Su and Emerald are sisters with nothing in common: Su lives in Singapore, playing the perfect wife to her conservative politician husband. Emerald is a queer sugar baby in New York, barely scraping by living with an artist friend. While their current lives look very different and they rarely speak, they have a shared past:Read More
A Brutal Colonial Horror Story: To the Bone by Alena Bruzas
To the Bone is the story of Ellis, an indentured girl in the Jamestown settlement of the Virginia colony. Ellis aspires toward little more than goodness; born poor in the late 1500s, she can neither read nor count, but understands the world as preachers sketch its edges. She works hard as a servant to the semi-prominentRead More
An Immersive Steampunk Mystery: A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark
A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark is many things: a steampunk mystery, an anti-colonial historical, an at once dark and whimsical fantasy, and more. But if I had to sum it up in one word, it would be fun. This book gives the reader plenty to chew on while immersing them in a rich world, anRead More
Feral Eldritch Ballerinas: I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me by Jamison Shea
Laure is a ballet dancer who has devoted herself entirely to her profession. She spends every waking moment honing her skill. And she is perfect. But as she soon learns, perfect is not enough. It doesn’t matter that she’s the best, because she’s fighting to rise up in an institution that sees her working classRead More
Must-Read Poetry Collections by Queer Women
It can be easy to feel overwhelmed during trying times, and to feel like you have less time/energy to sit down with a book and really immerse yourself in plot or nonfiction. I’ve personally always turned to poetry during periods like this, and in light of everything going on everywhere, these books have been particularlyRead More
Forever is Now by Mariama J Lockington
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! Content warnings: biphobia, racism, police violence Forever is Now by Mariama J. Lockington tells the story of Sadie, a Black teenage girl with anxiety that develops into agoraphobia after a truly terrible day. Her girlfriend breaks up with her and they witness an incidence ofRead More
The Song the World Needs: Thunder Song by Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! This was one of my five star predictions for the year, and I’m happy to say it lived up to that expectation. Thunder Song is a collection of essays about being a queer Indigenous women in the U.S. today. It begins with LaPointe talkingRead More
You Need to Read Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! I’m embarrassed to admit I only just read this for the first time. I’ve read every other Malinda Lo book. I’ve had a copy since it first came out—in fact, I’ve owned two copies, because I also spent $100 on a signed hardcover (itRead More
Messy Roots: a Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American by Laura Gao
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! Messy Roots is Laura Gao’s memoir of her childhood and coming of age, first in Wuhan, China, then an early move to Texas, and finally through her choices of college in Pennsylvania and a job in the Bay area. As a Chinese American immigrant,Read More
Creating Utopia in Love After the End edited by Joshua Whitehead
“Tomorrow will be kinder,” I whisper as I am swept into the rushing river of my dreams. —”The Ark of the Turtle’s Back” by jaye simpson Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction, edited by Joshua Whitehead, is a follow up to the anthology Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time. TheseRead More