Our Favorite Queer Books!

‘The Mercies’ by Kiran Millwood Hargrave is set on Vardø. The climate is rough so far north, but the inhabitants know how to deal with it. The story begins on Christmas Eve 1617, when all adult men that were not too old to go out for fishing were killed by a storm. At this time, all over Europe and North America, innocent people, mostly women, were being burned at the stake for witchcraft.

‘The Mothers’ by Brit Bennett is set in Oceanside, California. The story centers on three characters: Nadia, Aubrey, and Luke. Nadia is seventeen and her mother has died. Suicide. She lives with her father and is struggling with her grief. When she meets Luke, who is a few years older and the pastor’s son, they start dating.

‘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.

She was the perfect reckless. ‘The Stars and the Blackness Between Them’ by Junauda Petrus is so sweet—and heartbreaking. And although...

An ọgbanje is an Igbo spirit that’s born to a human mother, a kind of trickster that dies unexpectedly only to return in the next child...

'Milkman' by Anna Burns is set in a world in the 1970s where two religions are fighting each other. Although the setting is discernible at some point, the story could be set anywhere where religious groups clash. The first-person narrator, an 18-year-old young woman, leads a rather uneventful life and has regular dates with maybe-boyfriend until Milkman (with a capital M) starts stalking her.

‘Dschinns’ by Fatma Aydemir is a German book (English: ‘Djinns,’ translated by Jon Cho-Polizzi) about an immigrant family from Turkey and their struggles with life in Germany and in general.  Set in 1999, it begins with Hüseyin in his new condo in Istanbul. After 30 years of hard work in Germany, he finally got this condo and a well-deserved retirement. And a heart attack.

‘Young Mungo’ by Douglas Stuart is the author’s second book after ‘Shuggie Bain.’ And this one is as brilliant as the first. Growing up...

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

‘Under the Udala Trees’ by Chinelo Okparanta is a moving account of Ijeoma’s live in the Nigeria, mostly from the 1960s to the 1980s....

‘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...

I was so excited to read 'Unprotected: A Memoir' by Billy Porter ever since the book was announced. And it did not disappoint. The book...