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I did another post on this topic last year, but I thought it could use an update with some more books! And yes, the last post had people repeatedly adding on queer books by white people, so I’m a bit salty about it.

Other queer SFF PowerPoints:

Massive queer SFF rec post

Trans SFF

F/F SFF

Bi and Pan SFF

Ace SFF 

I’m not transcribing all the text, but you can find the titles, authors, information on TW, etc beneath the cut.

When possible, I’m linking to my database of queer books. The page for each book includes the synopsis, content warnings under spoiler tags, and links to reviews from queer readers. If it’s not in the queer database at the time of posting (8/24/19), I’ll link to Goodreads instead.

Correction (6/14/20): Girls of Paper and Fire is Southeast Asian inspired, not East Asian inspired. 

Further edit: I’m officially blocking anyone who recommends white authors on this post, because it keeps happening. RESPECT SPACES SET ASIDE FOR POC. 

Keep reading

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Black queer lives matter - and you should read more about them. Here are some suggestions to get you started.

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In the wake of JK once more being a total jk, here’s a (non-exhaustive) thread of works by Black trans writers.

Don’t Call Us Dead - Danez Smith, poetry about Black masculinity, police brutality, gender and queerness. Probably the best book of poetry I’ve ever read. Smith has several collections available and you should read them all.

The Deep - Rivers Solomon, a speculative fiction novella about the descendants of murdered slave women. Themes of trauma and memory. Really beautiful writing. Their sci-fi novel An Unkindness of Ghosts is equally unmissable.

Redefining Realness - Janet Mock, the memoir of Mock’s childhood and adolescence as a trans woman before she transitioned. Mock’s second memoir, Surpassing Certainty, focuses on her life in her twenties.

Felix Ever After - Kacen Callender, a YA novel about a teenage trans boy (at the start of the book), Felix, as he further questions his identity, tries to find love, and works on his artistic future. Everything that makes YA novels great.

Reacquainted with Life - KOKUMO, a debut about Black trans womanhood and the power of her voice and body. This work is so hard to describe. Ferocious? Lively? Witty? Completely different to literally any poetry I’ve ever read? All of the above and more.

Mannish Tongues - jay dodd, a poetry collection about Black youth, queerness, religion, family, and gender. I hate how pretentious the word ‘visceral’ is, but it’s pretty accurate here. dodd’s collection The Black Condition ft. Narcissus is also phenomenal.

Pet - Akwaeke Emezi, a YA novel about a Black trans teenage girl and having to confront the existence of monsters. Emezi also has an acclaimed adult novel out, Freshwater, and I believe their new adult novel, The Death of Vivek Oji, is out in August 2020.

trigger - Venus Selenite, poetry about being Black, trans, queer, and unapologetic. This one is hard to get hold of, but worth it if you can. Selenite also co-edited and is featured in Nameless Woman, an anthology of writing by trans women of colour.

Surge - Jay Bernard, a poetry collection written in response to the 1981 fire at New Cross Road, as well as Grenfell Tower and the Windrush Scandal. Bernard is one of those poets who can use 10 words to say more than most of us can in 1,000.

Nameless Woman: An Anthology of Fiction by Trans Women of Color - ed. Venus Selenite, Ellyn Peña and Jamie Berrout, this one includes several stories by Black trans women and is, as a body of work, completely invaluable. The stories here range from semi-autobiographical and romance to sci-fi and speculative fiction.

Resilience - ed. Amy Heart, Larissa Glasser and Sugi Pyrrophyta, an anthology of writing by ©AMAB trans people. Again, this anthology is not specifically dedicated to Black trans people, but it includes work by KOKUMO and CHRYSALISAMIDST, amongst others. This book is super varied, with short stories, poetry and personal essays.

Consider ordering these, where possible, from independent Black owned bookstores.

You can also financially support Black trans people through donating to organisations such as this and these.

Important addendum: I tried incredibly hard to find published works by Black trans women, because trans women are the focus of JK Rowling’s tweets and indeed an overwhelming amount of violence and bigotry in general, but I’m sure it’s no surprise to anyone that Black trans women are enormously discriminated against by the publishing industry, and are routinely denied a platform for their work and their voices. Literally, when you Google ‘black trans woman author’, you just get Janet Mock’s author page. I think all of the books by Black trans women in the list above, with the exception of Janet Mock, are self/indie pub.

I have trawled through online indie and radical publishing magazines, message boards, and nearly 100 lists of ‘trans authors you must read now!’ and I would charitably say that about 1% of people featured in such lists are Black trans women. Obviously, Black trans women are writing, but the lack of available platform for their work is a huge barrier to their voices being heard. If anyone else has recommendations for work by Black trans women, whether it’s a physical book, an online chapbook, an Insta account of poetry, or anything else, please add it, because there must be so much more than I’ve managed to find.

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Moon Palace Books is an independent bookstore located just behind Minneapolis police precinct 3 - the starting point of the riots last night.

When the police tried to set up barricades around the store, they said, “no thanks” and instead set up a station for protesters to get food, water, treatment, etc… They hung up an “Abolish the Police” banner in their window and are just generally badass.

They are also an amazing bookstore that is doing mail orders. Please consider using them if you are looking to buy something new to read.

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Spent some time this week becoming Gansey and let me tell you it makes getting chased by wasps much more terrifying

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Queer books // queer style

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“J K Rowling can’t stop me and she can’t stop you either.”

—

Problemsofabooknerd-

Reacting to Your Harry Potter Headcanons | HP Chats

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I have a second YouTube channel, friends! I just wanted to share the first review up on our new channel WHAT THE F!LM because it’s something me and my best friend have worked really hard on and I think this video is a ton of fun. Our review is totally spoiler free and includes a solid rant about how ridiculously hot Mary Elizabeth Winstead is, so maybe check it out. It would mean a lot to me.

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All of these books are queer, but they all have back blurbs that don’t say they’re queer. While this can be a pain if I’m scouting for queer SFF, it can come in handy for people in a situation where they don’t want to be reading queer books openly. 

Please do note that I don’t have hard copies of the books on hand so it’s possible that an author quote or something mentions one being queer (I feel like this isn’t super likely, but I don’t want to rule it out). Some might also have author biographies mentioning that the author is queer. Also, some may be shelved as LGBT on Goodreads or categorized as queer on Amazon. So if you’re planning on asking for any of these as holiday gifts, I would suggest going to the Amazon page or where ever your relative is likely to buy it from and double check that it’s something you’d be comfortable with sharing openly. 

I wish I had more pansexual books, but the ones I know of tend to mention queerness in the back description. 

With the exception of The Spy with the Red Balloon, these are all books I have read or are currently reading. If you want to recommend others, feel free to do so in the replies!

You can find my other queer book recommendations here.

Links to the queer books database (or Goodreads if the book hasn’t been added yet) are available below the cut. You can find information on content warnings there.

Keep reading

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I DIDN'T KNOW YOU WERE ACE HII THAT'S AWESOME sorry if that's weird but I'm demi and love your queer recs in your channel

Ahhh yay! I’m glad to hear you like my queer recs ❤️❤️ and yes I’m very very ace I just don’t really talk about it on my channel

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okay what if dane dehaan was younger he'd be a good ronan

ok perhaps I’m just a very big lesbian because like.... picturing any actual man as these characters has me melting down I cannot do it. I think I keep picturing a world where we have the boys and a bunch of teens are lusting after them and I’ll just be sitting there, a whole entire dyke, going “but they are my sons??? must they exist, is it not simply enough for me to make up images of them that are nonthreatening and only vaguely boy shaped???”

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Tom Holland with his head shaved? Noah Centineo with his head shaved? Me thinks a casting call for a raven boy is afoot

Please don’t speak this into existence these are both terrible choices aksjdjsks

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I was curious if we see HP headcanons on here if we could tag you in them? If that's too overwhelming I get it no problem!

Omg yes please tag me! Or send them to me! I can’t promise I’ll see them all, because honestly the notifications for this blog can sometimes get suuuuper overwhelming, but I’m always thrilled to find new great HP headcanon posts.

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Do NOT Support ‘Adam’ When The Film Comes Out

I’ve talked about this before on this blog but this is the most disgustingly transphobic and lesbophobic narrative I’ve ever come across. 

CWs: transphobia, homophobia, lesbophobia, corrective rape, voyeurism

The book Adam by Ariel Schrag is being turned into a movie which has been named as one of the most exciting LGBTQ films of the year. You should know before watching that the book is about a cis boy who pretends to be a trans man in order to persuade lesbians to sleep with him.

Yeah… you read that right.

Book plot summary: 

boy spies on his lesbian sister having sex

boy decides to pretend to be a trans man (gross)

i.e. pretends to have a vagina because he thinks lesbians will want him then (he literally wants to fuck lesbians because he watched his lesbian sister have sex wtf)

he does get a lesbian to sleep with him, he straps his penis down using ace bandages and uses a strap on.

all the actual trans dudes we meet identify as lesbians this basically implies that trans men are not real men (lesbians i.e. women)  

another time they have sex again only he uses his actual penis but tells her its a strap on. that’s literally rape, she didn’t consent to an actual penis.

he confesses that he’s been lying to her this whole time but she doesn’t break up with him. she even says its okay cause she fantasised about him being “a real boy"

that’s a direct quote. massive transphobia. huge. not to mention this is now the “lesbian is cured by dick trope” which is disgusting and that trope leads to real lesbians and bi women being raped to “fix” them. 

he leaves new york, they’re long distance. they get in an argument and he calls her a slut and a whore among other things and then she dumps him

eventually they get back in touch and she has a new cis boyfriend so yep, she’s been “cured” woo she’s actually straight and he helped her realise that yay (massive sarcasm)

It is deeply deeply transphobic. To imply that our identities are just costumes for other people to put on erases who we are as people. More than that, to imply it is done to trick people into sex is a dangerous lie that literally gets us killed.

It is also deeply lesbophobic. To fuel this narrative that lesbians can be “fixed” by having sex with a man leads to real corrective rapes happening. 

Here is a review of the book by a trans man. I have yet to find one by a lesbian but will edit this if I do.

This book gives out incredibly harmful notions about trans men and lesbians that are used to hurt them in real life. It’s so entrenched in the narrative that I don’t see how the film can possibly be any better.

I do not say any of this lightly. it’s very very rare for me to call out a piece of fiction or for me to decide that a story is unfixable. But this… there’s no excuse for the bigotry in this. 

I’d like to tell people to boycott it but I can’t tell you what to do. So instead I’m going to ask that you share this because it being named as an exciting new LGBTQ film is going to make LGBTQ teens want to see it. And they should know beforehand how hurtful it could be. They should be able to arm themselves with that knowledge.

Don’t make queer kids see this film believing it will represent them only to be exposed to this hatred of their identities. 

Please reblog.

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Lesbrary Link Round Up

[image description: a collage of 16 covers of the books mentioned in the links below, with the text “Lesbrary Links: Bi & Lesbian Lit News & Reviews]

This is the Lesbrary bi-weekly feature where we take a look at all the lesbian and bi women book news and reviews happening on the rest of the internet!

[image description: the covers of Silhouette of a Sparrow by Molly Beth Griffin, Tell Me How You Really Feel by Aminah Mae Safi, On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden, The Second Mango by Shira Glassman, and That Could Be Enough by Alyssa Cole]

Autostraddle posted 8 YA Books Featuring Characters who Are Happily Lesbian but Have Other Drama.

Book Riot posted

50 Must-Read Queer Romance Novellas

An Anne Lister “Gentleman Jack” Reading List

“[T]hose librarians failed students”: Book Ban at Irving Independent School District

Cece (Problems of a Book Nerd) posted How to Find Out About Queer Books (video).

Electric Lit posted 10 Exuberantly Queer Graphic Novels.

[image description: the covers of 100 Times: A Memoir of Sexism by Chavisa Woods, Queering the Tarot by Cassandra Shaw, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mario Tamaki, Kindred: 12 Queer #LoveOzYA Stories, and Jam on the Vine by LaShonda Katrica Burnett]

Niamh Murphy reviewed Gentleman Jack, including critics’ response, audience response, representation, and more.

“12 Books By (And About) Lesbians And Bisexual Women To Read This Pride Month” was posted at Buzzfeed.

Kindred: 12 Queer #LoveOzYA Stories edited by Michael Earp was reviewed at The Nerd Daily.

Queering the Tarot by Cassandra Snow was discussed at Autostraddle.

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell was reviewed at Rich in Color.

100 Times: A Memoir of Sexism by Chavisa Woods was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

If you like what we do at the Lesbrary and Bi & Les Lit, support us on Patreon at $2 or more a month and be entered to win a queer women book every month!