Author: Patricia Elzie

Brookins writes, “Every day, I am assumed to be a Black American man, though my ID says ‘female,’ and my heart says neither of the sort.” This memoir, interspersed with poetry, contains Brookins’ own experiences of the particular flavor of marginalization that happens when a person is Black, queer, and trans. Some of this is exacerbated by religious community but don’t let anyone lead you to believe this marginalization doesn’t happen outside of those spaces as well. Brookins’ birth mother had them very young and they were adopted by and raised by another couple. These folks, their parents, are, according to them, very religious and very Texan.

My heart broke over and over, reading about the bullying and the discomfort of elementary school, and then I shook with rage reading about the sexual assault they suffered at the hands of teenage children of fellow church members. Needless to say, this book is an emotional read filled with multiple kinds of abuse and homophobia and transphobia but there is always, always hope written between the words.

For 60 years, the author’s family has had two gospel-singing troupes made of dozens of family members. The family is well-known in churches in the Fort Worth, Texas area and they write about the effects of this on them growing up. They also write about their eventual escape from the toxic culture that surrounded and terrorized them, which coincided with going to college. During all of this is their struggle to figure out who they are, where they belong, and who they belong with. Maybe I’m biased, but one of the reasons I always find Black queer memoirs so powerful is that there is always hope as the through line. If there was no hope, then the memoir wouldn’t exist. If there was no hope, then Black queer people would not exist.

I feel so fortunate that this book exists and I get to share it with you.

Chihiro Ito is sixteen and has big dreams about being a samurai. She is obsessed with Tatsuo Nakano, a well-known samurai who was the first girl to be accepted to the renowned samurai school known as Keisi Academy. Keisi Academy is notorious for only allowing boys, but Tatsuo’s fierce talent could not be ignored. Tatsuo is glorified in movies and television and on posters (and probably other merch), and Chihiro might just be her biggest fan. Chihiro has been training with her father who himself is an esteemed samurai, though in retirement from serving Daimyo Teshima. Chihiro’s father has an existing injury from his samurai days which makes the fact that he has been called out of retirement and back into service even more worrisome. A large, terrible creature called a yamauba has been kidnapping children in a town in the mountains.

Chihiro is eager to prove herself and volunteers to go in her father’s place. Her parents only allow it if she finds a rōnin to accompany her and fight the monster as a team. Chihiro decides that she is not going to hire just any rōnin. She wants to hire her idol, Tatsuo Nakano. When she finally catches up to Tatsuo and convinces her to join her, Chihiro finds that her idol is not at all who she imagined. Tatsuo is fighting her own demons. She is doing everything she can to escape from grief, which often involves a lot of drinking and a lot of being rude to people so she doesn’t form any kind of attachments.

Amidst the snarky dialogue and plenty of humor, this graphic novel is absolutely about the ways in which grief can tear us apart and bring us together. Content warnings for violence and death of friends and family members.

This comic anthology features 29 transgender and nonbinary comic artists, each sharing a slice of their individual journeys of stepping into their own authentic selves. The stories in this anthology are vulnerable, encouraging, and diverse. Trans and nonbinary folks are not a monolith, and while some stories may have similarities, each is unique. This collection is a love letter to the trans and nonbinary community. It offers open arms to readers who may be questioning or struggling with their own gender identities as well as an outstretched hand to readers who are pursuing a deeper understanding of trans and nonbinary experiences.

Each comic is quite short, only a handful of pages long or fewer; however, each comic is expressive and meaningful, earnest and heartfelt. Dozens of small journeys take us from dysphoria, discomfort, fear, and confusion to a place of euphoria and at the very least, contentment. Contentment is no small feat, mind you, and the stories in this book are proof that it is possible.

The variety of comics in this anthology is really impressive. Not every story has a fairytale ending or an ending at all. Some folks are still discovering who they are, and that is valid too. Some creators were able to carry parts of their younger selves with them while others needed to completely break free of all they were, including their family and community. Many found new communities, sometimes in unlikely places, and that, too, can be gender-affirming. All of the creators are, of course, incredibly talented, and the artwork for each comic amplified the emotions in a way that only text would not.

This is an excellent anthology that began as a Kickstarter but is now available as an expanded version.

I’ve said this before, but I truly believe that poets write the best memoirs. The essays in this book range from harrowing to heartbreaking to hopeful, and each one is deeply eye-opening. Lawson has a way of making every place and every feeling palpable to readers.

The author is one person who seems to have crammed a hundred lives into their single existence. One essay takes place in Egypt. They and their young woman friends are single and not dressed as modestly as is typical, and they come a little too close to learning exactly how dangerous that could be. They describe with intimate detail a performance piece they experienced in Japan, and reading their description made it feel like I was also there.

Many of the essays are also explorations of being Black in whichever particular city and country they are in during that story. They write about being in Venice, Italy, and the gondolier who was smitten with them while not fetishizing them. They write about being married and living in Roosteren, Netherlands, and constantly battling white saviorism, thinly veiled racism, and food that sounds absolutely terrible. They write about being Black in Harare, Zimbabwe, and being in a car full of other “Black” people driving recklessly in the dark and the realization that, while they could get in trouble, it will not be from a white cop because there, the police are “Black” too. The story about when they were in France at a beautiful dinner party and opted out of the white people shenanigans really resonated with me.

They also write about becoming disabled over time, about love and community, about loss, and about learning and unlearning, especially around gender as a construct and their own identity. Lawson’s travels could easily make them seem unrelatable to folks who have not had such access; however, each essay exudes connection and cultivates understanding.

It’s the twenty-third century: Korea has long since united and has cultivated the pinnacle of space exploration. Korea is the genesis of the Alliance, which is the space military that oversees the safety and order of the solar system, also referred to as “the solar.” Ocean Yoon is a space pilot who has had a major demotion because of a past incident and we find her working on a much lower-class ship than she once did. When Ocean was eight years old, she was sent away from the Jeju province in Korea to the diplomat school, where she was expected to train to be a diplomat until she was 18. She dropped out of this program a year before graduation to join the Alliance. Ocean’s older brother had taught her how to fly spacecraft. As a person who loves to drive and also sometimes misses the satisfaction of driving a manual, I was tickled by the care and focus that the author takes when talking about how Ocean flies the spacecraft. I had never thought I would encounter a manual spaceship, but I am absolutely delighted by it.

Teo Anand is the younger son of a hugely wealthy family, perhaps the wealthiest family in the solar. The Anand family’s companies are responsible for a lot of terraforming and designing a lot of tech, especially the tech used by the Alliance. Ocean and Teo are unlikely friends and as such, their friendship is kept secret. Their bond is the kind that can only be formed from shared trauma.

Ocean is part of a ragtag crew on a Class 4 ship, definitely not the class of ship that sees any action. The Captain, Dae, is a bit sketchy and very money-focused. She hires on a new medic, who is from the group of people that handle death and death rites. His name is Haven Sasani, and his people have very strict rules around physical touch — that is, it is forbidden to touch him. His people are also looked down upon by everyone else in the solar.

Dae takes on what is supposed to be a fairly underwhelming mission to go to a place where there is a bunch of abandoned technology and do some diagnostic work. Everything goes horribly wrong. Meanwhile, Teo, as a member of the Alliance, is part of the crew on a ship that is escorting Seonbi, an elite group of scholars, to Mars. Everything goes horribly wrong.

This book has a lot of moving parts and is beautifully choreographed. It was an incredibly fun read that I enjoyed, and I hope you do too.

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, cultural critic, and MacArthur Genius but before he was any of these things he was, and will always be, an Ohioan. On the surface, this book is about basketball, Ohio, poverty, and incarceration; however, it only takes a couple pages for readers to realize that it’s about so much more. There’s Always This Year is about belonging and survival and connection and above all, love. It’s a blend of memoir and exploration that is bursting with love and told in such palpable earnestness that a reader doesn’t need to be from Ohio or know a thing about basketball in order to feel a flicker of love bloom in their own heart by sheer influence of Abdurraqib’s writing.

This is a book about home, and home is sometimes the place where a person is born and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes home isn’t even an actual place, but instead the idea of home is personified in a sports team. The author writes about basketball in the way that basketball should be written about — the sport itself, especially in the Black community, is itself about love and connection and promise and hope. One cannot write about basketball in Ohio without diving into the sheer depth of hopes and dreams that folks had tasked LeBron James with fulfilling. The author writes about this in ways that are both beautiful and devastating. Abdurraqib also writes about his own history of struggle and incarceration in a place he loved so much but didn’t seem to love him back sometimes.

This book is a great read that pushed and pulled my heart with every page.

This book is set in the Southside of Chicago and school is out for the summer. Our main characters are around 19 or 20ish years old. Ariel Grace Jones is determined for their garage punk band, the Baby Hares, to break into the music industry. They have a repeat festival gig coming up, and music is life. Ariel (aka Ari) is the lead singer, and they write most of the songs for the band. As with many creatives and musicians, the reality of that space between high school and whatever they’re doing next is starting to hit hard, and they’re wondering if they should hang up their guitar and move on. Suddenly, a fellow punk musician and local celebrity starts taking an interest in Ari’s talent, and maybe a little more than their talent. Just in time, too, as drama amongst the Baby Hares band members crescendos.

I love everything about this book. The story is a familiar one, but it’s an important one to keep telling. It’s the kind of graphic novel that will definitely make some people mad. I can imagine the tantrums it’s going to cause, and it’s delicious. This book is unapologetically punk, unapologetically Black, and unapologetically queer. I found it incredibly affirming as a Black queer person who used to go to a lot of goth clubs and would notice that I’m the only Black person in sight at a Type O Negative concert. It is so rare I get to see representation like this on the page. Speaking of goth clubs, the scenes in this book in the goth club made me laugh hysterically.

The color palette of this graphic novel is perfect, and yes, I’m biased, because it’s all my favorite colors. Punk Rock Karaoke is simultaneously a big F.U. to the status quo and a love letter to the BIPOC femmes and thems of rock and the community they’ve built despite all the haters and thieves. This is definitely one of the best graphic novels I’ve read this year so far.

This book is a retelling of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of James, also known as Jim, the runaway enslaved man and Huck Finn’s companion during his adventures down the Mississippi River. If you have read any of Everett’s other work, then you know you are in store for a hilarious, clever, gut-wrenching, punch-in-the-face book.

When this book starts, you immediately know what the character James is about. He is intelligent and knows how to read, illegally consuming books from the Judge’s library. James is astute enough to know not to show any of his hand, carefully speaking to white folks in the manner in which they expect a simple enslaved person to speak. He teaches this to his children, not only the correct “incorrect” grammar but also the ways in which to speak according to social structure.

It’s clear that James has a soft spot for Huck. When James catches wind that he (James) may be sold to another enslaver, he runs away. He doesn’t really have a plan, and while understandably more than a bit panicked, he’s confident he can figure something out. Huck Finn comes along, and so now James is navigating a situation where he’s constantly having to keep himself and Huck safe while also doing the extreme code-switching he has perfected and formulating a plan to somehow liberate his wife and children.

While it is not necessary to have read Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn before reading this book, if you want an absolutely sublime reading experience, I suggest you read (or reread) it and then read James immediately after. I never thought I’d be suggesting that anyone read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, yet here we are.

Content warnings for racist violence (isn’t it all violence?), murder, other violence, and a host of other things that come along when talking about slavery without romanticizing it. This book also contains perhaps the funniest exchange I have ever read, an exchange that is the pinnacle of comedy, and it rendered me speechless for a good ten minutes after reading it.

Aphrodite Du Bell feels incredibly burdened by her name: it’s a lot to live up to. Though she is incredibly beautiful and talented, she feels pressure to constantly be the most beautiful, the most talented, and the most everything. Being named after the goddess of love and beauty is a lot to ask of someone. She loves to walk about the gardens, and her mother thinks she loves to read a bit too much. Aphrodite is part of a big family of five siblings, and they are all very loving and close to each other.

Aphrodite is 22 and unmarried. She had every intention of marrying her childhood friend, Evander Eagleman, the Duke of Everely. As far as she knew, he had every intention of marrying her as well. During the season of her coming out (four years prior to the start of this book), she turned down every offer from every suitor, as she expected Evander to show up and ask for her hand. She waited and waited and he never showed. In fact, the next she heard was that he had gotten married to someone else. It is now the next eldest daughter’s turn for her coming out, and the family has insisted that Aphrodite go to London for the season with everyone to show support for her sister Hathor, who is just a giant ball of anxiety. Coincidentally, Evander has a younger sister, Verity, who is also coming out this season, and on top of that, Evander’s wife just passed away. The likelihood of Aphrodite and Evander crossing paths is incredibly high. The family is torn on this whole situation. Aphrodite’s mother, who is also Evander’s godmother, is depending on them running into each other and making up and getting married. Damon, Aphrodite’s older brother, is very much against it and does not want his sister to get hurt yet again.

While Evander is the Duke of an estate, he and Verity have had multiple traumatic experiences growing up due to their careless, abusive, and now deceased father and the father’s second wife, who was his mistress and not from their circles. This book went to some places that I did not expect it to go, and it’s told from multiple viewpoints. There is definitely sex on the page, which is both steamy and charming. While there is some trauma talked about in the book, it isn’t racism-based trauma, and racism is hardly a theme in this book, if at all. Content warnings for physical and verbal abuse, including child abuse, discussion of suicide, and violence.

I am a huge fan of the Quick & Easy Guides put out by Limerence Press. They are unintimidating, clear, concise, and fairly inexpensive, so they aren’t only good, impactful reads, but they may also be easy to buy extra copies to give to others. I definitely did that with the Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns as well as the one on Queer & Trans Identities.

As it says in the title, this installment is about consent — specifically consent in sex, relationships, and other physical contact. The information in this book is far from the often common and sometimes oversimplified “no means no” advice. This book focuses on and reinforces enthusiastic, informed, active consent, also referred to as “yes means yes.” Affirmative consent means that whatever the people involved are doing, they are all truly interested in doing it. This framework focuses on people wanting to do something and not just willing to do something.

Our guide through this book is Sargent Yes Means Yes from the Consent Cavalry. They are witty and charming and I would venture to say that this book is probably more explicit consent training than most people get. One of the most important things is that this book is really positive. It’s less about danger around every corner and more about how consent is not only good and necessary, but getting and giving consent can also be fun and sexy in itself.

This book doesn’t really cover laws, because laws vary and are dependent on many things, such as time and geographic location. This book does, however, make it very clear that consent is for all gender identities, and the people drawn in this comic are diverse with regard to race, gender, and orientation. Sexual violence is definitely discussed, but there are no visual depictions or graphic descriptions.

If you are thinking to yourself, “How can there be a whole entire book, even a small book, on consent?” then it might be in your best interest to read this book!