lgbtqiap

She Who Became the Sun

Two-time British Fantasy Award Winner & Astounding Award Winner as well as Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, Hugo Award, Locus Award, & Otherwise Award

She Who Became the Sun reimagines the rise to power of the Ming Dynasty’s founding emperor.

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.

When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.

After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness.

“The characters are bold and complex in this story of fealty, family, and self. Epic worldbuilding, high action, and ruthless shades of love and desire make the tale at turns tragic and inspiring... Parker-Chan’s debut is forceful, immersive, and unforgettable. This inspired queer retelling of Chinese history is an exciting read.” ―Library Journal, starred review

“Parker-Chan’s gorgeous writing accompanies a vibrantly rendered world full of imperfect, fascinating characters. With every turn of the page, the book offers a new set piece, a new revelation, a new horror.... If you’re a fan of epic fantasy, you can’t miss this one.”―BookPage, starred review

“In the book’s opening chapters, Parker-Chan masterfully balances poetry and tension, keeping the reader flying through the pages as they watch Zhu gain a foothold in life… this is an important debut that expands our concept of who gets to be a hero and a villain, and introduces a pair of gender disruptors who are destined to change China – and the LGBTQ fantasy canon – forever.” ―USA Today

“Gorgeous and sprawling masterpiece of historical fantasy.”―Buzzfeed

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The Membranes

Best Translated Book of 2021, a Reviewer's Choice Best Book of 2021, & a Book of the Year 2021 selection

“An extraordinary novella . . . at last available in English in a brilliant translation by Ari Larissa Heinrich. At just 134 pages, its scope is dazzling. Now, from the vantage point of the future, its playful and unsettling insights into digital saturation, the traps of consciousness and labor, and the fugitive fabulations of identity and the self, have only grown more profound.” (The Paris Review Daily)

It is the late 21st century, and Momo is the most celebrated dermal care technician in all of T City. Humanity has migrated to domes at the bottom of the sea to escape devastating climate change. The world is dominated by powerful media conglomerates and runs on exploited cyborg labor. Momo prefers to keep to herself, and anyway she’s too busy for other relationships: her clients include some of the city’s best-known media personalities. But after meeting her estranged mother, she begins to explore her true identity, a journey that leads to questioning the bounds of gender, memory, self, and reality.

First published in Taiwan in 1995, The Membranes is a classic of queer speculative fiction in Chinese. Chi Ta-wei weaves dystopian tropes—heirloom animals, radiation-proof combat drones, sinister surveillance technologies—into a sensitive portrait of one young woman’s quest for self-understanding. Predicting everything from fitness tracking to social media saturation, this visionary and sublime novel stands out for its queer and trans themes. The Membranes reveals the diversity and originality of contemporary speculative fiction in Chinese, exploring gender and sexuality, technological domination, and regimes of capital, all while applying an unflinching self-reflexivity to the reader’s own role. Ari Larissa Heinrich’s translation brings Chi’s hybrid punk sensibility to all readers interested in books that test the limits of where speculative fiction can go.

“[T]his captivating novel is rich and rewarding.” ―Publishers Weekly

”A mind-blowing book . . . I have NEVER read anything like it.” ―Literary Infatuation

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Ten Steps to Nanette

NY Times Bestseller, One of the Best Books of the Year: PopSugar, Vulture

“There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself,” Hannah Gadsby declared in their show Nanette, a scorching critique of the way society conducts public debates about marginalized communities. When it premiered on Netflix, it left audiences captivated by their blistering honesty and their singular ability to take viewers from rolling laughter to devastated silence. Ten Steps to Nanette continues Gadsby’s tradition of confounding expectations and norms, properly introducing us to one of the most explosive, formative voices of our time.

Gadsby grew up as the youngest of five children in an isolated town in Tasmania, where homosexuality was illegal until 1997. They perceived their childhood as safe and “normal,” but as they gained an awareness of their burgeoning queerness, the outside world began to undermine the “vulnerably thin veneer” of their existence. After moving to mainland Australia and receiving a degree in art history, Gadsby found themselves adrift, working itinerant jobs and enduring years of isolation punctuated by homophobic and sexual violence. At age twenty-seven, without a home or the ability to imagine their own future, they were urged by a friend to enter a stand-up competition. They won, and so began their career in comedy.             

Gadsby became well known for their self-deprecating, autobiographical humor that made them the butt of their own jokes. But in 2015, as Australia debated the legality of same-sex marriage, Gadsby started to question this mode of storytelling, beginning work on a show that would become “the most-talked-about, written-about, shared-about comedy act in years” (The New York Times).           

Harrowing and hilarious, Ten Steps to Nanette traces Gadsby’s growth as a queer person, to their ever-evolving relationship with comedy, and their struggle with late-in-life diagnoses of autism and ADHD, finally arriving at the backbone of Nanette: the renouncement of self-deprecation, the rejection of misogyny, and the moral significance of truth-telling.

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Boulder

Shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize

Working as a cook on a merchant ship, a woman comes to know and love Samsa, a woman who gives her the nickname ‘Boulder’. When Samsa gets a job in Reykjavik and the couple decides to move there together, Samsa decides that she wants to have a child. She is already forty and can’t bear to let the opportunity pass her by. Boulder is less enthused, but doesn’t know how to say no – and so finds herself dragged along on a journey that feels as thankless as it is alien.

With motherhood changing Samsa into a stranger, Boulder must decide where her priorities lie, and whether her yearning for freedom can truly trump her yearning for love.

Once again, Eva Baltasar demonstrates her pre-eminence as a chronicler of queer voices navigating a hostile world—and in prose as brittle and beautiful as an ancient saga.

“[T]he language of desire never stops vibrating off the page; Baltasar pans the mundane for gold, and offers those nuggets—these morsels of intimacy—in a way that grips and sates.” —New York Times Book Review

“Exquisite, dark and unconventional, Eva Baltasar turns intimacy into a wild adventure.” —Fernanda Melchor

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Gaysia

Benjamin Law considers himself pretty lucky to live in Australia: he can hold his boyfriend's hand in public and lobby his politicians to recognize same-sex marriage. But as the child of immigrants, he's also curious about how different life might have been had he grown up in Asia. So he sets off to meet his fellow Gaysians. Law takes his investigative duties seriously, going nude where required in Balinese sex resorts, sitting backstage for hours with Thai ladyboy beauty contestants, and trying Indian yoga classes designed to cure his homosexuality. The characters he meets—from Tokyo's celebrity drag queens to HIV-positive Burmese sex workers and Malaysian ex-gay Christian fundamentalists to Chinese gays and lesbians who marry each other to please their parents—all teach him something new about being queer in Asia. At once entertaining and moving, Gaysia is a wild ride and a fascinating quest by a leading Australian writer.

”Law has achieved what seems the impossible: an enjoyable read, full of titillation, yet deep with sociological observations, along with a clear understanding of Asian history. Whether you’re planning a trip to Asia, an armchair tourist, or merely curious, Gaysia is a book you should add to your collection.” —Routledge

”In between the funny asides and sharp perceptions, Law offers serious observations to show that Asia may be halfway around the world, but it’s closer than we think. Funny and charming and worthy of being tucked in your carryon this summer.” —Terri Schlichenmeyer

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A Long Way from Doula

Bursting with local color, this hilarious, heartwarming coming-of-age tale follows two friends on a raucous journey across Cameroon as they grapple with grief, sexuality, and dreams of leaving. 

After their father’s sudden death, Jean’s older brother Roger decides he’s had enough of their abusive mother and their city. He runs away to try his luck crossing illegally into Europe, in the hope of becoming a soccer star abroad. When no news of him reaches the family, and the police declare that finding some feckless brat isn’t worth their time, Jean feels he has to act. Aiming to catch up with Roger before he gets to the Nigerian border, Jean enlists the help of the older Simon, a close neighborhood friend, and the two set out on the road. 

Through a series of joyful, sparky vignettes, Cameroon life is revealed in all its ups and downs. Max Lobe insightfully touches on grave, complex issues, such as the violence Boko Haram has inflicted on the region, yet still recounts events with remarkable humor and levity.

Artfully constructed and absorbing…Lobe has the ability to summon up whole worlds in a careful economy of phrase, bringing individuals and communities to life beyond the photogenic opportunism of breaking news.” —Irish Times
 
“Max Lobe has emerged as a name to watch…for his topical, rip-roaring explorations of life, society and politics in both his birth and adopted countries…There’s a lot to like about his straight-talking prose and sparky, Camfranglais-sprinkled dialogues, and I’d happily have stayed on board for longer.” —European Literature Network
 
“Lobe is a brilliant young talent…This defiant and uplifting immigrant’s story is powerful and persuasive…[a] stylish and colorful tale, rich and insightful.” —NB Magazine

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Jawbone

Finalist for the 2022 National Book Award in Translated Literature, Longlisted for the PEN Translation Prize & Ms. Magazine “Favorite Books of 2022”

Fernanda and Annelise are so close they are practically sisters: a double image, inseparable. So how does Fernanda end up bound on the floor of a deserted cabin, held hostage by one of her teachers and estranged from Annelise?

When Fernanda, Annelise, and their friends from the Delta Bilingual Academy convene after school, Annelise leads them in thrilling but increasingly dangerous rituals to a rhinestoned, Dior-scented, drag-queen god of her own invention. Even more perilous is the secret Annelise and Fernanda share, rooted in a dare in which violence meets love. Meanwhile, their literature teacher Miss Clara, who is obsessed with imitating her dead mother, struggles to preserve her deteriorating sanity. Each day she edges nearer to a total break with reality.

Interweaving pop culture references and horror concepts drawn from Herman Melville, H. P. Lovecraft, and anonymous “creepypastas,” Jawbone is an ominous, multivocal novel that explores the terror inherent in the pure potentiality of adolescence and the fine line between desire and fear.

“Delectable. . . . There are echoes of Lovecraft and Shirley Jackson at play, but the vision is ultimately Ojeda’s own―delicious in how it seduces and disturbs the reader as the girls rely on horror both as entertainment and as a way of staving off the actual terrors of growing up. This is creepy good fun.” ―Publishers Weekly

“Edgar Allan Poe meets a few of the mean girls. . . . Mother-daughter relationships slide under Ojeda’s microscope, sharing space with the teacher-student dynamic and deities as objects in an exploration of power and sexuality during adolescence. . . . Every good horror story needs a victim; Ojeda’s monsters and victims wear the same faces.” ―Kirkus

“Rife with gothic body horror and the darkness of the jungle and within ourselves. . . . Ojeda is a strikingly singular voice, combining basic teen angst with stark madness and the power of teen girls to push back in a world that tries to make them powerless.” ―The Brooklyn Rail

(A special thank you to book club member, Jordi Valbuena for the suggestion.)

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Butter Honey Pig Bread

Finalist - Lambda Literary Award, Governor General's Literary Award, Longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize

An intergenerational saga about three Nigerian women: a novel about food, family, and forgiveness.

Butter Honey Pig Bread is a story of choices and their consequences, of motherhood, of the malleable line between the spirit and the mind, of finding new homes and mending old ones, of voracious appetites, of queer love, of friendship, faith, and above all, family.

Francesca Ekwuyasi's debut novel tells the interwoven stories of twin sisters, Kehinde and Taiye, and their mother, Kambirinachi. Kambirinachi feels she was born an Ogbanje, a spirit that plagues families with misfortune by dying in childhood to cause its mother misery. She believes that she has made the unnatural choice of staying alive to love her human family and now lives in fear of the consequences of that decision.

Some of Kambirinachi's worst fears come true when her daughter, Kehinde, experiences a devasting childhood trauma that causes the family to fracture in seemingly irreversible ways. As soon as she's of age, Kehinde moves away and cuts contact with her twin sister and mother. Alone in Montreal, she struggles to find ways to heal while building a life of her own. Meanwhile, Taiye, plagued by guilt for what happened to her sister, flees to London and attempts to numb the loss of the relationship with her twin through reckless hedonism.

Now, after more than a decade of living apart, Taiye and Kehinde have returned home to Lagos to visit their mother. It is here that the three women must face each other and address the wounds of the past if they are to reconcile and move forward.

“The stories of Kambirinachi and her daughters, Taiye and Kehinde, unfold in lyrical, emotionally affecting parallel narratives . .. Written in sizzling prose, Ekwuyasi's assured, inspired debut will impress fans of Akwaeke Emezi.” —Publishers Weekly

(A special thank you to book club member, Layne Percival for the suggestion.)

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Dear Senthuran

Featured on the cover of Time Magazine as a 2021 next generation leader

In critically acclaimed novels, Akwaeke Emezi has introduced readers to a landscape marked by familial tensions, native belief systems, and a boundless search for what it means to be free. Now, in this extraordinary memoir, the bestselling author of The Death of Vivek Oji (view on Amazon) reveals the harrowing yet resolute truths of their own life. Through candid, intimate correspondence with friends, lovers, and family, Emezi traces the unfolding of a self and the unforgettable journey of a creative spirit stepping into power in the human world. Their story weaves through transformative decisions about their gender and body, their precipitous path to success as a writer, and the turmoil of relationships on an emotional, romantic, and spiritual plane, culminating in a book that is as tender as it is brutal.

Electrifying and inspiring, animated by the same voracious intelligence that distinguishes their fiction, Dear Senthuran is a revelatory account of storytelling, self, and survival.

“A once-in-a-generation voice.” —Vulture

“One of our greatest living writers.” —Shondaland

“A thing of great beauty . . . Dear Senthuran is about powerful excellence, especially the excellence that appears in bodies that aren’t white and aren’t male. Emezi is changing the world and our reaction to this kind of power.” —The Paris Review

“An audacious sojourn through the terror and beauty of refusing to explain yourself.” —New York Times Book Review

“The brilliant Akwaeke Emezi candidly shares their reflections on gender, embodiment, queerness, creativity and relationships with the same fierce dedication and candor that defines their bestselling novels.” —Ms. Magazine

(A special thank you to book club member, Heather Purcell for the suggestion.)

Note: Great on audio—read by the author herself!

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City of Strife

130 years have passed since Arathiel last set foot in his home city. Isandor hasn’t changed—bickering merchant families still vie for power through eccentric shows of wealth—but he has. His family is long dead, a magical trap has dulled his senses, and he returns seeking a sense of belonging now long lost.

Arathiel hides in the Lower City, piecing together a new life among in a shelter dedicated to the homeless and the poor, befriending an uncommon trio: the Shelter’s rageful owner, Larryn, his dark elven friend Hasryan, and Cal the cheese-loving halfling. When Hasryan is accused of Isandor's most infamous assassination of the last decade, what little peace Arathiel has managed to find for himself is shattered. Hasryan is innocent… he thinks. In order to save him, Arathiel may have to shatter the shreds of home he’d managed to build for himself.

Arathiel could appeal to the Dathirii—a noble elven family who knew him before he disappeared—but he would have to stop hiding, and they have battles of their own to fight. The idealistic Lord Dathirii is waging a battle of honour and justice against the cruel Myrian Empire, objecting to their slavery, their magics, and inhumane treatment of their apprentices. One he could win, if only he could convince Isandor’s rulers to stop courting Myrian’s favours for profit.

In the ripples that follow Diel’s opposition, friendships shatter and alliances crumble. Arathiel, the Dathirii, and everyone in Isandor fights to preserve their homes, even if the struggle changes them irrevocably.

City of Strife is the first installment of the City of Spires trilogy, a multi-layered political fantasy led by an all LGBTQIAP+ cast. Fans of complex storylines criss-crossing one another, elves and magic, and strong friendships and found families will find everything they need within these pages.

Note: Arseneault is an asexual & aromantic-spectrum writer who writes sci fi & fantasy led by aromantic & asexual heroes. She also maintains a database of aro & ace characters & books from a large variety of writers. City of Strife includes an asexual aromantic character & a graysexual character. If these terms are new to you: An asexual (aka “ace”) is someone who does not experience sexual attraction. An aromantic (aka “aro”) is a person who experiences little or no romantic attraction to others. A graysexual is someone who experiences limited sexual attraction (i.e., they experience sexual attraction very rarely or with very low intensity).

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After Elias

2021 Edmund White Award Finalist

When the airplane piloted by Elias Santos crashes one week before their wedding day, Coen Caraway loses the man he loves and the illusion of happiness he has worked so hard to create. The only thing Elias leaves behind is a recording of his final words, and even Coen is baffled by the cryptic message.

Numb with grief, he takes refuge on the Mexican island that was meant to host their wedding. But as fragments of the past come to the surface in the aftermath of the tragedy, Coen is forced to question everything he thought he knew about Elias and their life together. Beneath his flawed memory lies the truth about Elias—and himself.

From the damp concrete of Vancouver to the spoiled shores of Mexico, After Elias weaves the past with the present to tell a story of doubt, regret, and the fear of losing everything.

”Arresting... [a] deftly crafted novel.” ―Foreword Reviews

“Tan has written an immersive, unpredictable, engaging novel propelled by mystery, softened by tenderness, and enriched with little wisdoms.” ―Patrick Nathan, noted author

”Tan has crafted a page turner from a set of unlikely ingredients—tragedy, grief, pain and the darker shadows of the human mind. But most of all he has written tenderly, resplendently, about love.” —Christopher J. Yates, noted author

”It's rare to find a book that works well as a deeply emotional exploration of grief and as a suspenseful thriller, but After Elias manages this feat.” —Booklist

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Cobalt Blue

A literary sensation in South Asia, this memorable novel confronts issues of sexuality in India through a love triangle with a brother and sister falling for the same man. Cobalt Blue is a tale of rapturous love and fierce heartbreak told with tenderness and unsparing clarity.

Brother and sister Tanay and Anuja both fall in love with an artist lodging in their family home in Pune, Western India. He seems like the perfect tenant, ready with the rent and happy to listen to their mother’s musings on the imminent collapse of Indian culture. But he’s also a man of mystery. He has no last name. He has no family, no friends, no history, and no plans for the future.

Translated from the Marathi by acclaimed novelist and critic Jerry Pinto, Sachin Kundalkar’s elegantly wrought and exquisitely spare novel explores the disruption of a traditional family by a free-spirited stranger in order to examine a generation in transition. Intimate, moving, sensual, and wry in its portrait of young love, Cobalt Blue is a frank and lyrical exploration of gay life in India that recalls the work of Edmund White and Alan Hollinghurst—of people living in emotional isolation, attempting to find long-term intimacy in relationships that until recently were barely conceivable to them

“A mesmerizing novel of heartbreak, memory, and the ease of falling in love set against the impossibility of fully knowing other people.” —Kamila Shamsie, noted author

“One of the most shocking and brilliantly worded stories of love. . . . The story will stick with you, and long after you read it, the novel will play on your mind, forcing you to revisit it from time to time.” ―Buzzfeed

“Cobalt Blue reads like a love song . . . Kundalkar’s writing is masterful in its play of voice, capturing through his characters the claustrophobia of a small town, their longing to escape a middle class existence, and how love, and being in love, has the ability to transform every small detail from the mundane to the magnificent.”—Scroll.in

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Amora

Sweeping nearly every major Brazilian literary prize in 2016—including the Prêmio Jabuti and Prêmio Açorianos de Literatura—Amora has propelled Natália Borges Polesso to the forefront of the international literary world.

From an emerging talent comes an exquisite collection of stories exploring the complexity of love between women.

Amora dares explore the way women love each other—the atrophy and healing of the female spirit in response to sexual desire and identity. These thirty-three short stories and poems, crafted with a deliberate delicacy, each capture the candid, private moments of women in love.

Together, these stories and the women who inhabit them reveal an illuminating portrait of the sacred female romance, with all its nuances, complexities, burdens, and triumphs revealed. These pages are adorned with a mosaic of unforgettable moments, including a lesbian granddaughter discovering unexpected commonalities with her grandmother, a teenager’s tryst with her friend after disenchanting sex with a boy, and an old couple’s dreamy Sunday-morning ritual.

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First Spring Grass Fire

Lambda Literary Award Finalist

Transgender indie electronica singer-songwriter Rae Spoon has six albums to their credit, including I Can't Keep All of Our Secrets. This first book by Rae (who uses “they” as a pronoun) is a candid, powerful story about a young person growing up queer in a strict Pentecostal family in Alberta.

The narrator attends church events and Billy Graham rallies faithfully with their family before discovering the music that becomes their salvation and means of escape. As their father's schizophrenia causes their parents' marriage to unravel, the narrator finds solace and safety in the company of their siblings, in their nascent feelings for a girl at school, and in their growing awareness that they are not the person their parents think they are. With a heart as big as the prairie sky, this is a quietly devastating, heart-wrenching coming-of-age book about escaping dogma, surviving abuse, finding love, and risking everything for acceptance.

“First Spring Grass Fire will be meaningful to anyone who has struggled to fit in. By telling these stories—of being different, queer, raised in a rigid belief system you didn't choose, trying to be yourself within circumstances you can't control—Rae Spoon illustrates the triumph in reclaiming and controlling your own identity. This moving collection is a story of what we do to find a place, physical or intangible, that we can call home.” —National Post

“The prose is concise without ornamentation; emotionally moving because of its raw honesty. While issues of gender and sexuality certainly underline the majority of the narrator's existential despair, the book works because it pushes the reader to understand the humanity of the narrator rather than simply a trans or lesbian narrative. It demonstrates the commonality of grief, loss, fear, pain, love, and longing.”
—Lambda Literary

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Under My Skin



Min Lee is a workaholic who can’t say no. She substitutes sleep with Red Bull and, through a combination of repression and bad habits, has managed to score herself a luxury apartment, a fabulous boyfriend and the approval of her billionaire CEO. Things are looking pretty awesome… well, apart from those body image issues that constantly plague her.

But Min thinks she's got everything worked out. She's arranged her comfort zone and has zero desire to look outside of it… or, so she tells herself.

It’s not until a troubled schoolgirl tracks her down from the Internet, stalks her to her home and noses her way into life that Min begins to admit that something is wrong in her perfect world. Something that she's never thought about before, and doesn’t even want to think about. Something that has the power to ruin all her relationships and dismantle everything in her life she’s worked so very hard for.

What if “she” isn’t the right word for Min at all?

“When was the last time a book hooked you so deeply you actually worried about the characters when you weren't reading? I didn’t want this book to end!” —Olin Elliott

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Our Lives Our Words

“Fear. I was scared to walk on the road for fear of people recognizing me. I was afraid the police might arrest me. I avoided taking the bus, not sure whom I could sit next to. I was scared to use the public toilet for fear that people might know my difference. I was scared that rotten tomatoes might hit me in the market. I was scared of falling in love for fear of being hit hard.”

The stories in this landmark volume chronicle, in their own words, the lives of aravanis* with narratives of pain and courage, of despair and triumph.

Aravanis have long been the invisible yet hyper-visible subjects of a societal gaze that reduces them to stereotype. Imagined as often as looked at or talked about, simultaneously revered and cursed, they have, in the process, been refused individual histories, lives and identities, even selves. Yet the community continues to challenge and subvert this view, persistently refusing to allow itself to be shamed or victimized. Some of the greatest recent victories in this ongoing battle for rights have been won in Tamil Nadu (a state in southern India), where the government first began to recognize many of the rights of the hijra community.

These stories are amongst the first accounts of hijra lives to be produced entirely by the members of the community themselves.

*As Identiversity notes, “nonbinary identities may seem like a new phenomenon in Western culture, but that’s not the case in other parts of the world. In India, a third gender identity known as hijra (or aravani in Tamil Nadu) has been intertwined with Indian culture for thousands of years, with hijras holding a prominent place in some of the most significant ancient Hindu texts.

Prior to British rule, hijras enjoyed a degree of acceptance in Indian society, playing a key role in celebrations. However, the colonial era was marked by criminalization and persecution, and today’s hijras—which include people who are intersex, transgender, and eunuchs—continue to occupy an uneasy space in Indian culture. Many are forced to eke out a living through begging or functioning as sex workers.

Efforts to gain legal protections took a significant step forward in 2014, when the Supreme Court of India officially recognized hijras as a third gender.

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I Hope We Choose Love

American Library Association Stonewall Book Awards Honor Book & Winner, Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature

What can we hope for at the end of the world? What can we trust in when community has broken our hearts? What would it mean to pursue justice without violence? How can we love in the absence of faith?

In a heartbreaking yet hopeful collection of personal essays and prose poems, blending the confessional, political, and literary, acclaimed poet and essayist Kai Cheng Thom dives deep into the questions that haunt social movements today. With the author's characteristic eloquence and honesty, I Hope We Choose Love proposes heartfelt solutions on the topics of violence, complicity, family, vengeance, and forgiveness. Taking its cues from contemporary thought leaders in the transformative justice movement such as Adrienne MareeBrown and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, this provocative book is a call for nuance in a time of political polarization, for healing in a time of justice, and for love in an apocalypse.

“In this brave and skillfully written collection of essays, Kai Cheng Thom dares to be really honest—to write truths that go beyond easy orthodoxy to her and our own messy, complex, real stories. As a suicide survivor and someone who does work around suicide in queer and femme communities, I deeply appreciate her clarity about how suicide shows up in queer and trans communities and the ways in which social justice, queer, trans and/or Black and brown communities turn on and hurt each other while trying to keep ourselves safe. This is a brave book, and an essential text for everyone trying like hell to create something that will come after the end of the world. Read it, and prepare to have your mind challenged and opened.” —Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, author of Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice

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Little Fish

Winner, Lambda Literary Award; Amazon Canada First Novel Award; Firecracker Award for Fiction; A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year

It's the dead of winter in Winnipeg and Wendy Reimer, a thirty-year-old trans woman, feels like her life is frozen in place. When her Oma (grandmother) passes away, Wendy receives an unexpected phone call from a distant family friend with a startling secret: Wendy's Opa (grandfather)—a devout Mennonite farmer—might have been transgender himself. At first she dismisses this revelation, but as Wendy's life grows increasingly volatile, she finds herself aching for the lost pieces of her Opa's truth.

But this isn’t a story about her Opa. It’s a slice-of-life story about Wendy. Alternately warm-hearted and dark-spirited, desperate and mirthful, Little Fish explores the winter of discontent in the life of one transgender woman as her past and future become irrevocably entwined.

“I have never felt as seen, understood, or spoken to as I did when I read Little Fish. Never before in my life. Casey remains one of THE authors to read if you want to understand the interior lives of trans women in this century.” —Meredith Russo, author of If I Was Your Girl

“A touching and beautiful novel.” —The Independent (UK)

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Funny Boy

Lambda Literary Award Winner

An evocative coming-of-age novel about growing up gay in Sri Lanka during the Tamil-Sinhalese conflict—one of the country’s most turbulent and deadly periods.

Arjie is “funny.”

The second son of a privileged family in Sri Lanka, he prefers staging make-believe wedding pageants with his female cousins to battling balls with the other boys. When his parents discover his innocent pastime, Arjie is forced to abandon his idyllic childhood games and adopt the rigid rules of an adult world. Bewildered by his incipient sexual awakening, mortified by the bloody Tamil-Sinhalese conflicts that threaten to tear apart his homeland, Arjie painfully grows toward manhood and an understanding of his own “different” identity.

Set in the mannered, lush world of upper middle class Tamils in Sri Lanka, this deeply moving novel, though not autobiographical, draws on Selvadurai’s experience of being gay in Sri Lanka and growing up during the escalating violence between the Buddhist Sinhala majority and Hindu Tamil minority in the 1970’s and early 1980’s.

Refreshing, raw, and poignant, Funny Boy is an exquisitely written, compassionate tale of a boy’s coming-of-age that quietly confounds expectations of love, family, and country as it delivers the powerful message of staying true to one’s self no matter the obstacles.

“Selvadurai writes as sensitively about the emotional intensity of adolescence as he does about the wonder of childhood.” —New York Times Book Review

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Sexographies

In fierce and sumptuous first-person accounts, renowned Peruvian journalist Gabriela Wiener records infiltrating the most dangerous Peruvian prison, participating in sexual exchanges in swingers clubs, traveling the dark paths of the city in the company of prostitutes, undergoing a complicated process of egg donation, and participating in a ritual of ayahuasca ingestion in the Amazon jungle—all while taking us on inward journeys that explore immigration, maternity, fear of death, ugliness, and threesomes. Fortunately, our eagle-eyed voyeur emerges from her narrative forays unscathed and ready to take on the kinks, obsessions, and messiness of our lives. Sexographies is an eye-opening, kamikaze journey across the contours of the human body and mind.

“The most striking quality of Sexographies is Wiener’s fearlessness―her ability to broach any topic without the slightest flinch, however unfamiliar or achingly personal…. her essays do not deal solely in sex, as the title of the collection may suggest, but in the exploration of identity and gender. How are we to make sense of our own bodies and the bodies of others? Why is it that we with the internet at our fingertips supposedly know more than ever, yet often experience less and are less open to the experiences of others? Wiener urges us to ask these questions in order to uncover the artificial boundaries that have confined us to our own experiences. Nothing is off limits to Gabriela Wiener and she spares her readers no detail of her adventures. The result is Sexographies―an addictive and darkly funny collection that surprises at every turn.” —The Arkansas International

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

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