Queer YA To Read for Disability Pride Month

Have I recommended this book before in Our Queerest Shelves? Yes, because I will take any excuse to talk about it. It’s set in 1904 Norway and follows a queer teen found family group: Aster, who is asexual, has Waardenburg Syndrome, and is deaf in one ear; Gunnar, who is an amputee, is non-ambulatory, and experiences chronic pain; and Erland, who has anxiety. Gunnar and Erland are in a romantic relationship, and the three of them are rejected from their community for not following norms, forcing them to find a way to survive together. Plus, there’s a horse race to save the family farm. This is a beautiful and immersive story I need more people to read ASAP.

Simone is a teenager who’s been HIV positive since birth. It’s managed well with medication, but she faced so much stigma in her last school that she had to change schools and hide her diagnosis. Now, just as everything seems to be going well and the boy she’s crushing on might be crushing on her too, she starts getting blackmail notes threatening to out her as HIV positive.

Simone is bisexual, and she spends part of the book coming to terms with this: she has two queer best friends, and she feels like she can’t “claim” the label of bisexual because she’s more often attracted to guys. This is something I haven’t seen a lot in books, and it’s handled so well. She also has two dads, so there’s plenty of queer rep!