Our Favorite Queer Books!

‘Last Night at the Telegraph Club’ by Malinda Lo is set in 1950s San Francisco, primarily in Chinatown. The story follows Lily, who slowly begins to understand her sexuality. Lily is a good Chinese girl. She studies hard. Her mother buys her sensible clothes. Because she is a good girl. In the middle of the ‘Red Scare,’ Lily and her Chinese-American friends are becoming young adults.

‘Kaikeyi’ by Vaishnavi Patel continues the long tradition of retelling one of the most important Hindu epics, the Ramayana. Many of these retellings revisit female and/or villainized characters—like Kaikeyi—and allow them to tell their stories on their own terms. At the heart of this novel is Kaikeyi, one of Rama’s mothers.

‘Everything I Never Told You’ by Celeste Ng is set in a small Ohio town in the 1970s. After Lydia vanishes, her Chinese-American family struggles to uncover the reasons behind her disappearance and unravel long-held family secrets.

‘OBIE is Man Enough’ by Schuyler Bailar follows Obie: a seventh-grader, competitive swimmer, nerd, and Korean American boy. And Obie is trans. When he realizes and shares that he is a boy, his family supports him wholeheartedly. But things don't always run smoothly—he loses his spot on the swim team, faces rejection from friends, and becomes a target of bullying and transphobia at school.

Representation is a critical way for people to recognize that their experiences—even if invisible in the mainstream—are valid. ‘We Have...

‘Marriage of a Thousand Lies’ by SJ Sindu tells the story of Lucky. Lucky’s family is from Sri Lanka and tries to live by Hindu...

‘딸에 대하여’ by Kim Hye-jin, translated into English as ‘Concerning My Daughter’ by Jamie Chang (I read the German translation, ‘Die...

‘To Paradise’ by Hanya Yanagihara is brilliant. And I didn’t expect anything less from her. The book is divided into three sections, all...