Lez Liberty Lit: The End
Hi and welcome to the last-ever Lez Liberty Lit!
What we pay attention to grows.
Over the decade-ish that I’ve been writing this column, the number of published queer and trans stories has exploded. It used to feel possible to read all of them, because there were so few. Then it felt possible to at least track all of them. Now, they simply feel abundant.
This is, in case it’s not obvious, an extremely good thing. But it’s also not a sure thing.
It can be tempting, when you fight for something and then start to get it, to see it as static. Now that we have it, we will always have it. What a relief that would be, right? But queer stories, like queer pleasure and desire and love, must be part of an ongoing practice. We must continue to give them our attention and consideration and care.
If you take anything away from this space over the years, I hope it’s this: Seek out the stories that resonate with you, and when you can’t find them, write your own.
If you’d like to keep in touch, find me at rl.yates (insta), rlyatesofficial (twitter), rlyates (venmo if you want to buy me a coffee), or rlyates.com. Thank you so much for being here.
Lez Liberty Lit: Just for the Sake of It
Hi and welcome to this week’s Lez Liberty Lit!
At Electric Literature, McKayla Cole interviewed Lee Lai on her new graphic novel Stone Fruit, the transformative power of queer breakups, and the upsides of being embodied:
“I’m discovering more and more that there’s no limit to how much sensation you can experience if you’re willing to pay attention. That’s something a lot of people feel nostalgia about in their childhood, their ability to experience so much sensation. To be enthralled with dust in the air, or tasting a watermelon, or sticking your feet in pebbles. All of those things become really big, and they come with a lot of excitement and stimulation and pleasure. As an adult, being very preoccupied and busy, you get out of touch with experiencing sensations as much as you can. There’s something very childish about trying to take the time and hone in on sensations just for the sake of it.”
When schools ban books by people of color, kids suffer.
In their series about writing about trans people at Electric Literature, Eli Cugini writes about how to write about trans people, including a frank discussion of what cis people gain from doing so:
“To break a certain taboo: cis authors gain something from writing about trans people. That isn’t meant to imply that cis people shouldn’t ever write about us, or that cis people’s relationship to transness can only be mercenary and cruel. (Some of my best friends are cis, you are valid, etc.) It just means that most cis people must reach substantially outside their comfort zone and lived experience to write about transness, so, when they choose to do so, it tends to be for a few common reasons. Transness has plot utility and immense cultural power; it’s connected to modernity and a liberal, cosmopolitan sensibility that values diversity; it’s a key source of fascination and existential anxiety; and it’s the source of an ongoing liberation struggle, so it can genuinely be impactful to include trans people non-pejoratively as book characters.”
“How do we explore the trauma the AIDS crisis continues to enact and imagine a way out?”
Books should break us open.
We need better vocabulary than “closure” around grief.
Here are Electric Literature‘s favorite non-fiction books of 2021 and favorite poetry collections of 2021. And according to Lit Hub, these are the best-reviewed poetry collections of 2021, the best-reviewed short story collections of 2021, the best-reviewed memoirs and biographies of 2021, the best-reviewed mystery and crime books of 2021, the best-reviewed essay collections of 2021, and the best books of 2021 you may have missed.
75 of the Best Queer Books of 2021
Welcome to the best queer books of 2021! It’s always a joy to put together this list and marvel at the amazing LGBTQ+ work that writers and artists are putting out. This year was particularly great for nonfiction, so I’ve expanded that category from the usual five to eight books. The literary / contemporary fiction section is similarly eight instead of five books; there is consistently so much good stuff to choose from there that I can’t bear to narrow it down to five. 2021 was also a great year for queer horror, so you might notice this year it’s its own category instead of being combined with fantasy. Now, onto the books!
- Comics / Graphic Novels and Memoirs
- Fantasy
- Horror
- Historical Fiction
- Literary / Contemporary Fiction
- Memoir / Biography
- Middle Grade
- Mystery / Thriller
- Nonfiction
- Poetry
- Romance
- Science Fiction
- Young Adult Contemporary / Historical
- Young Adult Science Fiction / Fantasy / Horror
Comics / Graphic Novels and Memoirs
The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel
Bechdel’s graphic memoir is, superficially, about fitness and exercise. But more profoundly it’s a meditation on the interwovenness of the body and mind, the search to escape the prison of your own ego, and the profound power of nature. The art is classic Bechdel: precise, detailed, realist, and full of movement. Check out this Autostraddle interview with Bechdel about the book.
Shadow Life by Hiromi Goto and Ann Xu
Queer BIPOC elder representation shines in this graphic novel about Kumiko, a bisexual Japanese Canadian woman in her 70s who finds death has come too early for her. She intends to fight it. Xu’s art is exact and generous as it takes care to depict an elderly woman with dignity and to create an affectionate portrayal of East Vancouver.
Stone Fruit by Lee Lai
This alternately joyful and heartbreaking graphic novel in gorgeous blue-shaded watercolor tackles themes of family and vulnerability. Bron and Ray are a couple who enjoy their role as the weird queer aunties to Ray’s 6-year-old niece. At the same time as their intimate connection falters, both Ray and Bron reach out to their sisters, attempting to mend those relationships.
Red Rock Candy Baby by Shira Spector
Formally innovative in a way that is reminiscent of Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Spector’s unique graphic memoir covers an eventful ten years of her life. During that time, she struggled to get pregnant, her father was diagnosed and passed away from cancer, and family and partner relationships changed. The story begins in stark black ink; Spector slowly introduces color until it explodes into a full, bright palette.
Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Lisa Sterle
A dark feminist horror comic with a sapphic romance subplot and vintage horror aesthetics, Squad is a clever blend of The Craft and Buffy with a werewolf focus. Becca is the new girl at a posh school and is amazed when the popular clique recruits her. Surprise: They’re a werewolf pack.
Fantasy
The Unbroken by C.L. Clark
This dark, gripping military fantasy novel is concerned with colonization and racism, based on France’s occupation of North Africa. A soldier and a princess — both complex, fallible characters in their own right — each grapple with the emotional and practical horrors of empire, as well as with each other.
In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu
This novella is a beautifully layered and fragmented tale about surveillance, stories, belonging, and what makes a life worth living. It follows Amina, an extrasensory human, and how aer life changes after a chance encounter with a mysterious visitor to the city ae is tasked with watching.
She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
A queer reimagining of the story of the Ming dynasty founding emperor, Parker-Chan’s novel bursts with lyricism and heart. Zhu Chongba is a young boy given the fate of greatness. But it is he who perishes in a bandit attack, leaving his sister — fated to nothingness despite her intelligence and capability — behind.
The Bone Shard Emperor by Andrea Stewart
The second installment of the Drowning Empire epic fantasy series, The Bone Shard Emperor follows Lin as she assumes the throne amidst less than ideal circumstances. A unique magic system, alternating perspectives, and an action-packed last quarter make for a satisfying novel that avoids the middle book syndrome so many fantasy trilogies fall into.
The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri
An epic fantasy rooted in India’s mythologies and history, this smartly written and fiercely imagined novel tells the story of an imprisoned princess and a maidservant with forbidden magic. They become unlikely allies in the quest to save the empire from the princess’s traitorous brother.
Horror
Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw
A deliciously creepy and disorienting tale, Khaw’s haunted house story set in Japan centers a group of old friends from Malaysia with a history of ghost hunting. They have rented a Heian-era mansion; legend has it that an abandoned bride was buried in the house’s walls and a girl has been sacrificed every year since then to keep her company.
Queen of Teeth by Hailey Piper
Body horror competes with the terrors of big pharma in this invigorating futuristic horror story about a lesbian named Yaya who discovers she has a vagina dentata. She assumes it is a side effect of an experimental medication her mother took when she was pregnant, but when a pharmaceutical company comes after her she realizes it might be a new experiment altogether.
Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn
Rocklyn’s gothic horror fantasy debut is deeply immersive and deeply weird, with lyrical writing that belies the foulness of the content. Iraxi is a survivor and refugee on an arc fleeing a flooded kingdom; she is also pregnant and might be about to give birth to a monster.
Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt
Rumfitt’s terrifying gothic haunted house tale succeeds in bringing to life the terrors of fascism while also illuminating British trans life. The story centers on three friends who are forced to return to a haunted house they spent a horrifying night in three years ago.
Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon
Themes of monstrosity, anti-Black racism, memory, and the co-opting of activism dominate this exceptional story about Vern, a character who escapes to the forest from an oppressive cult. There she gives birth to twins, but continues to be haunted and hunted by her past as she undergoes a strange metamorphosis.
Historical Fiction
The Heiress: The Revelations of Anne De Bourgh by Molly Greeley
Taking a minor character from Pride and Prejudice, Greeley’s compassionate novel portrays Anne De Bourgh as a woman manipulated into taking laudanum and gaslit into believing she is ill and incapable. Her life changes when she flees the grips of her family’s control, establishes a new life in London, and discovers lesbian love!
Matrix by Lauren Groff
Set in medieval England, Matrix tells the enthralling story of Marie, who arrives as a new nun at an abbey with the mission of leading it back to prosperity. Themes of collective sisterhood, queer sexuality in a gender-segregated environment, religious visions, female power, and feminist leadership all feature in this unique and lively tale.
Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body by Megan Milks
This novel is a wildly weird masterpiece that would be at home in half of the categories on this list. It’s here in the historical fiction category because it is deeply 90s: a reimagining of tween girl series like the Babysitters Club, a brutally honest novel about a queer and trans coming of age and disordered eating, a choose your own adventure/video game style surreal journey through the body, and an intellectual adult reflection on all of this.
Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton
A contemporary directionless trans woman writes fan letters to the lead/songwriter of a fictional 60s band a la The Beach Boys. The musician’s life turns out to intersect with hers in unforeseen ways, including their shared trans identity. Thornton brilliantly employs the epistolary form to bring the reader into the world of the LA 60s pop music scene while insightfully establishing the contrasts and similarities between the two women’s lives.
The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo
Although this dreamlike Great Gatsby retelling includes a magical aspect, the focus is on the experience of being a queer adopted Vietnamese immigrant socialite in the American jazz age. Daisy’s friend and occasional narrator Jordan from the original novel is the focus here as Vo creates a fascinating character study of her and her precarious place in 1920s rich white American society.
Literary / Contemporary Fiction
The Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine
With keen observation and lush characterization, Alameddine weaves a story about conflict and refugees centering an Arab American trans lesbian doctor named Mina. Mina goes to Lesbos to help at the Syrian refugee camp, but she finds herself suffocated by the helplessness she feels in the face of the crisis. The novel is both a celebration and a tragedy.
With Teeth by Kristen Arnett
Peering beneath the skin of an attempt to have a perfect queer family, Arnett’s latest novel looks at a number of messy entities: lesbian motherhood, a challenging kid, and a troubled marriage. The protagonist Sammie, her wife Monika, and their son Samson are rich and fully realized. The result is a candid, darkly funny, brash, and simultaneously warm and tense novel. Read the interview with Kristen Arnett on Autostraddle by Drew Gregory.
Milk Fed by Melissa Broder
Full of dark humor, food, and religion, Broder’s tale is about a deeply unhappy woman who has replaced Judaism with calorie counting. Then she meets Miriam, a zaftig young Orthodox Jewish woman who works at a frozen yogurt shop and wants to feed her. Kate Gorton reviews the book in full on Autostraddle.
Skye Falling by Mia McKenzie
Skye is a queer Black woman nearing forty who loves her no-strings-attached life. But it turns out she can’t do without relationships once she returns to her hometown of Philadelphia and meets a kid who tells Skye she is one of the eggs Skye donated in her twenties. With a keen sense of place and community, McKenzie creates a moving story of midlife transformation.
We Are Watching Eliza Bright by A.E. Osworth
An incisive response to GamerGate, Osworth’s debut novel makes use of a clever first person plural narrative point of view as it investigates internet trolling, sexism in video game culture, voyeurism, fandom, and “sixterhood.” The excellently paced action takes place in both real life — aka meatspace — and in a massive multiplayer online role playing game made by the studio that Eliza works for. On Autostraddle, check out this author interview as well as a full review by Kate Gorton.
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
As Drew Gregory’s review on Autostraddle declares, Peters’ debut novel “is for trans women—the rest of you are lucky to read it.” The story is about three women — two trans and one cis — who are entangled in a kind of love triangle involving a breakup, a detransition, and an accidental pregnancy. It is as emotionally true as it is intellectually stunning.
A Dream of a Woman by Casey Plett
Plett’s trademark skills at authentic characterization, evocative setting, and insight into the lives of trans women are on full display in this superb collection of short stories. The stories crackle with quiet complexity as they cover topics like a woman returning to her Mennonite roots while visiting a lover and another leaving the Portland’s queer utopia to transition in New York’s anonymity.
Blue Skinned Gods by SJ Sindu
SJ Sindu’s sophomore novel is epic in terms of scale, theme, and prose. Moving from Tamil Nadu to New York City and spanning a decade, this story explores faith; ethnic, gender, and sexual identity; and global interconnectivity through the life of Kalki. Kalki is a person born with blue skin and believed to be the reincarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu; but just as he is supposed to come into his power, he begins to question it.
Memoir / Biography
The Natural Mother of the Child by Krys Malcom Belc
The topics of conceiving, pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding are explored from the perspective of a trans masculine nonbinary parent in this perceptive memoir in lyric essays. Using documents such as birth certificates and childhood photographs, Belc investigates how these experiences clarified his gender and opened up new ideas of parenthood and family.
Broken Horses by Brandi Carlile
Acclaimed lesbian musician Brandi Carlile tells the story of her life so far, including growing up in a financially poor but musically rich family, tension between her queer sexuality and Christian faith, 15 years of touring, six albums, and raising two kids with her wife. The memoir is poignant, engaging, and inspiring.
Dear Senthuran by Akwaeke Emezi
Subtitled “a Black Spirit Memoir,” this fierce, tender book is written in Emezi’s trademark eloquent and insightful prose. Through letters to Emezi’s friends, lovers, and family, they explore their creative journey to writerhood; their gender and body; mental health; hunger for success; spiritual, emotional, and romantic relationships; and more.
A History of Scars by Laura Lee
Lee delves into her legacy of trauma as the queer kid of Korean immigrant parents, as well as topics as diverse as mountain climbing, sexuality, cooking, writing, Alzheimers, and being a student. Her writing is vivid, raw, and intimate.
The One You Want to Marry by Sophie Santos
In her refreshingly honest voice, comedian Sophie Santos traces the winding path through many different identities: tomboy, emo theater kid, pageant queen, sorority sister, and, finally “calm” lesbian. In her review for Autostraddle, Analyssa calls the memoir “quite funny [as] Santos rips through stories that are awkward, painfully relatable or even deeply embarrassing.”
Middle Grade
Almost Flying by Jake Maia Arlow
The delight and chaos of an amusement park make a fitting setting for this heartwarming story about a middle grader named Dalia who ends up on a trip with her soon-to-be stepsister Alexa, Alexa’s secret girlfriend, and Dalia’s new friend Rani. Keeping Alexa’s secret makes Dalia realize she might have the same one herself: she has a crush on Rani.
Hazel Bly and the Deep Blue Sea by Ashley Herring Blake
Blake has an excellent track record with compassionate and complex queer middle grade books and her latest novel is no different. After one of Hazel’s moms dies in an accident, she is left with anxiety and a mama who hasn’t settled anywhere for more than a few months. An unexpectedly long stop in a small town known for a legendary mermaid changes everything.
The Deepest Breath by Meg Grehan
This Irish novel-in-verse about 11-year-old bookish Stevie was published in North America this year and what a gift. It’s a quiet, thoughtful character study of a girl learning that she likes girls (through books and a helpful librarian!) and sharing her revelations with her mom.
A Touch of Ruckus by Ash Van Otterloo
This ghost hunting story set in the forest features a queer girl, Tennessee, and her nonbinary crush/friend, Fox. Secret keeping, rural queer experiences, mental health, and the pressure to stifle yourself to keep the peace are all explored with compassion and insight.
Artie and the Wolf Moon by Olivia Stephens
When eighth grader Artie discovers she comes from a long line of werewolves, she is thrilled to join a new community, where she finds a new friend and crush. But she also learns some scary news: vampires are the real threat in the woods! Stephens’ paranormal graphic novel is full of unique lore and world-building as well as warm themes of family, community, and human-animal relationships.
Mystery / Thriller
Dead Dead Girls by Nekesa Afia
The first book in a new historical series called Harlem Renaissance Mysteries features a fascinating Black sapphic character with a traumatic past. In Louise Lloyd’s first case (reluctantly taken), she investigates the murders of several local Black women.
Journey to Cash by Ashley Bartlett
Cash’s past as a drug dealer and police informant comes back to haunt her just as she’s moving on in the last installment of Bartlett’s authentically queer millennial crime series. Diving as always into morally grey waters, this book hinges on Cash’s ex-girlfriend returning from her disappearance with news that Cash’s ex-business partner wants to kill them both.
The Final Child by Fran Dorricott
In this chilling psychological thriller, a woman who escaped a serial killer kidnapping as a kid is reminded that the past is not far behind her when a journalist wants to interview her about the experience. It’s a welcome addition of sapphic characters and lesbian romance subplot to a genre sorely lacking in both.
Warn Me When It’s Time by Cheryl A. Head
The sixth book in the Charlie Mack Motown Mystery series, this exciting novel with compelling Black lesbian representation follows private investigator Mack and her team as they attempt to track down a hate group. They are hired by the children of an imam who was killed in a recent arson at his mosque. As the Mack team investigates, they discover the group’s roots go much deeper than they thought.
Unbreakable by Cari Hunter
This engaging well-paced mystery follows two parallel storylines that eventually intersect with a bang. In one, a doctor is held at gunpoint and forced to treat the serious injuries of her abductor. In the other, detective sergeant Safia Faris is on a murder case that turns out to be much less straight forward than it seemed at first.
Nonfiction
What Fresh Hell Is This? by Heather Corinna
This hilarious and informative guide to “perimenopause, menopause, and other indignities” is chock full of what you need to know, with an explicit emphasis on including those whose experiences are often left out of reproductive health discussions. There are also illustrations by Archie Bongiovanni! Kaelyn reviews the book on Autostraddle, calling it “fun and refreshing.”
We Are the Babysitters Club edited by Marisa Crawford and Megan Milks
The artistic and prose work in this anthology is as engaging formally as it is in content: graphic pieces and comics mix with essays on topics like fashion, disability, race, and friendship. The legacy of The Babysitters Club is critiqued as well as celebrated. Check out the Autostraddle roundtable on the book!
The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye
Bolding taking on the rise of trans misogyny specifically and transphobia generally in the U.K., British trans feminist Shon Faye focuses her work on how the actual material oppression that trans people face is being ignored. Her socialist feminist arguments are as convincing as they are refreshing.
Girlhood by Melissa Febos
This enthralling and revelatory blend of memoir, reporting, and critique examines the stifling narratives of girl- and womanhood that women grow up with. Febos also sets out to replace the harmful values with ones that prioritize women’s health, happiness, and freedom. Read a full review by Luna Adler on Autostraddle.
Crip Kinship by Shayda Kafai
Sins Invalid, a queer disability justice performance project, is the subject of this empowering and revolutionary book. The history of the organization’s art and activism is explored and expanded on as Kafai shares the wisdom and lessons disabled, queer, and trans people of color have for collective survival. She also looks at what disability justice is capable of.
On Freedom by Maggie Nelson
The concept of freedom, as Nelson notes, can be alternately enlivening and nihilistic as it continues to dominate the four areas she investigates: art, sex, drugs, and climate. Moving between analyzing pop culture and critical theory to discussing her own lived experience, Nelson asks many thought-provoking questions that defy easy answers.
Our Work Is Everywhere by Syan Rose
This genre-bending anthology about queer and trans resistance packs a big punch for a short book. It moves between interviews, essays, conversations, and more, all accompanied by Rose’s intricate, expansive illustrations. Containing both rage and celebration, the book explores topics such as Black femme mental health, sex worker activism, and queer fat performance art.
The Care We Dream of edited by Zena Sharman
This unique anthology collects essays by Sharman on topics such as queering health and kinship as well as fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and interviews with health care workers and researchers on the LGBTQ+ healthcare they dream of. As the subtitle declares, the feast of content is truly “liberatory and transformative.”
Poetry
Villainy by Andrea Abi-Karam
Punk in content and form, Abi-Karam’s second poetry collection is a vision and a call to action for a thriving queer abolitionist future. Desire and rage, protest and sex, coexist as the poems embody how to be “an accomplice to radical action.”
The Good Arabs by Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch
Investigating how we might love under the circumstances of social injustice, sorrow, and disaster, this collection of verse and prose poems is thoughtful and lyrical. El Bechelany-Lynch looks at bodies and identities — Arab, trans, queer — as well as places and times: humid Montreal summer’s, Lebanon during the 2015 garbage crisis, and the aftermath of the Beirut explosion.
The Renunciations by Donika Kelly
Kelly’s heartbreaking and affecting collection is concerned with trauma, survival, and resilience, particularly in response to childhood sexual abuse. The poems have incredible movement and innovative formal play, such as using parentheses to convey what cannot be expressed.
Dreaming of You by Melissa Lozada-Oliva
Wildly weird and magical, Lozada-Oliva’s novel-in-verse is about a young Latinx poet, Melissa, who resurrects Tejano pop star Selena. The resurrection leads her on a journey through a spirit world populated by her own shadow self, karaoke, and a dead celebrity prom. Featuring themes of fandom, grief, queer identity, and loneliness.
Magnified by Minnie Bruce Pratt
Love, loss, grief, and communism in her life with Leslie Feinberg dominate this collection as Pratt lingers on the tiniest of details. As the title implies, these details of both nature and caretaking for an ill loved one are enhanced to breathtaking and heartbreaking effect. Check out this Autostraddle interview with Pratt about the book.
Romance
For the Love of April French by Penny Aimes
This sweet, feel-good BDSM debut romance by and about a trans woman is a very welcome addition to LGBTQ+ romance. April is a wonderfully crafted character: a nurturing type of mommi with a side of nerdiness, intelligence, and relatable insecurity. Her love interest, Dennis, is equally nerdy, as well as matching her mommi with cute dad vibes.
Night Tide by Anna Burke
An affecting enemies-to-lovers story that tackles privilege and chronic illness, Night Tide features two women who went to veterinary school together. They’ve tended to push each other’s buttons, sometimes bringing out the worst in each other. When circumstances find them working at the same vet clinic together, the result is an emotionally vivid and intimate love story.
How to Find a Princess by Alyssa Cole
This Anastasia retelling is a delightful fairy tale story of queer Black love between a long lost princess and the private investigator tasked with tracking her down. With steamy sex scenes, delicious slow burn chemistry, and exciting travel adventures (featuring fun tropes like there’s only one bed!), How to Find a Princess is a big winner.
One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston
McQuiston’s swoony rom com is full of optimism, humor, queer found family, dirty NYC sensory details, and lusty queer love. Also: a clever time travel twist that presents, shall we say, unique obstacles for the couple’s happily ever after. Read Heather’s glowing review for Autostraddle.
Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers
A delicious mix of romance and late 20s coming of age tale, Rogers’ debut follows Grace, an over-achieving grad student who gets impulsively married in Vegas to a woman she just met. The result of this uncharacteristic move is a tender, authentically messy story about the benefits of letting go of a strictly controlled life.
Science Fiction
A Natural History of Transition by Callum Angus
In this extraordinary collection of short stories, Angus takes the often trod thematic path of trans characters and transition and presents them in a completely new, surprising, and thought-provoking way. The stories blend keen observations on future life with fabulist, magical elements as well as details of the natural world.
Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
Aoki’s joyful science fiction fantasy features donuts, queer alien love, curses, and bargains for the soul. Infused with musicality, the novel tells the story of trans runaway Katrina, an extraordinary violin player, and Shizuka, who needs to make a violin prodigy like Katrina sell her soul.
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
The first book in Chambers’ new Monk and Robot series displays her trademark optimism, warmth, unique world-building and rich characterization. An agender traveling tea monk meets a robot, who asks an age old question: “What do people need?”
Future Feeling by Joss Lake
Future advanced technology and witchcraft come together in this wickedly funny, inventive, and eloquent satire about two trans guys, their mutual resentment, and the other trans guy who gets stuck in the crossfire. Themes include trans kinship, magic, social media, human connection, and jealousy.
A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
The sequel to 2019’s A Memory Called Empire, this show-stopping space opera absolutely lives up to the intricate world-building, bubbling action, and intimate characterization its predecessor exemplified. In this installment, Mahit and Three Seagrass face off against an unknown alien enemy, a last resort diplomatic envoy. Read this excerpt on Autostraddle!
Young Adult Contemporary / Historical
Love is for Losers by Wibke Brueggemann
This sex-positive novel in diary format is a true romantic comedy: biting, sharp humor and a swoony slow burn queer romance. At first 15-year-old Phoebe is convinced falling in love is for the birds. But while volunteering at a thrift store, Phoebe meets Emma, who might just disprove all her theories.
Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating by Adiba Jaigirdar
Two very different Bengali queer teen girls, popular Hani and academic overachiever Ishu, fall in love in this delightful take on the fake dating trope. Hani’s friends don’t believe she’s bisexual if she’s only dated guys and Ishu needs a boost in popularity to meet her goal of becoming head girl — the situation is perfect for a fauxmance. Too bad they’re catching feelings!
Rise to the Sun by Leah Johnson
There is a remarkable depth and fierce honesty to Johnson’s characters in this summertime tale of queer Black love set at a music festival. Olivia and Toni’s stories investigate loss, grief, isolation, and the healing power of music. Read Carmen’s interview with Johnson, where she declares “Leah Johnson is the Toni Morrison of queer YA.” You can also read an excerpt of Rise to the Sun right here on Autostraddle!
Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo
Lo’s colorful, captivating historical YA is set in 1950s San Francisco Chinatown. Two teen girls, Lily and Kathleen, risk everything for their love, at the same time as the so-called Red Scare threatens Chinese Americans like Lily and her family. Now a National Book Award winner!
The Girls I’ve Been by Tess Sharpe
This novel is both a page-turning thriller and a deeply moving account of going through and healing from trauma. Nora is the daughter of a con artist who, along with her new girlfriend and ex/BFF, is held hostage at a bank during a robbery. In order to survive, Nora might have to brush off her old skills.
Young Adult Science Fiction / Fantasy / Horror
Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
Ace of Spades is YA’s answer to the new popularity of dark academia, with queer (bisexual girl and gay boy) Black characters to boot! Àbíké-Íyímídé deftly examines the interweaving of class, queerness, and Black identity in this heart-racing horror mystery thriller where two Black students at a predominantly white private school are targeted by an anonymous texter revealing their secrets to the world.
To Break a Covenant by Alison Ames
A chilling queer feminist horror thriller, To Break a Covenant is set in a wonderfully realized creepy town called Moon Basin, which is known for being haunted after a mine explosion killed 16 people. Residents of the town are experiencing spooky, peculiar phenomena like night terrors and hearing strange voices. Four teen girls decide to take matters into their own hands, descending into the mine to learn the truth.
This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron
Bayron’s sophomore novel is a contemporary fantasy deeply influenced by Greek mythology, a fascination with plants, and a dedication to complex queer Black representation. Briseis is a young woman with a strange and dangerous power that allows her to make any plant blossom instantly with her touch. When she and her moms leave Brooklyn to spend the summer at a dilapidated rural estate, she discovers the true depth of her power.
The Heartbreak Bakery by A.R. Capetta
Syd is an agender teen baker who gets into a big ol’ mess after baking a batch of magical brownies after being dumped. It turns out everyone who eats them breaks up, including the owners of the queer bakery where Syd works. Can Syd fix it before it’s too late? This cozy magical realist story is a delightful love letter to queer love and community.
A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger
Themes of magic, family, asexuality, and traditional storytelling dominate in Lipan Apache author Darcie Little Badger’s delightful and uplifting second YA novel. A Lipan girl named Nina collides with Oli who is from the land of spirits and monsters. But some people will do anything to keep them apart. This is a wholesome, elegantly written read guaranteed to warm your heart!
Let’s talk books in the comments! What were the best queer books of 2021 according to you? Have you read any of the ones featured on this list? Did I leave off any of your favourites? Any queer reads coming out in 2022 you’re looking forward to? Please share!
Quiz: Which Wintery Queer Book Should You Read This Holigay Season?
Whether or not you love the winter holiday season, Autostraddle’s resident lesbrarian has got some great reads for you this December! Just take this quiz and I will match you with an amazing queer book. Looking for a sweet Christmas-themed rom com? Got you covered. Want to indulge in holiday melancholy while reading short stories featuring queer Black characters? Check! Looking for a kinky Hanukkah-themed story? Oh, we’ve got that option too. How about a group of trans women friends supporting each other through the winter in Winnipeg? Yes, that’s also one of the choices. Let us all know in the comments which book you got and share any other wintery queer book recommendations for this time of year.
Holigay Gift Guide: What To Buy for Book Lovers (Other Than Books)
It should be easy to buy gifts for book lovers, right? Wrong!!!!! Every time I try to buy my girlfriend a book, it turns into an arduous process of 1. Trying to figure out if she already has read said book 2. Trying to figure out if she already owns said book (though this has gotten easier ever since we pared down and organized our bookshelves) and 3. Trying to figure out if she would even like said book. In theory, that last one should be easy! I have tons of data to work with. I know what books she has read recently and loved. I know her all-time favorites. We are both writers, so we talk about books…almost every day? And yet, because she has read so many books, I try to branch out to writers she has never read before, and that is sometimes a risk! I know it’s not my fault if I get her a book that ends up just being okay or not totally her thing, and yet I DON’T WANT THAT TO HAPPEN! Simply love to put unnecessary pressure on myself during the holiday season.
All that aside, the holidays are an incredibly stressful year for independent bookstores and booksellers. This year, that stress is magnified by the looming supply chain issues. Frankly, if you’re planning on buying books for your holiday shopping, you should have gotten that done months ago! There’s still time, of course, to visit your local indie bookstore in person. And please (I hope this goes without saying?) don’t throw a fit if they don’t have the exact book you want in stock! There is a very serious book shortage impacting all sides of the book industry right now. Take that into consideration when buying bookish gifts this year — especially now that we’re in December.
Also, consider this: You don’t have to buy a book for the reader in your life. You can celebrate their passion in other ways, like with some of the products below! You can also support indie bookstores by buying gift cards! It makes for a great stocking stuffer, and it lets the receiver pick out their own books, taking off some of the pressure on you to figure out what they haven’t read yet. Check out this list of Black owned bookstores by state, this list of Indigenous owned bookstores, and this list of queer indie merchants (command+F “book” to find the bookstores). Also check to see if your local bookstore sells merch like mugs, totes, and shirts.
Here are some gifts for book lovers (most are $35 and under!) other than books.
Shelf Control
1. Wooden Book Rack With Built In Bookmarks ($250) // 2. Book Shelf Dividers ($26) // 3. Vase Bookends ($39) // 4. Tabletop Book Display ($35)
Listen, you don’t want to go messing around with another person’s book organization system, but here are some noninvasive shelf-related gift ideas. Etsy is full of fancy display shelves, like this hanging one that also serves as a bookmarker for the titles on display. It would look great in a bedroom for someone who reads multiple books at once! Shelf dividers give any space a libraryesque feel, and bookends can be multifunctional, like this vase one or this hybrid pencil cup/book end set. And chances are, if they love to read, they’ve got a to-be-read pile through the roof. Maybe instead of just leaving a stack of books haphazardly on their nightstand or coffee table (guilty!), they could use a wooden tabletop book display to add a little style and panache to the chaos. Make them feel special with a vintage version like this one or this one.
Bookworm Decor
1. Literary Insults Poster ($25) // 2. Customizable Book Planter ($15) // 3. Vintage Book Ornament ($15) // 4. Lesbian Pulp Fiction Mug ($23) // 5. Lesbian Hell Print ($13) // 6. Reading Pillow ($18)
Every bookworm’s home could use some lit decor, whether it’s something in-your-face like this literary insults poster or something a little more personal and subtle, like this little planter you can customize with someone’s favorite book titles. For a gift exchange or stocking stuffer, consider a bookish ornament, like this one made from vintage books or these actually vintage options. For a lover of some lesbian pulp: this multi-cover mug or this Lesbian Hell print. And every reading nook could use some plush pillows. There are fancy options, like these velvet ones, but I also love a good old-fashioned reading pillow with arms.
Having Fun Isn’t Hard When You Have A Library Card
1. Library Due Date Card Coasters ($13) // 2. Library Card Socks ($12) // 3. Library Necklace ($13)
Is one of my personality traits “dates a librarian”? MAYBE SO. In addition to the above, you can’t go wrong with a Buffy-inspired Kiss the Librarian mug or enamel pin.
Reading Power Tools
1. Pressed Flower Bookmarks ($14) // 2. Rechargeable Book Light ($20) // 3. Highlighter Set ($8) // 4. The Book Lover’s Journal ($34)
I have been obsessed with pressed flowers lately, and Etsy is chock-full of pressed flower shit, including bookmarks! An underrated piece of technology: clip-on book lights! My parents got me a book light for Christmas when I was in middle school, and it was a perfect gift, because it meant I could secretly stay up past bedtime reading. If you’ve got an academic reader or a writer to buy for, highlighters are always useful. On that note, I don’t think I’ve ever met a reader (or writer!) who doesn’t appreciate post-its/sticky tabs! They make a fun stocking stuffer, especially some of the ~aesthetic~ ones sold on Etsy. The idea of a “book journal” always seemed kind of corny to me, but this year I started tracking every book I read on Instagram, and I loved it? It might be nice to have a more physical record.
Word Games
1. Ex Libris ($29) // 2. The World Of Jane Austen Puzzle ($20) // 3. New Yorker Playing Cards ($10) // 4. Scrabble Deluxe ($120)
I know I already said what I want for Christmas in our Ultimate Team Gift Guide, but I take it back! All I want for Christmas is fancy Scrabble or fancy Boggle or plain ol’ Bananagrams! Also, Ex Libris is one of the most underrated games of all time, and if there are any writers/bookworms in your life, you should absolutely get it for them.
Get Lit
1. Stack Of Books Rocks Glass ($15) // 2. Vintage Encyclopedia Ice Bucket ($45) // 3. Customizable Book Cover Wine Charms ($27)
You know, gifts for book lovers that double as bar cart decor! Perfect for the book club that’s more about the wine than about the books.
Lez Liberty Lit: Do Not Privatize Libraries
Hi and welcome to this week’s Lez Liberty Lit!
Here are the books parents want to ban in schools now. And here’s why banning books is banning voices.
“Real inclusion means centering voices, not just bodies — especially for queer Chinese Americans,” Jade Song writes at Electric Literature:
“The relegation of these Chinese American characters’ bodies into tools, into objects, is precisely why I cannot let go of them. I have seen us become objects far too often. I want so much more for Katrina and Jane, for myself, for my community. I want us to free ourselves from the weight of narratives we have been cursed to live under. Our bodies deserve autonomy. Our bodies deserve our selves.”
Zen Cho talked to Electric Literature about domestic mundanity in her magical worlds, believing in ghosts, finding her voice and more.
Nonlinear narratives are not just for novels.
Don’t wait for permission to write. Also, developing a structure can change your writing life. So can creating the workspace you need.
Here’s how being a pen pal helps incarcerated populations.
Here’s how to design your own reading intensive.
Read these lesser-known stoner novels, with cannabis pairings. Read these interviews with and stories by Native writers. Read these books in translation from Central Africa. Read these queer books without romances.
Lez Liberty Lit: Queer Books as Hydra
Hello and welcome to this week’s Lez Liberty Lit!
At Book Riot, Danika Ellis writes about queer books as an unstoppable hydra:
“I’ve been writing about queer books for more than a decade. I’ve seen the golden age of queer YA dawn. You might have been able to list and try to ban every queer kids and YA book in the 80s and 90s, but you’re too late now. Queer readers and authors have finally wedged a toe into the publishing industry, and we’re just getting started. You can ban 500 books, but more are on their way every week. Queer books are a hydra now: you cut off one head and two more will appear. We can write faster than you can even bother to keyword search. Bring it on.”
“Ford executes her task with both unstinting honesty and rare tenderness toward the deeply flawed, but steadfast, circle of adults who raised her. The resulting portraits, of her mother and grandmother, in particular, are remarkably vivid and humane, haunting the reader long after one has closed the book’s pages,” writes Ellen Wayland-Smith in a review of Ashley C. Ford’s Somebody’s Daughter at the Los Angeles Review of Books.
At Electric Literature, Sadie Graham discusses the problem of queerness in Sally Rooney’s work, “namely, that while the novel flirts with certain queer questions, theories, and antecedents, and casts longing glances after what-might-have-beens, it largely carries forward in the most heterosexual manner possible, deciding against the turn toward more interesting narrative territory, investing and reinvesting in straightness—to its detriment—until the very last page.”
Here are some photos of women in trees from a book by the same name.
What’s the final word on color-coded bookshelves? “Perhaps those who care about how someone else organizes their books in their own home and judges them accordingly should consider taking up a pastime that doesn’t make them look like an absolute dickhead.”
Rax King, author of Tacky, talked to Electric Literature on wearing animal prints, unselfconscious sincerity, virtuous shoplifting and liking what you like:
“As I got a little older, it became obvious that these things I liked so much were not cool at all. Other people, who seemed smarter and more worldly than me, who I really wanted to impress, they did not like any of the same stuff as me. And it was a moment of forced reeducation, like I needed to get on board if I wanted to make friends with the cool smart people—which I did, because I was 16 and shallow.
And after long enough time passed and I was no longer in high school, I felt comfortable revisiting all this stuff I used to like, and it turns out all of it is still awesome. So I was right, everyone else was wrong. You can quote me on that.”
Read these short story collections about the uncanny. Read these books on defiant women. Read these books in November. Read these books when you want to celebrate the Harlem Renaissance. Read these books by intersex authors. Read these fiction books that grapple with illness. Read this genre-bending nonfiction. Read these seven books about immigrants encountering the American south. Read these books with Millennial narrators who are children of immigrants.
Jen Winstons’ Greedy Reminds You To Remember The “And”
The first time I heard the word “Greedy” weaponized against bisexuality was in high school. A friend found me after dance class and informed me that our dance teacher, one of the only two Black women who worked at the school at the time, went on a rant about how bisexuals are salacious cheaters who steal everyone’s dating options and just can’t make up their minds. This is just one example of the harmful rhetoric that left me feeling unsafe in — and unsure of — my own sexuality for years.
As I flipped open Jen Winstons’ Greedy: Notes From a Bisexual Who Wants Too Much, I was unexpectedly greeted with the rare feeling of safety that only comes with being affirmed and understood. Winstons’ writing invites us to join her as she starts on her own self-aware, hilarious and honest journey to understanding their own sexuality and gender identity. She discusses the limits of representation and the suffocating nature of binaries. Greedy encouraged me to reflect on my own path of embracing my bisexuality.
The book begins with a narrative that I am all too familiar with, Imposter Syndrome. Before I embraced my bisexuality I didn’t feel queer enough to identify as such, but I also felt that identifying as straight was a personal betrayal. While I could see many of my own experiences reflected in Winstons’ journey, I felt the intersectional dissonance between their path and my own as a Black queer person. Contrary to their experiences, racism and misogynoir were a part of my journey to bisexual acceptance and aided in convincing my younger self that I wasn’t desirable as a Black girl in the first place.
My hesitation to connect with the identity was because, for a long time, I didn’t realize Black women could actually be queer. The limited queer representation that I found in media was often very white and usually cismale. I remembered overhearing rumors accompanied by pejorative disapproval in my childhood beauty shop that Queen Latifah was a lesbian, and I could feel something awakening in me every time I saw Santana from Glee embracing her sexuality as a woman of color, but I still had no tangible examples of Black femme queerness let alone specifically bisexuality.
I began to lean into and internalize the very cishet “Or”. People either liked girls or boys and there was no room for (or mention of) other gender expressions.
“And” didn’t exist yet for me.
I suppressed my own interest in other genders and channeled it into allyship and activism. If I could not yet embrace myself holistically, I figured, why not use my voice to advocate for those who live in their truth every day? Advocacy felt like a way to feel close to the community while maintaining a safe distance. I buried my own queerness and doubled down on my supposed exclusive attraction to men.
Winston however learned how to embrace the “and”. In order to find comfort and truth in her bisexual identity, they had to overcome internalized, societally-imposed limitations about the self. She found the power in being bisexual and began to recognize that an individual can embody both the feminine and the masculine. Winston found the strength to embrace herself as a whole and break through society’s limitations. Too often society and oppressive institutions expect us to make choices that are detrimental to our wellbeing by putting high emphasis on the “or”. You can like boys or girls, you can rest your body or you can work through unhealthy stress to ensure the arrival of the paycheck you need to survive — the “or” list is ever-growing.
In my own journey, embracing the “and” became a personal requirement, a politic of my own. I began to view all of my identities like puzzle pieces — without all of the pieces connected and secured I would be left with incomplete art. I grew tired of feeling incomplete. Rejecting social norms still proves to be difficult at times in the face of a stubbornly cishetnormative culture, but living in my truth is an investment I make in myself and our world every day. It is proof that we do not have to rely on rigid, exploitative systems to find self-validity, and reminds us that society’s boxes are not permanent fixtures we all must adhere to forever.
Binaries are to be shattered, not followed. I learned to accept that I contain multitudes, and neither my sexual orientation nor gender identity are exempt from my multifaceted nature. Winston’s memoir is a strong declaration that being bisexual does not make us greedy and I concur. I believe that instead, society that should carry the moniker. For it’s the one that has an insatiable need to maintain power by feeding on the livelihoods of queer individuals, constantly trying (and often failing) to limit our abilities to be our full — and true — selves.
Lez Liberty Lit: Love Is Renewable
Hello and welcome to this week’s Lez Liberty Lit!
Here’s Denne Michele Norris and Deesha Philyaw talking about how literary gatekeepers can advocate for Black trans women at Electric Literature. Norris says:
“Many among us are more invested in protecting our image, our wealth, our success, the perception of us as leaders, than we are in striving not to do material harm and to make amends when we have harmed. And I regret this about the publishing industry because we pride ourselves on being thought leaders. We pride ourselves on being forward thinking, and working in an industry where new ideas flourish and we get to push the cultural conversation forward. This is how we talk about the publishing industry, how we position it in our society. And yet we haven’t moved far enough forward to cast debates about trans identity aside. I feel this enormous sense of cognitive dissonance because I’ve been heartily embraced as a Black woman of the trans experience who occupies an influential editorial position. And yet in the same professional sphere, so many of us are willing to look the other way when the most powerful in our industry, all of whom have zero lived experience as trans people, are allowed to speak with authority on who and what we are, and where we fit into gendered society. It is obscene.”
Solange is opening the Saint Heron Community Library, dedicated to rare and out-of-print books by Black and Brown authors.
Here’s how to write a book in 30 days even if you haven’t written anything before.
Let’s stop talking about generations.
Read these 10 new books by Native writers. Read these books about older women behaving badly. Read these magical realism short stories. Read these books about living in Los Angeles. Read these books if you’re writing a speculative memoir. Read these 20 queer webcomics. Read these 14 works of Mexican literature in translation. Read this new nonfiction in translation. Read this new nonfiction from 2021. Read these books with love triangles that end in polyamory.
Hurts So Good Reveals That Masochism Is Everywhere
The only good male dominant I’ve ever played with for free was a blond bisexual switch who kept company with beautiful fags of all birth assignments. Aaron1 was easy to talk to and easier to bottom to, especially considering that he was a white cis guy.
Maybe Aaron didn’t feel like he had anything to prove. In his late twenties, he was several years older than I, dating two gorgeous men, and one of the first people I ever played with who wasn’t also a beginner. Unlike me, he had known about and embraced his sexuality since childhood. His first perverted memory was from back in elementary school, when he got hard while wrapping himself up in an electrical cord. It was, he said with a smile acknowledging his joke’s corniness, like a lightbulb turning on.
Charmed, I started asking other players I knew about their kinky a-ha moment. Only a few years gay at that point, I was sick of other homos’ depressing coming out stories2 (not to mention my own); of that inevitable moment early in any new relationship with another queer person when you would have to revisit the self-loathing, the fear, the confusion, the betrayal of family and friends. While these coming-to-kink stories weren’t always positive — and many of them mirrored or appended queer and trans coming out stories, because there once was a time, not so long ago, when a perv was a perv all the way down the line — I hadn’t yet come to a political understanding of myself as a leatherdyke, so my burgeoning interest in getting beat up by hot people still felt distinct from my interest in gay sex. Newer to me, conceptually speaking, than sodomy, “kinky” felt like more of a nut to crack than “gay,” which felt like it had cracked me. In both cases, however, I was still preoccupied with my difference from my natal family and culture, still asking myself, Why am I like this?
I thought about Aaron while reading Leigh Cowart’s delightful Hurts So Good: The Science & Culture of Pain on Purpose. Early in the book — part science journalism and part ethnography, with a just taste of memoir — as they recount their formative experiences as a young dancer, Leigh poses that same question:
“Did ballet make me a masochist? Or was I simply well suited to the grueling discipline of the art form because of something intrinsic to my core personality, the nebulous you-ness that becomes solid and nameable by kindergarten? (Two things can be true at once, and my guts tell me that the answer to both of these questions is yes.)”
Unlike back when I was sleeping with Aaron, Leigh is not expecting a single answer to their question, an approach I understand now that I’m a mature gay person and, if I may be so bold, a student of pain.
But I am not a scholar of pain, a scientist of pain or, like Leigh, a journalist of pain. Briskly interweaving history, biology and reportage, Hurts So Good showcases the expertise of not only doctors and scientists, but pain experts of all types — ballerinas, Muay Thai fighters, perverts, competitive pepper eaters, hook-suspension enthusiasts — resisting the medicalization of masochism and its associated sexual subcultures for a more holistic understanding of why and how “using pain for its own sake is an everyday part of being human,” as Leigh puts it (and has been since time immemorial across cultures all over the world). Combining what hard data we have available (though never without a critique of the many biases such studies tend to drag along with them), trawling strip malls, fairgrounds and gyms, they’re able to ask, Why am I like this? without the constraints the search for a defining answer imposes. A masochist themself, Leigh seeks a better and broader understanding of masochism rather than a solution for it, in defiance of mainstream approaches to difference that are more interested in tracking down the “gay gene,” the trans disease, the Black mental illness — thereby reinforcing the structures that birth and then destroy such difference — than they are with understanding the systems within with they exist. The critical but undoubtedly harm reductionist bent to Leigh’s survey of cutters, addicts, disordered eaters, Jesus freaks, pervs, perfectionists and other masochistic types, and those who love them, put me at ease right away; while a part of Leigh’s agenda is expanding what we mean when we say masochist, I wonder that a non-masochist could have done it so well.
Such an approach undermines the pain/pleasure binary at the root. “It seems counterintuitive: although our experience of pain feels immediate and straightforward, it is nothing like flipping a switch,” writes Leigh. “What makes pain so interesting to study,” says one of their sources, neuroscientist Jans Foell, “is that pain itself is really one hundred percent subjective.” Like sex, the body and desire, the experience of pain is circumstantial and contextual, making it a rich site of study for anyone who wants to know why from angles other than the ones in which we’re so violently inculcated. Though pleasure is not their explicit quarry here, Leigh’s exploded view of pain is an essential component of the excavation of pleasure for which we’re long overdue. In American culture, pleasure is inherently sexualized and viewed with suspicion, and yet even when we get away from the moralizing (and moral panics), we can’t agree about pleasure’s familiars, from consent and responsibility to risk and harm.
While I think Leigh’s project aligns with mine, what I probably won’t be able to do for you here is provide a mini bio of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, or explain why male platypus venom is so dangerous, or recount the blackout-inducing suffering of standing en pointe, or explain how a nociceptor works, or walk you through the excruciating lows — and highs — of an ultramarathon. But Hurt So Good does, and for that reason alone, I recommend it. Courageous, diverting and written with dark good humor, Leigh’s first book has left me looking forward to the next. Maybe that one will be about pleasure? We can only hope.
This article was originally published in Davey Davis’ Substack on September 6, 2021.
1. Obviously not his real name.
2. I mean this in a broad way. Many people are never “in” to begin with. The “coming out conversation,” in my experience, encompasses all queer and trans stories of origin and becoming.
Lez Liberty Lit: Liminal Spaces
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s Lez Liberty Lit!
In a review of The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi at Electric Literature, Apoorva Mittal writes about queer time, liminal spaces, and searching for something between domesticity and queer ideality:
“[Q]ueer time is magical. It doesn’t need to function linearly. Non-linear time and liminal spaces are often seen as purgatories, transitory spaces of suffering through which one must pass to reach the final destination but queerness finds safety in transition, in purgatory. The dominant construct assumes that everyone desires to be the center, but queerness expands into spaces where no center is needed.”
These librarians face possible charges for carrying sex education books:
“The County Campbell Public Library is doing their jobs, and there’s nothing illegal about carrying puberty education books or LGBTQ-friendly resources. The fact that they have received such intense backlash proves how vital these resources are: kids need to be able to access resources that can answer their questions about sex, puberty, and growing up. Without age-appropriate books on hand, they’ll likely turn to Google, which has less accurate and less age-appropriate answers.”
The Cory Book Service book club helped spark the gay rights movement in the 1950s, with a two-page newsletter and 3,000 subscribers who simply received titles. “Many subscribers to the newsletter were living in the closet, and, even though the service did not provide a clear way for them to communicate with one another, the mailings offered glimpses of community,” writes Michael Waters at the New Yorker.
Noname opened a library in Los Angeles dedicated to the Black experience.
“What is it about writers and emotional masochism?”
These are the odds for the Nobel Prize in Literature this year.
Here are the National Book Award finalists.
“The way that Rooney is often celebrated, or at least discussed, as the voice of her generation, has never existed in the same way for readers and writers of color,” writes Malavika Kannan at Electric Literature on how the myth of universality keeps white women at the center of the literary ecosystem.
Here’s how to write cinematically.
Here’s what’s up with the current book supply chain issues.
Read these books in October. Read these Indian women writers. Read these nine books set in the Caribbean. Read these eight goblincore books. Read these books that read like a club scene from the Sopranos. Read these books for scary season.
Lez Liberty Lit Is Engineering a Hot Streak
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s Lez Liberty Lit! This one is short because it turns out that simply taking a lighter few weeks isn’t enough to recover from chronic exhaustion and burnout! It took me six hours to do a single load of laundry the other day. You’re all doing great.
At Xtra, Eli Cugini writes about the troubled golden age of trans literature, including how coverage of successful trans books can mask the challenges of getting published, pay differences between trans and cis writers, and how cis writers continue to profit from transphobia:
“It can be frustrating to see journalists celebrate singular trans writers for their books’ ability to educate cis people, rather than thinking of their work as art independent of cis approval. When books by trans people get reviewed, we hear a lot about their “originality,” “importance” and “bravery,” and far less about their influences and craft. Such uninspired reflections can mean that trans authors’ connections to the literary world around them remain tenuous and provisional; they’re an imported curiosity, rather than a necessary part. When we’re missing from the discussion, nobody notices. Nobody asks who might be keeping us out, or why. Nobody asks why the same rich histories and cultures that inform our books suddenly don’t exist when it’s time to paint trans people as a cultural menace.
‘I really hope we can move on from being surprised that trans literature is a thing,’ Canadian author Casey Plett tells me. ‘I would love to move past that… and instead see more nuanced, complicated, real criticism.’ So, what might that real criticism look like? What would it be like to talk about trans lit in its history and context, rather than just applauding politely at its existence?”
“Too much free time isn’t actually bad for you.”
Today is a good day to preorder Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women’s Football League by Britni de la Cretaz and Lyndsey D’Arcangelo.
There is a generational divide in emoji use.
Artistic success requires a hot streak.
Read these books this fall and also these. Read these flash fiction collections. Read these seven books that grapple with memory and loss. Read these innovative new queer stories.
Sophie Santos’ Memoir Takes Us On Her Queer Path To The Lesbian Agenda
I’m going to assume we’ve all seen the Beyonce Pepsi commercial. You know the one, where Beyonce dances in a mirror with herself from some of her most iconic eras? Reading comedian Sophie Santos’ new memoir The One You Want to Marry (and Other Identities I’ve Had), in which Santos walks through the many phases of her life, reminded me of that commercial, though with less intricate choreography and more awkward stories.
When I came out, I wanted to split my life into two eras: before I knew I was gay and after I was gay. I thought that’s what coming out was, and I wanted everyone to say goodbye to that girl they thought they knew because now I was my True Self. The old Analyssa can’t come to the phone right now, she’s busy kissing hot queer people! I was embarrassed that my whole life hadn’t been gay, that I’d done ballet instead of basketball, that I’d dated my high school quarterback, that I’d been in a sorority. When I went to A-Camp for the first time my junior year of college, I was equally as sheepish about being in a sorority as I was about not knowing my sun, moon, and rising sign. (I’ve learned since them!)
Of course, no one’s life is split into two simple chapters. A self-proclaimed chameleon, Santos lets all of those former eras of hers live right next to each other in the mirror: a tomboy youth spent playing on the boys tackle football team, emo theater kid, pageant queen, Southern sorority sister, and finally an out and somewhat “calm” (to use her mother’s own words) lesbian. I feel required to say that many of my eras before coming out match up with the ones Santos shares in her book. Mixed-ethnicity kid, surrounded by a lot of white people? Yep. High school girly-girl? Facebook pics to prove it. Theater kid? Big time check. Sorority girl? Check (though I went to undergrad in California, I did apply to the University of Alabama, where Santos eventually rushes a sorority). Santos even lived in my hometown of Kansas City for a while growing up! I recognized the dance school where she took classes at, the outdoor amphitheater she mentions (Starlight Theater, where I saw Avril Lavigne once), and the football team she roots for — before they were good.
Even when it wasn’t scarily accurate about my life, the memoir is quite funny. Santos rips through stories that are awkward, painfully relatable or even deeply embarrassing, often punctuating them with short instruction guides to her various phases — “Rules of Winning Junior Miss”, “How to Be a Sorority Girl” and “How to Be a Lesbian.” The footnotes that run through the book add jokes on top of the story, almost like getting a chat message from a friend when you’re both in the same Zoom meeting. These are the types of stories usually reserved for your closest friends on a particularly rowdy night, the first time she got horny (to Love and Basketball at a sleepover), the time she tried to masturbate with a remote control, or the time she ditched her fraternity brother date to go back to a strip club where a stripper had hugged her in the bathroom.
If Love and Basketball as a pop culture reference doesn’t land for you, there are plenty more where that came from, an eclectic mix of millennial touchstones. There’s Disney Channel Original Movies, Sum41, and musicals from Spring Awakening to The Last Five Years. Who among us hasn’t watched the movie Selena and felt like spending the whole week afterward in mourning? And all of that is before Santos describes her (extremely familiar) path down the rabbit hole of media featuring queer women. Starting at YouTube videos of Olivia Wilde in The OC, which led her to Grey’s Anatomy and then to Imagine Me & You, But I’m a Cheerleader, Joanne and Maureen in Rent, and of course, The L Word — which Sophie watches obsessively in her room for months. My own path might have started at MTV’s Faking It, which I watched while living in my sorority house sophomore year, but it eventually led me to the same places.
The book is just as honest about the parts of finding yourself that aren’t always fun, Santos’ experiences with depression, anxiety, and OCD are all talked about. She calls her rock bottom a moment when her “inner chameleon had changed so drastically that [she] didn’t recognize the person in the mirror.” It’s not always flattering to Santos, and that frankness helped me keep rooting for her, even when she talks about things like treating people poorly in her romantic relationships, especially right after coming out. It might be painful to read for anyone whose first queer relationship wouldn’t hold their hand in public, or anyone who’s been cheated on, but it’s refreshing to hear someone own those mistakes as part of their journey. You don’t come out and suddenly transform into the best version of yourself. It takes work, and sometimes a bad haircut and a few bad tattoos too.
There are a few missteps in Santos’ book. Not all of the jokes land, especially some of the “edgier” ones. I reread the chapter about Santos’ first queer hook-up, Gabe, a few more times after Santos says that Gabe is now out as trans, because the pronoun use was very specifically gendered. Since Santos says she and Gabe are still good friends, I assume this is something the two of them have discussed and I don’t need to mind their business, but it felt odd to read. At one point while discussing her early gay dating escapades, Santos says she wanted to “debut as a stud.” In context, she seems to use the word more like “heartbreaker” or “player,” but because of its significance as an identity in the Black queer community, it’s an odd choice of word for her to use.
The book is long, and the last section is more current, as Sophie moves to New York, starts her comedy show “The Lesbian Agenda”, meets her girlfriend Amy, and attends a high school reunion. The book is at its best before this section, when Santos has the hindsight to look back on chapters of her life and draw meaning from them. It’s nice to hear that she has found success but it feels less polished, more caught up in granular detail. Perspective on each chapter can only come from having closed it, and it feels like Sophie is still living in the middle of this one, figuring out how she will define it and how it will define her.
As a former sorority girl and recovering theater kid, Santos memoir was always going to speak to me, but I think it’s a fun read for any weirdo who jumped from group to group, never understanding why they didn’t fit in perfectly until they realized some big truths about themselves, and understood that no one ever truly feels that they fit perfectly. In the end, Santos doesn’t get to dance in a mirror in front of all her baby gay phases, but she comes close. She goes back home to help her mom go through storage boxes, full of memorabilia and memories from her different eras. Pepsi commercial or not, it’s a fitting end to a story that’s less about coming out and more about finally coming into your own.
“The one you want to marry (and other identities I’ve had)” — is out everywhere on October 1!
Lez Liberty Lit: Ground Yourself
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s Lez Liberty Lit!
At the Creative Independent, author and illustrator Michelle Rial discusses creating while living with chronic pain.
Bi Visibility: A Bisexual Anthology is a new Kickstarter project from comics writer Kat Calamia and you can support it here.
Here’s how to ground yourself when shit gets chaotic.
“How should a Millennial Marxist novel be?”
What if we re-embrace our privacy?, asks Roslyn Fuller at the Los Angeles Review of Books.
“Woolf believed that characters were a novelist’s greatest tool, a way to bridge life and fiction. In “Mrs. Dalloway,” she put her theory to the test,” writes Merve Emre at the New Yorker.
Sometimes you don’t sell your novel probably.
And sometimes if you do your parents don’t read it.
I liked this from Wayne Koestenbaum, republished at Lit Hub, and maybe you will, too:
“Fiction writers often say that they listen to what the characters tell them. Not entirely a fiction writer, I listen to what language tells me; I instigate the process, but once the language commences its relentless hum, punctuated by doldrum and silence and distraction and Instagram and anxiety, then I occupy the position of the cook who has been given the lamb and the milk and the lettuce but didn’t create them. Even if I planted the romaine and watered it and harvested it, I am not its originator. I don’t mint, or coin, or engender the words, though I twist and pervert them. Language—its codes and leanings—surrounds me, and I try to make myself as inconspicuous as possible so that language can have its way with me; though I seem, in my I-centered prose and poetry, to be naked, I am in fact half-hidden, behind the shrubbery of this prepositional phrase, which wields its barricade of leaf and bud according to natural laws. I can’t make myself known to you without this rule-governed armature, whose wendings and reprisals must take precedence over my ideas, even if language’s caparisoned marauders need the mulch of my ideation in order to have a ground to trample.”
Read some short stories. Read these queer romantic comedies. Read these 10 new books written and translated by women. Read these books in September. Read these books by Malaysian women writers. Read these eight memoirs of women hiking in the wilderness. Read these books about working at a newspaper. Read these books this fall.
Lez Liberty Lit: A Gaping MAW
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s Lez Liberty Lit!
Jude Doyle and A.L. Kaplan’s MAW is out September 15 from Boom! Studios and is a perfect weird horror comic in five issue that “explores the anger of those trapped by society’s expectations and the monsters born from that collective rage.” I am “not a horror person” and personally I had a GREAT time, just saying! Ask your local comic shop to order it (even if you missed the deadline for the first issue, make sure to get the rest) and check out a preview here.
Novels that offer easy lessons aren’t worth reading, writes Jo Hamya at Lit Hub:
“I don’t mean to advocate reading for reading’s sake, though there is nothing wrong with reading for pleasure. Nor do I mean to suggest that texts should never be extended to their reader’s personal and social context. But there is, perhaps, an unhelpfulness in the way naturally occurring attitudes within reading culture are exacerbated by the internet — reward-seeking, tribalism, binary thought which tends to either over-identification, or apathy where such a process cannot be carried out. Under such pressure, most books dry up. Worse still, they become boring. The type of book which would successfully thrive under such criteria could form no reciprocal relationship with its reader, could only impart what its recipient is already willing to accept as knowledge, or else stamp information onto a blank slate unchallenged, must structure itself on linear and context-specific premises. It could only teach you the same thing once before its value is exhausted. Such reading glorifies “likable” or “relatable” characters; didactic plot or dialogue; effortless transmission of information.”
“Is the digital age costing us our ability to wander?”
You can read any book as a sacred text.
Here’s how to get into daily verbal affirmations.
A new Octavia E. Butler biography explores her early life.
What are dreams and why are they essential?
Here are 18 memorable trees from literature.
Here’s what to do when things feel scattered.
Here’s how to write your first comic book.
“It’s impossible to make money for most writers and artists in comics.”
Stop using language to self-sabotage. You do have time, you do know how, and you are brave enough.
What makes a great first sentence?
Read these books about death and dying. Read these books to recover a sense of the scared. Read these Indigenous memoirs. Read these fantasy books. Read this Black lesbian fiction. Read these books about the Y2K era.
Lez Liberty Lit: Time, Faith, Momentum
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s Lez Liberty Lit.
The United Nations climate change report is mandatory reading.
Time, faith, momentum are the keys to sparking and sustaining creativity, Mona Awad tells Lit Hub.
Here’s how toxic positivity took over the internet.
Edge Case is about the anxiety of an expiring visa.
“In a society like ours that conflates work with identity, the fear is not only that one’s job could become obsolete, but that one’s very self could become obsolete as well,” at Real Life. I also really loved this: “the economy’s incessant claims on our time and energy diminishes our engagement in non-commodified activities. According to Illich, it is only the willing acceptance of limits — a sense of enoughness — that can stop monopolistic institutions from appropriating the totality of the Earth’s available resources, including our identities, in their constant quest for growth.”
Phones don’t ruin the museum experience, they make its fundamentals more explicit:
“Sometimes phones are treated as though they have disrupted how museums operate, causing them to radically alter themselves to accommodate the phone’s implications. But the pre-existing museum effect has also shaped how people have come to use phones. In other words, the phone, like the museum, is a way of seeing. There is a “phone effect” that changes what we perceive and implies a certain kind of interest. How people use phones in museums is not so much disruptive as it is clarifying of museums’ already established complicity with consumerism.
Read these seven books about women in purgatory. Read these seven thrillers about vacation gone wrong. Read these books about crafting an identity on social media. Read these new books in August and these books, too.
Lez Liberty Lit Has Simply Had Enough of Drowning
Hi there and welcome to this week’s Lez Liberty Lit!
At the Creative Independent, writer and visual artist Larissa Pham talks about what makes a good essay, having a community of readers, and giving yourself the space you need to complete a project:
“Whenever I don’t read, I feel my brain turning off. It’s kind of like when you have a hot pan and there’s nothing in the pan and the pan’s just burning. That’s how I feel when I don’t read.”
Here’s how to live in a burning world without losing your mind.
Four Torrey Peters novellas will be published in 2022.
People don’t really like reading e-books.
Would you give up air conditioning (if it’s optional for you) if you knew it would save the planet?
It’s okay to feel lonely.
“Artists like Despentes, who came of age in the shadow of AIDS and the ensuing explosion of blood- and sex-centered queer art, were never striving to enter the canon or leave a legacy; they were simply interested in truthfully capturing all the moments in which they were dying,” writes Nina Herzog on Verginie Despentes at the Los Angeles Review of Books.
New emojis are coming.
It’s okay if your creative work doesn’t fit neatly into categories.
Where does loneliness come from?
Can literature teach us how to die?
“Few things limit us more profoundly than our own beliefs about what we deserve, and few things liberate us more powerfully than daring to broaden our locus of possibility and self-permission for happiness,” writes Maria Popova by way of introduction to this (excerpted) poem by David Whyte on stepping towards love:
“everything holds
us, and everything confirms
our courage, and if you wanted
to drown you could,
but you don’t
because finally
after all this struggle
and all these years
you simply don’t want to
any more
you’ve simply had enough
of drowning
and you want to live and you
want to love and you will
walk across any territory
and any darkness
however fluid and however
dangerous to take the
one hand you know
belongs in yours.”
Read these books in the second half of 2021. Read these 11 short story collections that practice magical feminism. Read these books about the heartbreak of losing a sibling. Read these 9 books about the complexities of identity. Read these science and tech books for summer. Read the Booker Prize longlist. Read these 8 books about the messiness and beauty of queer life.
Lez Liberty Lit: Discipline Is Part of Creation
Hi there and welcome to this week’s Lez Liberty Lit!
Discipline is part of creation. As poet Naomi Shihab Nye says:
“The more any of us writes, the more our words will “come to us.” If we trust in the words and their own mysterious relationship with one another, they will help us find things out… Consider the pleasure we feel when we go to a beach. The broad beach, the bigger air, the endless swish of movement and backdrop of sound. We feel uplifted, exhilarated. Writing regularly can help us feel that way too.”
There are only six books written by men.
Here’s an approach for when you’re overwhelmed with tasks.
Let teens tell you what to read.
A copy of Étienne Denisse’s botanical volumes has been digitized and restored.
Clitoria botanical print by Étienne Denisse via Brain Pickings
Doctors need to read chronic illness memoirs, says a doctor.
This woman reads 150 books a month.
Mirrors don’t tell the whole story.
It’s okay to be rejected.
How do you transcend fear?
Read these books on a hot day and these books this summer and these, too. Read these books about being a queer person of color in the United Kingdom. Read these queer adventure comics. Read these seven books about the search for intimacy. Read these books by Chinese American authors. Read these books to generate sad serotonin. Read these 12 books that break the rules of point of view. Read these books if you grew up with the Baby-Sitters Club.
‘We Are the Baby-Sitters Club’ Succeeds in Both Praising and Critiquing the Books of Our Childhoods
When we first found out about We Are the Baby-Sitters Club: Essays and Artwork from Grown-Up Readers, I knew we’d do a roundtable review of the anthology because this is the most perfect pairing. It’s no secret that many Autostraddle staff members are lifelong BSC fans, and I’ve always felt in some ways Autostraddle resembles the club/group of friends at the center of our favorite childhood series: fun, hardworking, reliable, loving, complicated.
We assembled a group of enthusiastic readers and dove into the expansive anthology, which features an introduction from Mara Wilson and contributions from Kristen Arnett, Myriam Gurba, Jamie Broadnax, Frankie Thomas, Sue Ding, and anthology editors Marisa Crawford and Megan Milks, to name just a few. Much more than just a one-note love letter, the essays in this book critically and carefully explore everything about the Baby-Sitters Club, from the way the series addressed friendship, race, sexuality, fashion, disability, class, and chosen family to the way the ghost writers committed to introducing each character in repetitive detail at the beginning of each installment. The essays and artwork in the book are just as interesting in form and style as they are in content, with more than a few graphics and comic contributions, many personal essays and cultural critiques, a piece that examines the handwriting of each of the characters, and an entire piece analyzing words used in the series as a dataset! No topic is off limits in this guide about the young adult book series that shaped the way so many of us interacted with our worlds as children, and the way some of us still interact with our worlds today.
Here are four Autostraddle staff members with their thoughts on We Are the Baby-Sitters Club: Essays and Artwork from Grown-Up Readers, out today July 6, 2021. — Vanessa
Lez Liberty Lit: James Baldwin’s Record Collection
Hi there and welcome to this week’s Lez Liberty Lit!
In an interview at Lit Hub, Larissa Pham discusses genre, internet celebrity, and the relationship between art and intimacy:
“I think that our experience of art can be, and often is, a deeply intimate thing. It is felt. Even when we’re experiencing art in a communal context (like at a show or at a concert, for example), our experience of it is so private and internal. We’re never going to feel exactly what someone else feels and that’s special. Art moves us; it can shift things in us. And art (and literature, and culture) is uniquely powerful in how it can reach across time and space to shift us in precisely those ways.”
Capitalism is a cult, and you’re already a lifetime member.
Cats can illuminate the meaning of life. You’re welcome.
Check out this history of queer publishing.
Writer’s block is part of life. Here’s how to break out of your pandemic procrastination. (Unless it’s an essential part of your writing process.) Here’s what deadlines do to lifetimes.
Read e-books for free without pirating them.
Check out James Baldwin’s record collection as a Spotify playlist.
Read these ten genre-bending short story collections. Read these new books directly in front of a fan. Read these books about being under- and unemployed. Read these books about women fighting for a just society. Read this poetry about Black womanhood and desire. Read these books about exile and what we leave behind.