The Desi Challenge For Readers Who Love Diversity

Are you a reader who appreciates diversity? Are you always looking to include more diverse representation in your reading lists? Are you willing to add more south-asian books to your TBR in 2023? This challenge is meant for you!

The South Asian Reading Challenge is to help readers easily incorporate more south asian books in their reading plans. The guidelines are simple:

1. The author of the book should be south asian or the story should be centred around and/or inspired by south asia.
2. You have to start and finish the book in 2023.
3. That’s it!

Note: I’m always highly supportive of ownvoices books and request readers to prioritise such titles, but considering the occasional absolute inability in searching an author’s identity — and the offensive gatekeeping that might follow — this challenge allows readers to select books more widely.

All formats and any genre counts. Rereads count too! You can join in anytime since sign-ups are open throughout the year. 🎉

This region of the world includes eight countries: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Bhutan, and the Maldives. Both homeland and diaspora authors deserve all the love!

You have to announce your commitment to this challenge from the Himalayan peak. 📢

Just kidding.

There’s no sign-up form or specific requirements. From a Goodreads shelf to a Twitter thread and from a blog post to an Instagram post, you can choose to share this challenge or your progress anywhere. And even if you don’t say anything at all, it’s fine! My only request would be to link back to this page if you do mention the challenge somewhere online.

The official hashtags you can use are: #sarc | #southasianrc | #sarc2023

Are you a South Asian author? Make sure to let us know by replying to this tweet so we don’t miss you when setting up a comprehensive database of books by South Asian authors!

HEY! ✨ we're working to set up a database of south asian books and wish to miss no titles: both backlist & upcoming releases. so if you're a south asian author —whether from the diaspora or the homeland— please share a link to your website or your book's goodreads page below 💗
— South Asian Reading Challenge (@southasianrc) May 9, 2022

Upcoming Books We’re So Excited For! 🌸

Here are some South Asian books releasing in Spring 2023 that we absolutely can’t wait for. Add these to your TBR right away and let us know what you feel about them when you do pick them up on release.

Browse Our South Asian Reading Lists! ✨

Murder Mystery, Love Triangle, and 1970s Paris — 10 South Asian Books Out In March 2023

March is looking excellent for all the South Asian books releasing this month. There seems to be something for everyone, from fun romance to murder mystery. Rajani LaRocca’s follow up to the Newbery Honor Book, Red, White, and Whole is exciting as it brings twin sisters and music and prose and poetry together. Balli Kaur Jaswal, whose much-loved Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows was a Reese’s Book Club Pick is now bringing a murder mystery that dives into the Singaporean class hierarchy. Alisha Rai…