorithm and discover a world of captivating stories?

In this inaugural episode of We Read Smut, Alesia dives deep into the importance of diversifying your reading list. She explores why representation matters in romance, how reading diversely can broaden your horizons and challenge biases, and how to break free from the limitations of algorithms that often promote only mainstream titles.

Key Takeaways:

• Why Diverse Reading Matters: Alesia shares her personal journey and emphasizes the power of seeing yourself reflected in the stories you read, as well as gaining empathy and understanding for experiences different from your own.
• The 2025 Reading Challenge: Discover the exciting new reading challenge designed to help you explore diverse authors and popular tropes. Each month focuses on a different trope, encouraging you to find books by BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ authors that feature that trope.
• Practical Tips for Diversifying Your Reading: Alesia offers actionable advice on how to actively seek out diverse authors and characters, including following diverse bookstagrammers, exploring different genres, and supporting publishers who prioritize diverse voices.

Ready to embark on a reading adventure that will open your mind and heart? Join the 2025 Reading Challenge and discover the incredible power of diverse reading! 

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Connect with Alesia:
Storygraph

This podcast was produced by Galati Media.
Proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.

Chapters

• 0:00 Importance of Diversifying Your Reading
• 4:35 Setting and Achieving Diversity Goals
• 6:46 Personal Impact of Diverse Reading
• 10:11 The 2025 Reading Challenge
• 12:08 Encouraging Diverse Reading Practices

Transcript

Alesia Galati: 0:00

Have you ever felt like you're stuck in a rut seeing the same stories and characters over and over again? It might be time to diversify your reading. Today, we're talking about why diversity matters in romance and why it's important for us to read diversely. Listener discretion is advised, this podcast contains mature content intended for adult audiences only. Welcome to the podcast. This is our very first episode, and this is a topic that I am extremely passionate about. My name is Alesia. I am an afro, Latina romance reader. I love reading so much a lot, and I wanted to start us off with the importance of not just reading diversely, but why this podcast is even here, is to encourage us to read diversely, to find authors outside of our typical scope, to encourage you to follow creators who are pushing the boundaries of what we see in the top five publishing companies. So I think this is going to be a lot of fun, but let me just kind of get into why reading diversely is so important to me as an afro Latina, it is so important that I see myself reflected in the stories I read. That does not mean that I only read afro, Latina MCs or main characters. What that means is that I also make sure to incorporate stories that have some of my lived experiences. And I understand the importance of seeing lived experiences outside of my own. But I want to take you back to 2022, during that year, I was reading almost exclusively whatever the algorithm was serving me, and that didn't really work well at all for me, because I only was reading white authors and white stories. Now there's nothing wrong with reading some white authors and some white stories, but as someone who's a person of color, as someone who has a platform that is encouraging other readers to read different books or new books or books that I enjoy, I knew it was important for me to shift so around that time, I started following a lot more bookish creators. I started following a lot more diverse people who were creating bookish content that were recommending books. And what that showed me is that the algorithm was lying to me. It was giving me only the books by the main publishers, instead of indie authors who are putting their heart and soul and lived experience into these books, I found that to be really frustrating, that the algorithm was cheating me of these incredible stories. So in 2023 I decided that I was going to read more diversely. While I did, read a lot more diversely in 2023 when I looked at the number of books that I had read versus the number of diverse books I read, the percentages were not looking good. It was 28% were bipoc authors, and then the rest were all white or unknown authors, and I was really mad at myself. Quite honestly. I was frustrated with myself that as someone who talks about this so openly, who is like read diversely, I was not showing up how I wanted to in the world. And so in 2024 I made a decision that I needed to bump those numbers up, and I wanted my number to be closer to 45% of diverse authors, or bipoc authors, versus the rest being white or unknown authors, meaning unknown that I don't know what their ethnicity is or their race. What I liked about that challenge is that every month, I was able to see what does that number look like. And I personally use story graph. I'm part of their premium subscription, and with their premium subscription, they have the ability to look at those stats a lot deeper. And I'm a stats girly. I love looking at my stats, the story graph is great for that, but I like having that ability to say, I'm tagging all of these books based on what I know about these authors, and then being able to say, am I reading as diversely as I said I was going to and being able to check that on a monthly basis. And that really allowed me to see that I had to be really intentional, that if I was looking at those numbers, and I was holding myself accountable, that I was actually going to do it. And so that was my mission for 2024 I am happy to say that I am currently, at the time of this recording, at about 68% Different bipoc authors, and the rest being white or unknown authors, it's about intention. When I think about the number of books that are out there, or the tropes that people like, there are so many diverse stories within those tropes, or that have those tropes. So I think that it's really important to diversify our shelves, to diversify our reading. One way that you can do that is through our new challenge that we are running this year. Last year, we did the bipoc ABC challenge, where you took a letter of either the author's name or the title of the book and filled out the entire alphabet with those stories, we had a few people complete the challenge, who brought to you. I'm so happy for you. We are still running that challenge. You can also follow that challenge on story graph, just like last year. It's still going to be around for this year as well, but we're not going to be focusing as heavily on it for this year. I wanted to create something a little different. I wanted to create almost like a book club, but for mood readers. And what I mean by that is, every month we are going to get a trope. For example, our January trope is friends to lovers. We're going to find diverse authors, meaning bipoc or LGBTQIA, plus authors who have that trope within their books. The goal here is to diversify your reading across the board, but to show people who are maybe curious about diversifying their shelves or diversifying their reading that it's easy, that you can literally find so many books within the tropes that we all know and love, that you can find that you're going to enjoy, and that just because these people have different lived experiences, you still get the joy of experiencing a trope You enjoy. But this is not the only reason why I started this challenge. I understand why diversity matters in reading one thing that it has done for me is it has allowed me to see other people's experiences that I previously had not I've shared the story on Instagram, and I'll share it here in 2019 my mom passed away due to a fentanyl overdose. She struggled for the majority of my life with addiction and with severe depression. She was also diagnosed with manic depression, and as someone who does not struggle with manic depression and does not struggle with drug addiction, I did not understand and I had a really hard time being able to relate to her and being able to understand her point of view, I would ask her, like, why do you do this? I don't understand why you keep making these choices? And she would say, Alesia, it's not a choice that I make. It just happens in the day. It's a culmination of moments that lead me to this point. And I did not understand, and I don't think I really wanted to understand either, especially because of how it impacted my childhood and the person that I am today. So I remember reading a book. I could not tell you the book at all, but I remember reading a book where the main character struggled with addiction, and they also struggled with depression and very severe depression. And I remember thinking, this is how my mom felt, and it gave me such a deeper perspective and understanding of her experience that I didn't have. That is the power of reading. That is the power of reading diversely, reading lived experiences that are not our own. I think that it can honestly make the world a better place. Another thing that it does is that it challenges the biases and stereotypes. In this podcast we talk with Carla is reading who is a Latina who shares a ton of Latina recommendations, and in there we talk about the challenging of the negative Hispanic and Latinx representation that we see in media, these stereotypes that actually don't empower us as Latinas. And I think that it's such a powerful conversation, and so make sure that you listen through for that one. So now we understand, hopefully, the power of reading diversely. Here are some practical ways that you can diversify your reading. First, seek out diverse authors and characters. This is really, really important as we are building our own library. Is we are building our own repertoire of books that we have in our space. Follow diverse books to grammars. We have a post. I'll make sure that I link it where I share a bunch of books to grammars that are diverse, that we like to follow and engage with. Follow book tubers, book bloggers, all of those that are diverse. Make sure that you check out diverse book lists and recommendations from your local library or bookstores. I get lists or collections from book sellers. So if you go to a bookseller's website, it is likely that they will have a section that is bipoc stories or bipoc authors or something like that. Check those out, buy them, invest your money in them. Take the time to read those stories. You can also support publishers and imprint that prioritize diverse voices. Another way is to explore different genres and formats. And I know that this might feel like, well, I like to read x, or I like to read romance, or I like to read historical, or like to read fantasy, maybe you just challenge yourself to read one book that is in a different genre than you typically read, or maybe in a different format. So one challenge for me at the end of 2024 was that I wanted to do my 10 before the end. But as a mood reader, I wanted to read two new to me authors, two backlist reads, two new formats, two recommendations from friends, and then finish two of the challenges that I was suing. And the two different formats that I picked was one comic book, and there are romance comic books, it is possible, and there are diverse romance comic books, and then a book of poems. And so I picked a book of poems by a bipoc author that is sharing poems about motherhood, because I'm a mom and so that is what I picked. That is outside of my typical reading style or scope, but I did it, and I know that you can too. It is important that we're mindful of the books that we choose and are actively seeking out to be those that are from diverse voices, even a small change, like adding one more diverse book to your reading list each month, and actually reading it can make a difference. It will open you up to new authors that you never even considered as options before, and you're gonna say, Wow, I need to read this author's entire backlog. I know I have done that before, and so I highly recommend just making a conscious effort of I'm going to do one thing, and that's going to add one book per month. Maybe I'm going to join the diverse trope challenge. There's so much power in diverse reading. I highly recommend that if you are interested join our diverse reading challenge that is from January to December. If you join in the middle, that's okay, too. The goal there is really to show that there is so much diversity in the stories that we can read and in the tropes that we know and love, you can find out more about that on our Instagram or at we read smut.com thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you. Please leave a rating and review if you enjoyed this episode and I cannot wait for you to hear the next episode you