Happy Pride month! For June’s reading challenge, we’ve got something for every color of the rainbow — and every shade in between. If ever there was a month to feed your mind something new and outside your usual boxes, it’s June, when we celebrate all things queer, in every sense of the word. When people think of “summer reading,” they generally go to typical beach reads — thrillers, romances — but the Feed Your Mind challenge is all about defying expectations.
If you’re up for the challenge, here’s how Feed Your Mind works:
Each month, we create five prompts to follow; you can challenge yourself to complete one, all five, or any number in between. These prompts are designed to motivate you to:
-
Read more
-
Explore new content types
-
Help you find works that are outside of your usual go-to genres
The challenges are a mix of timely prompts and random, fun ideas.
Here are June’s prompts:
Read with Pride
We’re here to promote stories from LGBTQ+ community members sharing their pasts, the community’s history, and speculative but hopeful futures where queerness is wholeheartedly accepted. These are stories that celebrate love and gender in its many wonderful forms.
Relevant lists:
Celebrate recent graduates
The class of 2021 spent most of the school year learning remotely or with limited in-person interaction. These students spent it without all-nighters at the library or elaborate campus parties. They had to work extra hard with less support throughout the pandemic, so they could use a stirring graduation speech or two — perhaps more than any other class in recent history. Indulge in something inspiring that assures you the next year will definitely be better.
Relevant lists:
Celebrate awesome Dads
Give your dad an extra big hug this Father’s Day, just as you hopefully were able to for your mom on Mother’s Day. Dads have had to step up to the plate in a big way during the coronavirus pandemic. Read a book about dadhood, from funny memoirs to sweet portrayals of fathers in fiction.
Relevant lists:
Learn more about Juneteenth
Last year, at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, interest in learning about and celebrating Juneteenth (Emancipation Day) skyrocketed. The holiday is celebrated on June 19th, and it observes the end of slavery in the United States in 1865. Inequality among African Americans and white Americans has persisted through other biased legislation — the latest is a reckoning with how many interstates were built through once thriving Black communities 20, destroying their businesses and future prospects. Learn more about how America was built on the backs of slaves, and how this founding mistake reverberates throughout the country’s history.
Relevant list:
Read a microhistory
In our opinion, microhistories are some of the most delightful ways to learn quirky things (even better than Wikipedia rabbit holes). A microhistory focuses intensely on one thing — say, bananas — and tells the history of the world through the importance of this seemingly mundane item. There’s something weird in here for everyone. Fair warning: You probably won’t look at a fish the same way ever again. (We don’t.)
Relevant list:
