Celebrating International Women’s Month comes in all shapes and forms from reflecting on the groundbreaking women in our respective fields to recognizing the work still left to be done. Back in January I made it a goal to diversify my 2025 reading list and so, for International Women’s Month, I’ve chosen to share some of my favorite stories by female authors from all over the world. Here are my top five reads by BIPOC women authors that I’ve read so far this year.

The Eyes are the Best Part - Monika Kim

Cover: TEATBP Cover.jpg

Rating: 5 stars

Release Date: June 25, 2024

Streaming: Audible and Everand

Page count: 278

Genre: Horror fiction, Suspense, Psychological Fiction

The Eyes are the Best Part, is the debut novel by second-generation Korean-American author Monika Kim that is sure to appeal to the true-crime lovers among us. The story starts off strong in the wake of our main character, Ji-won’s, family falling apart after her father’s extramarital affair. Ji-won quickly starts to unravel under the stress of her family turmoil and the pressures of her freshman year course load and starts to dream of bloody rooms filled with eyes, particularly those of her mother’s new boyfriend who is the definition of toxic masculinity. What follows is a thrilling, gory, and disturbing story of a woman pushed to her breaking point who loses all semblance of rationality and becomes obsessed with her revenge and the consumption of eyeballs. I loved it, then again I do love an unhinged woman character. The Eyes Are The Best Part is a quick read that gives an interesting take on the female serial killer trope. It is extremely fast paced which I know some have criticised it for, but I think it adds to the building derangement we see out of Ji-won. If you’re squeamish about eyes, do not like gore or violence, or are not a fan of descriptions of cannibalism, maybe skip this one.

Elatsoe - Darcie Little Badger

Cover: Elatsoe Cover.jpg

Rating: 5 stars

Release Date: August 25, 2020

Streaming: Audible and Everand

Page count: 368

Genre: Indigenous Speculative Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Paranormal fiction

I can honestly say that Elatsoe is likely unlike anything you’ve read before. It’s set in contemporary Texas and follows Ellie (nickname for Elatsoe), a Lipan Apache girl in a world that combines Apache stories with fairies and vampires and ghosts. Ellie has the ability to recall the ghosts of dead animals back into the realm of the living, through ancestral knowledge that has been passed down the women of her family for generations. One night, Kirby, the ghost of her beloved dog that she keeps as a companion, is spooked by some unknown cause. Soon after, Ellie learns that her cousin, Trevor, has died in a car accident. Trevor's ghost comes to Ellie in a dream and he tells her that his accident was no accident at all (*cue dramatic gasp here*) and that he was murdered by a wealthy local doctor in town. He asks her to protect his wife and infant son. Ellie then sets out on a mission to find out the truth about her cousin's death and along the way learns about her family history and a legendary ancestor that gives her the strength to defeat the evil forces in the fictional town of Willowbee, Texas. Now, I loved this book for the same reason a lot of people did not finish it. It’s technically a young adult fantasy novel. The main characters are 17 years old and Darcie Little Badger, a member of the Lipan Apache Nation herself, found ways to deal with some really heavy material for a slightly younger audience. For me, it was easy to read and I found myself really enjoying the fantastical elements of it. Some of the DNF-ers feel that it’s too young, that it reads as unpolished or unedited. Either way, I highly suggest it. It’s got a really satisfying ending and, if nothing else, it’s a nice escape from the real world.

Binti - Nnedi Okorafor

Cover: Binti Cover.jpg

Rating: 4 Stars

Release Date: June 25, 2024

Streaming: Audible

Page count: 90

Genre: Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction, Space Opera, Afrofuturism

Binti by Nigerian-American author Nnedi Okorafor is first in a trilogy of the same name. The narrator, Binti Ekeopara Zuzu Dambu Kaipka of Namib, is the first of her people, the Himba people of Earth, to ever be invited to attend the prestigious intergalactic academy Oomza Uni. She sets off into a wider universe where xenophobia is everywhere, and is suddenly and violently thrown into an interspecies conflict when the ship she’s traveling on is hijacked by the Meduse, a jellyfish-like alien species that was previously at war with another human ethnic group called the Khoush. Binti finds herself having to figure out how to only negotiate a powder keg of long-standing interspecies conflict in order to survive and save everyone at Oomza. Now, it is important to remember that this book is a novella. It’s only 90 pages. As such, it does not go as in depth and has some relatively glaring plot holes that I’m hoping are filled a bit more in the following books since I have not yet read the other books in the trilogy. That said, I thought this was a really cool take on the conflict between holding onto tradition and adapting to a larger world. It’s a pretty easy read and Okorafor is amazing at world building. Overall, I highly recommend it, especially to the science and math nerds out there.

The Poppy War - R.F. Kuang

Cover: TPW Cover.jpg

Rating: 4 stars

Release Date: May 1, 2018

Streaming: Audible and Everand (Coming in April)

Page count: 544

Genre: Fantasy Fiction, Grimdark, High fantasy, Historical fantasy

The Poppy War is R.F. Kuang’s fantasy debut, the first of another trilogy, that follows the life and experiences of the main character, Runin (Rin). The book has three parts, each focusing on a different chapter (pun fully intended) of her life. Part one centers around her studying for, testing into, and training at a prestigious military school. Part two is where the tone of the book greatly shifts to something darker and more intense as Rin joins her classmates in a war against her country's island neighbor, meanwhile learning to wield her newly-found shaman power. And finally, part is where The Poppy War earns its grimdark genre categorization as Rin and her comrades are in crisis after crisis and have to make some really tough calls in order to survive and save their country. I have a few mixed feelings about this one even though I thoroughly enjoyed the story. For one thing, Runin as a character is inconsistent with constantly changing motivations. The second is that I agree slightly with some of the book’s critics in that there could have been more attention put into the worldbuilding aspect. TPW isn’t set in a land based on China, it’s set in China with some strange changes to names that feel random at times. That said, Kuang details several of the atrocities from Chinese and East Asian history and gives space for the experiences of the victims of those atrocities. Some of those chapters are extremely hard to read as she does not sugar coat anything. To do so would be disrespectful to the memory of it. Still, I would highly recommend this book with a huge content warning for the descriptions of events in part three in particular.

The Cemetery of Untold Stories - Julia Alvarez

Cover: CoUS Cover.jpg

Rating: 5 Stars

Release Date: April 2, 2024

Streaming: Audible and Everand (Coming in April)

Page count: 256

Genre: Magical Realism, Historical Fiction

I am a huge fan of magical realism. I think it’s such a cool genre that has endless possibilities. The Cemetery of Untold Stories, does not disappoint and is one of several Julia Alvarez’s novels that I cannot recommend enough. The story starts with Alma, a retiring writer who moves back to the Dominican Republic from the US. She ultimately decides to bury the remnants of her stories and the characters she was unable to fully realize in a “cemetery of untold stories” (I love it when the title fits the story). Alma highers a local woman named Filomena as caretaker of her cemetery and they try to burn boxes of notes and manuscripts. Two of them don’t burn, however, those containing notes and manuscripts detailing the stories of Bienvenida Trujillo, the ex wife of the past dictator of Dominican Republic, and Dr. Manuel Cruz, Alma’s eccentric father. Over the course of the book, these characters have ideas of their own. They refuse to be buried and end up taking over parts of the narrative to be sure their stories are told. They speak to Filomena and to each other in a fascinating premise that I can’t seem to stop thinking about. There are some spots that are dark, some spots that are funny, and all of it is truly captivating as Alvarez explores themes of family (and family conflict), love, home, and connection through story. It took me a little longer to get through this one with the addition Filomena’s family drama added into the mix, there was just a lot to keep track of and I listened to the audiobook so I had to skip back at times when I got confused, but The Cemetery of Untold Stories is absolutely an incredible book that I will forever and loudly recommend to anyone who will listen.