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Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

10/10

Great for: everyone! But 14+ and anyone wanting to learn more about trans issues especially.

So Cemetery Boys was probably the biggest hit queer book of 2020 and it so deserved it. It's just an insanely good book. Yadriel is a trans boy who wants to officially become a brujo to prove himself to his family and community, who do not believe that a trans person could achieve this. Yadriel goes through the ceremony in secret after his cousin is murdered, hoping to find his cousin's spirit. Instead, he finds the spirit of Julien, a stubborn spirit who refuses to cross over.

One of the things I really admired about this book was its trans representation. Yadriel is such a well written character and Thomas puts you in his shoes from early on- you are as sure of his gender as he is, to the point where I was genuinely confused at some points when he was misgendered. Thomas also shows that Yadriel, and another trans girl named Flacca, don't necessarily pass because they don't have access to the tools to transition, from hormones to legal name change- he makes a point of showing that this doesn't invalidate their gender, but highlights how much tougher it makes life for them. Yadriel is also gay, and while I'm not going to spoil anything, the romance in the book is so beautiful. There's a particular line from Yadriel's love interest written in Spanish, and it was so beautifully romantic that I actually gasped out loud.

The other brilliant aspect of the novel is the representation of Latinx and brujx culture. The details of everything from the preparations for the day of the dead to Yadriel's relationship to his goddess, Lady Death, is so wonderfully rich and fleshed out. The mystery of the plot is so deeply tied in with Yadriel's culture that all the detail is necessary, but it never feels expository, and I left this novel having learned a lot.

Cemetery Boys is an outstanding queer romance, and Aiden Thomas is a superb writer who I can't wait to see more from.

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Things a Bright Girl Can Do by Sally Nicholls Great for: everyone! But especially young feminists and LGBT people (14+) 10/10 This is a book that I can't praise highly enough! I came across it through pure chance looking through my local Waterstones. As usual I was trying, and failing, to find any queer books and saw this. I only picked it up because it was about suffragettes but nearly fell through the floor when it said that it featured two girls in love casually in its blurb. I was so excited I was reading it while I was walking home! The story follows three suffragettes, Eveline, Nell and May, from 1914 and through the first world war. Eveline faces many injustices because of her gender, namely, that she cannot go to university while her brother can. This leads to her secretly joining the suffragettes, mostly in the hopes of proving herself to her parents, while also angering them. Her story is one of defiance, and eventually, using privilege for the betterment of both herself and other women like her. May very much encapsulates the modern middle class liberal woman, going to her very first meeting of the suffragettes, which both she and her mother had always disapproved because of their use of violence. When a riot ensues, she meets Nell, a girl who dresses like a boy and pulls May from the riot. Nell and May are both naive in their own ways: May has led a sheltered, middle class life, where her pacifism and other radical notions have merely been mocked, and has no idea of the real struggles of the impoverished working class in the London east end; Nell, on the other hand, discovers that there are other women like her as May tells her of the Sapphists and other women who dress like Nell. The war tests Nell and May, showing the often ignored tales of the women lest behind as the men left for the Great War.

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Love Frankie by Jacqueline Wilson

10/10

Great for: 12-16, but would genuinely recommend for everyone!

I love Jacqueline Wilson. She is the embodiment of my childhood and love for reading. The Dare Game was the first book I read on my own; I would obsessively look for new Wilson books at the library; when my mum couldn't afford the Sleepover Club, she and my best friends mum split the cost and we would each have a week with the book.

When I started studying and reading queer ya/children's lit about four years ago, I was desperate to read a queer book by Jacqueline Wilson and was really disappointed that there wasn't one. Until now.

Love Frankie is about 13 year old Frankie, who lives with her two sisters Zara and Rowena and her mum, who suffers with MS. Frankie hates her dad after he left their mum for another woman and doesn't recognise how hard life with MS is. On top of that, Frankie is being bullied by Sally, who says that Frankie's mum is alcoholic after she had a fall at school. Everything changes though when Frankie and Sally make friends, and Frankie realises that she's in love with Sally...

One of the things you hear all the time about queer ya is 'I wish I'd had a book like this when I was younger!'but Love Frankie is the first where I really felt that. I was 20 when I finally came to terms with being bi, and that was after years of questioning and denial- out of all the books I've read, Love Frankie is the first queer book I've that I know would have made that process a lot shorter and less painful.

Jacqueline Wilson has always had a special skill with talking to teenage girls in her books and making them feel seen, and that hasn't changed. She shows the confusion of the first crush on a girl, and how it can be hard to tell the difference between wanting to be friends and more than friends. I love that she doesn't talk down to kids about what being queer at a young age means- that it's not just fine, it's great! You should be proud! But also shows that kids aren't 100% accepting.

Love Frankie also provides something which queer children's literature has been desperately missing, which is about queerness from a working class perspective. Seeing Frankie struggling made her £11 pocket money buy everyone's Christmas presents while questioning her sexuality was brilliant to see- I was a working class kid, and only seeing middle class stories being told was really frustrating, as if queerness was reserved for them. Working class communities, especially in the UK, are often stereotyped as being homophobic and I'm really glad Wilson challenges that and shows that queer working class kids are just as able to come out as middle class kids in grammar schools.

The one thing about reading Jacqueline Wilson as an adult is it makes you feel old. At one point, 13 year old Frankie talks about watching her favourite film from when she was little: Frozen. At which point I aged a thousand years. And as much as I related to Frankie, the character I related to most was her mum (very alarming for me). Like her mum, I suffer with chronic illness, and her experiences of exhaustion, loneliness and refusing to date because 'who'd want me?' attitude spoke so powerfully to my own experiences it took me aback.

I can't recommend Love Frankie enough- I'm really excited to see how kids respond to the book. I would really recommend getting a physical copy- it's a beautifully designed cover and looks gorgeous on a shelf.

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Hard to stress just how cute Jacqueline Wilson's new book cover is- I'm so excited to read it!

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TW: transphobia

The thing that gets me about JK Rowling's new book, which features a 'transvestite serial killer' and just seems to be patently transphobic is that her going 'mask off' makes sense now.

It had been an open secret before 2020 that she wasn't a particular ally to trans people, and the Robert Galbraith books haven't been the smash phenomena like Harry Potter, plus she is far from the beloved author she once was after all the amendments to HP after publication (wizards don't use toilets, werewolves are a metaphor for AIDS etc.) All of which meant she was losing her social capital and influence with her audience.

So in the middle of a pandemic and civil rights uprising, when cops were beating protesters and hundreds of thousands suffered and died in a deadly plague, she turned her attention to the important issue of *checks notes* the term 'people who menstruate'.

After that, she publicly went downhill fast, publishing long threads about her 'concerns' about trans women, which was basically the same as all trans exclusionary hate, only with a veneer of respectability politics. At the time, I couldn't understand why she was going out of her way to become a reactionary figure and ruin her public image as 'the good billionaire'.

She was courting a new audience. The largely left leaning kids who had grown up reading her work were done with her, and older readers who would normally be the target audience for crime thrillers have never been a big part of her audience. So she spends her summer using her massive platform to demonize and shit talk trans people, essentially for publicity. This is just the inverse of right-wingers throwing away their razors and burning their nikes because they made a 'woke' ad. A brand (JKR) publicly adopts the politically ideology of a large but niche group (there are so many british terf mums at the minute) and becomes their new figurehead.

I'm not saying she became transphobic for profit. The fact that she wrote her book about hunting down a trans serial killer says that she has held some serious transphobic beliefs privately for a while. I'm saying she has made life measurably worse for trans people, exposed the general public to more extreme terf-ism, and put trans life at risk.

For profit.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe she didn't aggressively rebrand herself as the voice of 'gender critical feminism' just before her 'oops! All transphobia!' book reaffirming the idea of trans women as evil predators killing women. Maybe it's all a coincidence. I'm not saying this is definitely what she has done, just that this would be my educated guess.

If you want to support trans charities in the UK, organisations like Stonewall and Mermaids are some of the biggest (Stonewall is also hosting a trans day of joy on September 17th). Some smaller charities that could also use help are the AKT, which helps LGBTQ+ youth facing homelessness (a big issue for trans people, especially during the pandemic) and gendered intelligence.

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just for anyone who didnt see this – such an amazing interview with Noelle Stevenson and Rebecca Sugar about the challenges of making shows with gay rep and what it has meant to them 💖💖

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no one:

me: here’s a flow chart of 41 lgbtq+ book recommendations, have fun!

disclaimer: this is a very non-comprehensive list since I’m only including books that I’ve read

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24 LGBT+ Books by Black Authors

I’m seeing a lot of the same books on my dash, so I spent a few hours researching some lesser-known books. These books fall across a variety of genres and age group. 

Ways you can help

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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.

Keep reading

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With its sprinkling of stars and hearts, Love Frankie (her 111th book, if anyone is still counting), looks like any other teen romance, but the rainbow on the inside cover is a clue that this isn’t the usual boy-meets-girl story. The middle one of three sisters, bookish tomboy Frankie is struggling to deal with her mum’s MS diagnosis, their dad leaving them for “horrible Helen”, and the mean girls at school: so far, so Jacqueline Wilson. Then she falls for Sally, the prettiest, coolest girl in class. (And she just happens to be writing a dystopian story “about a devastating plague affecting the whole Earth”.)

Jacqueline Wilson at the Guardian, on her new novel, Love Frankie: ‘I’ve never really been in any kind of closet’

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rick riordan off the shits

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Stuck in isolation and need a recommendation?

Try Once and Future by Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy

It's a super fun sci-fi fantasy about Ari, the 42nd reincarnation of King Arthur. For the first time, Arthur is a girl and she's in space, a refugee from an evil corporation. There's loads of queer representation, from nb characters to an ace character. There's touching romance, cool magic and the gay Merlin you wish had been in the BBC show- but I refuse to spoil anything. Just read it!

And if you read now you'll be just in time for the sequel, The sword in the stars which comes out on April 7th!

(Fun side note- the authors are an irl couple. They recently got married and have a kid together- they're super cute on Twitter!)

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Lesbian romance author Lucy J. Madison writes about her #MeToo experiences and the power of writing happy, healthy lesbian romances:

I write lesbian romance novels because I love to tell stories about two women falling in love. That is my happy place. It is my hopeful place. It is my most treasured space, where my hopes for this life are firmly rooted. Love. The love between women in a world fully open to women where good men do not dominate but co-exist equally. This is why I write. This is what I write. There is power in that. There is power in reading that.

Comment on the original post for a chance to win her newest novel, A Recipe for Love: a Culinary Romance!

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Currently reading: Toil and Trouble- 15 tales of women and witchcraft

Really enjoying this collection- so far Tess Sharpe's story has been my favourite. It was beautiful, moving and had great wlw representation (like many others from the collection). Definitely check it out in time for Halloween!

(I mostly posted this to satiate my desire to be an Instagram book blogger type- did it work?!)

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We need much more media that features women of color in relationships with other women of color. Most of the media that does show lbpq women of color characters puts them in relationships with white women/white people. And those relationships, predictably, tip the balance of power in favor the white person. You’ll notice that plot narratives center around emphasizing the autonomy of the white woman/white person at the expense of the woman of color’s health/wellbeing/autonomous development. 

Also, it’s incredibly important to show healthy romantic love between two women of color. We need the power to reclaim our capacity to love, to be loved, and to rid our lives of whiteness and the white gaze as much as possible. 

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Happy (Upcoming) Bi Visibility Day!

Happy (Upcoming) Bi Visibility Day!

Happy Bi Visibility Day! Of course, the best part of this day is that you don’t really need to choose a single book to read; you can think all of them are damn fine! (I’m sorry, I cannot let a single BVD go without making a horrible joke. Anyway, here are some great bi things.)

Books to Read Now

Girl Made of Stars by Ashley Herring Blake

“I need Owen to explain this. Because yes, I do know that…