Read Woke Challenge

Our February Reading Challenge was Beanstack's Read Woke Challenge, which encourages reading books from the following categories: African American Voices, Asian American Voices, Diverse Abilities, Female Voices, Hispanic American Voices, Immigration, LGBTQ+ Voices, Social Injustice, and Voices of Those Experiencing Poverty & Homelessness.

Links to We Need Diverse Books, Diverse Book Finder, Stay Woke From Home, and Antiracist Resources and Reads: Lists for All Ages are included in each category, and a place to list the book read and to write what you learned (and shared with a friend) are additional challenges.

Read Woke is a movement. It is a feeling. It is a style. It is a form of education. It is a call to action; it is our right as lifelong learners. It means arming yourself with knowledge in order to better protect your rights. Knowledge is power and no one can take it away. It means learning about others so that you can treat people with the respect and dignity that they deserve no matter their religion, race, creed, or color.

I concluded that a Woke Book must:

-Challenge a social norm;

-Give voice to the voiceless;

-Provide information about a group that has been disenfranchised;

-Seek to challenge the status quo ;

-Have a protagonist from an underrepresented or oppressed group;

-Cicely Lewis, creator of Read Woke