Queer Book Recs
We get asked for book recommendations pretty regularly, so I wanted to share some of my favourite queer reads of 2022 so far.
Passing Strange by Ellen Klages: San Francisco in 1940 is a haven for the unconventional. Tourists flock to the cities within the city: the Magic City of the World’s Fair on an island created of artifice and illusion; the forbidden city of Chinatown, a separate, alien world of exotic food and nightclubs that offer “authentic” experiences, straight from the pages of the pulps; and the twilight world of forbidden love, where outcasts from conventional society can meet.Six women find their lives as tangled with each other’s as they are with the city they call home. They discover love and danger on the borders where magic, science, and art intersect.
Blood Feast by Malika Moustadraf with Alice Guthrie (Translator), Alice Guthrie (Translator): Blood Feast is the complete collection of Moustadraf’s short fiction: haunting, visceral stories by a master of the genre. A woman is groped during her suffocating commute; a teenage girl suffers through a dystopian rite of passage; two mothers scheme about how to ensure their daughters pass a virginity test. And the collection’s titular story paints a grim picture of dialysis patients in Casablanca–Moustadraf ultimately died of kidney disease at age thirty-seven, denied access to basic healthcare that could have saved her life. Through brilliantly executed twists and rich slang, she takes an unflinching look at the female body, abuse and harassment, and double standards around desire. Blood Feast is a sharp provocation to patriarchal power, and a celebration of the life and genius of one of Morocco’s preeminent writers.
Not Pounded By Anything: Six Platonic Tales Of Non-Sexual Encounters by Chuck Tingle: Across the wide world of the Tingleverse, one thing is clear: love is real. But, for many buckaroos, their preferred kind of love has nothing to do with sex. Whether asexual or just not feeling it at the moment, this collection of completely sexless tales is perfect for the desires of any readers who are looking for a non-sexual trip through the alternate timelines of Dr. Chuck Tingle.
Still Life by Louise Penny: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a local fixture in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines, just north of the U.S. border, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it’s a tragic hunting accident and nothing more, but Gamache smells something foul in these remote woods, and is soon certain that Jane Neal died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter.
Witching Moon by Poppy Woods: Alandra Michaels is your everyday, run-of-the-mill, ordinary witch. She doesn’t have an affinity for an element, like her sister. She can’t speak to the dead, like her mother. Even her familiar–Beezelbub the moth–is a plain, non-threatening insect. Alandra is fine with that; she knows what she is and what she isn’t. Or so she thought … When a spell goes wrong and a gorgeous woman shows up in her living room claiming to be the Moon, everything changes for Alandra and her magical abilities will be put to the test.
A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson: A lyrical and dreamy reimagining of Dracula’s brides, A Dowry of Blood is a story of desire, obsession, and emancipation. Saved from the brink of death by a mysterious stranger, Constanta is transformed from a medieval peasant into a bride fit for an undying king. But when Dracula draws a cunning aristocrat and a starving artist into his web of passion and deceit, Constanta realizes that her beloved is capable of terrible things. Finding comfort in the arms of her rival consorts, she begins to unravel their husband’s dark secrets. With the lives of everyone she loves on the line, Constanta will have to choose between her own freedom and her love for her husband. But bonds forged by blood can only be broken by death.
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao: The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn’t matter that the girls often die from the mental strain.When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it’s to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister’s death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way—and stop more girls from being sacrificed.
The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontiers by Mark Gevisser: More than seven years in the making, Mark Gevisser’s The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontiers is an exploration of how the conversation around sexual orientation and gender identity has come to divide–and describe–the world in an entirely new way over the first two decades of the twenty-first century. No social movement has brought change so quickly and with such dramatically mixed results. While same-sex marriage and gender transition are celebrated in some parts of the world, laws are being strengthened to criminalize homosexuality and gender nonconformity in others. As new globalized queer identities are adopted by people across the world–thanks to the digital revolution–fresh culture wars have emerged. A new Pink Line, Gevisser argues, has been drawn across the globe, and he takes readers to its frontiers.
IRL by Tommy Pico: IRL is a sweaty, summertime poem composed like a long text message, rooted in the epic tradition of A.R. Ammons, ancient Kumeyaay Bird Songs, and Beyoncé’s visual albums. It follows Teebs, a reservation-born, queer NDN weirdo, trying to figure out his impulses/desires/history in the midst of Brooklyn rooftops, privacy in the age of the Internet, street harassment, suicide, boys boys boys, literature, colonialism, religion, leaving one’s 20s, and a love/hate relationship with English. He’s plagued by an indecision, unsure of which obsessions, attractions, and impulses are essentially his, and which are the result of Christian conversion, hetero-patriarchal/colonialist white supremacy, homophobia, Bacardi, gummy candy, and not getting laid. IRL asks, what happens to a modern, queer indigenous person a few generations after his ancestors were alienated from their language, their religion, and their history? Teebs feels compelled towards “boys, burgers,booze,” though he begins to suspect there is perhaps a more ancient goddess calling to him behind art, behind music, behind poetry.
