This week’s reading list includes recommendations from two YA authors in the LGBTQIA+ community—Kalynn Bayron (author of Cinderella Is Dead, out now) and Candice Iloh (author of Every Body Looking, coming September 2020)—and our own PEN America staff. These books, all by LGBTQIA+ authors, ranging from Octavia Butler (whose birthday we celebrated in June) to Adam Silvera and June Jordan, ask us to question the notions of sexuality and race that many of us grew up with, deconstruct our societal norms of family and community, and remind us how language and narrative can help us to reimagine the future and remember the past.
Fledgling, Octavia Butler (2005)
Bookshop | Amazon
“When I was younger, I searched high and low for vampire stories that deconstructed the myths we all know. This story does that so perfectly while also exploring the myriad ways individuals form bonds of love and attachment. Fledgling explores themes of sexuality, race, agency, and family. It is a title I return to again and again.”
—Kalynn Bayron, author of Cinderella Is Dead (Bookshop, Amazon)
Sorry to Disrupt the Peace, Patty Yumi Cottrell (2018)
Bookshop | Amazon
“This book taught me it’s OK to be messy, to be confused, to be sad, and to not know how to react to the world one doesn’t fit into.”
—PEN America Staff Pick
The Mad Man, Samuel R. Delany (2015)
Publisher | Amazon
“This is an eye-opening, lurid, and often disturbing look into the lifestyle of a gay Black academic in New York City. The pathos of the story arises from the unapologetic honesty and frank exploration of power dynamics as the protagonist, a moneyed intellectual, engages in sex with homeless men.”
—Robbie Pollock, Program Manager, Prison Writing
Freshwater, Akwaeke Emezi (2018)
Bookshop | Amazon
“Freshwater tells a deeply resonant story of identity, and it does so in a way that feels entirely new. It is a book that reminds you of what language and novels are capable of—a book that reminds you why you love reading.”
—Summer Lopez, Senior Director, Free Expression Programs
The Gilda Stories, Jewelle Gomez (2016)
Bookshop | Amazon
“Like any 13-year-old Catholic schoolgirl, I was obsessed with vampire novels—a genre that has always been queer. Vampires flee their biological families, certain they’re freaks; reproduction just isn’t possible; and queer desire is, like every other sensation, heightened and validated as a superpower. But the genre is historically very white, and Gomez’s novel ‘queers’ it in that sense, too: ‘sharing the blood’ becomes the only way for Gilda, a lesbian vampire who runs a bordello, to save the life of the fugitive slave who takes her name. In following this heroine through eras of turmoil in America, like Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement, and even the future of our dying planet, Gomez gives young LGBTQIA+ readers a vision of a life full of possibility and love from the families we choose. Fun fact: This indigenous, multiracial foremother of queer literature was also a plaintiff in the California Supreme Court case that declared bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional in 2008.”
—Nicole Marie Gervasio, Ph.D., Manager, Literary Festival and Public Programs
We’re On: A June Jordan Reader, June Jordan (2017)
Bookshop | Amazon
“When I read June Jordan’s work for the first time, I could not believe I had gone my whole life without reading her. Jordan’s work challenges us to think through our political identities and beyond to consider the radical future of poetics and community. From essays to queer love poems, this reader chronicles much of Jordan’s life and work.”
—Alejandro Heredia, Manager, Community Outreach
The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson (2016)
Bookshop | Amazon
“This book defies categorization; it is a deeply felt and personal meditation that also draws on the spirit of some of our greatest theorists, storytellers, thinkers, and cultural critics. The book provides gorgeous and thoughtful accounts of the mundane but transformative moments in the author’s life—falling in love, pregnancy, parenting—rethinking the societal norms, structures, and binaries we have inherited, while holding up the human values that transcend them. Love, courage, care.”
—PEN America Staff Pick
The Stars and the Blackness Between Them, Junauda Petrus (2019)
Bookshop | Amazon
“I recommend The Stars and the Blackness Between Them. It is the magic-filled, ancestral, shameless Black queer love story that baby me needed to read. It is a spell, a hug, and an affirmation all in one.”
—Candice Iloh, author of Every Body Looking (Bookshop, Amazon)
More Happy Than Not, Adam Silvera (2016)
Bookshop | Amazon
“Silvera’s books remind us that the experiences of teens and young people are no less weighty than those of adults. In his debut novel, Silvera takes us into the life of a protagonist who is juggling grief, growing up in poverty, and coming to terms with his identity—all at once.”
—PEN America Staff Pick
