Author: Patricia Elzie

Our protagonist, Yadriel, lives in a cemetery in Los Angeles with his whole brujx community. He is 16 and should be a full-fledged brujo by now except his community is not supportive because he is transgender and gay. The way that the brujxes think that magic works is that there is men’s magic and women’s magic. So while they’re attempting to be loving, they end up being really transphobic. The person who was his biggest support, his mom, has died but soon it will be the first Día de Muertos since she has died, and Yadriel intends to tell her that he is a brujo now after he sneaks off to do his ceremony in secret.

When a brujx turns 15 they’re presented to Santa Muerte aka Lady Death. She then gives them a blessing and ties their inherent magic to their chosen conduit. For women, it’s usually a rosary. For men, it’s usually a dagger. This conduit is called a portaje. Yadriel’s best friend, Maritza, is super supportive of Yadriel and she makes a beautiful dagger for Yadriel so he can perform his own brujx quince and show everyone that he is just as much of a brujo as any other man. So, he does his secret quince with Maritza and it seems like it works.

Meanwhile, Yadriel’s cousin Miguel dies that same night but they don’t know where his body is. So Yadriel hatches a plan to find Miguel’s portaje and free his spirit and then no one can deny he is a brujo. He and Maritza go poking around and find a necklace, which definitely feels like a spirit is tethered to it. What Yadriel doesn’t expect is that it’s actually the spirit of Julian Diaz, known troublemaker at their high school. Julian wants to make a deal. If Yadriel and Maritza help Julian find his friends and let them know he’s gone, then Julian will let Yadriel sever his tie and set him free to prove to everyone he is a brujo. Seems straightforward, but it really really isn’t. On top of that, spending all that time together, Yadriel isn’t sure he wants to let Julian go.

This book is fun and suspenseful and heartbreaking and heartwarming and I totally have a crush on this book.

This story begins on the East Coast with our two main characters, Patricia and Laurence, as children. We first meet Patricia when she is six. She finds a wounded bird and tries to soothe it by saying she’ll take it home and put it in a cage until it gets better. Much to Patricia’s surprise, the bird speaks up against that and we learn that Patricia can speak to birds. The bird is also very surprised that Patricia can speak to it and tells her she’s probably a witch. The bird tells her who can both fix its wing and figure out if she is a witch, so they set off to find them.

We then meet Laurence, a kid whose parents desperately want him to be outdoorsy and he is very much not. He’d rather be tinkering with his computer and playing video games. He finds some schematics on the internet and builds a clever little piece of tech that I’m not going to tell you the details of because I find it charming and I don’t want to spoil it for you.

Flash forward to when Patricia and Laurence are around thirteen. They meet and Laurence commissions Patricia to help him convince his parents that he’s spending time outdoors and has a friend. When Patricia is at Laurence’s house, he shows her the supercomputer he is building and developing AI. He sets it up so that Patricia can “chat” with it and help the AI develop.

Meanwhile, there is an assassin trying to murder them both because he thinks it will save the world. He ends up separating them from each other. Patricia goes off to a witchcraft school and Laurence goes off to study science.

Their paths cross again in adulthood, now in San Francisco, and their paths continue to cross in the most awkward and mysterious ways. You can feel something building as you read these encounters, but you’re not quite sure what it is.

This book is both fun and funny and one of my favorites to escape into.

Jasmine Mans is a spoken word poet and the book is described as “an unforgettable poetry collection about race, feminism, and queer identity,” but in my opinion that’s a huge over-simplification. The poems in this book are just so much. So much what? So much everything. So much pain, so much joy, so much passion, so much memory, so much generational trauma, so much community. It’s just so much. I’m amazed I read it as quickly as I did because every few poems I would come across a line or a stanza and I would have to put the book down and stare into space. Or take a walk around our apartment. As if her words made my brain bluescreen and I had to wait for my mind to get back on line.

Some of these poems were very hard to read, not due to complexity but due to the raw emotion. For example, one of the poems is from the point of view of one of the little girls that died in the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. The poet also offers many poems as memorials. In honor of Sandra Bland. In honor of Whitney Houston. In honor of the countless Black women mutilated and terrorized by American doctors in the name of science.

There are poems of love and loss and love that lead to loss. And not only romantic love, but love between a mother and daughter, or the love of grandmothers and aunties. There’s a poem titled “Footnotes for Kanye” which I happened to read right after his divorce from Kim Kardashian was announced and though I do not care about Kanye West, this poem hit extra hard when I read it.

I am both changed and seen by this poetry collection and I highly recommend it.

This Stonewall Honor Book is about Charlie, a Black, queer 13-year-old who is guilted by her parents into attending an all-white girls’ Christian youth backpacking camp. When Charlie’s parents drop her off, she is immediately apprehensive that there will be anything that caters to anyone who looks like and believes like her.

The head counselor is Bee and she co-facilitates with her daughter Penny. On top of the subtle micro-aggressions and sometimes clear ignorance on the part of the head camp counselor (and sometimes, even other campers), Charlie is also struggling with her faith in god.

The camp is part of a wider tradition in the area where one of the town colonizers settlers was Beatrice Tillson. Beatrice Tillson is referred to as a feminist who, once a year, would take all the women in the town on a week-long, 50-mile expedition to a place where they created a women-only shrine and they would spend a day of worship and do some kind of special ceremony at that point. What that ceremony entails, exactly, is kept a mystery. This camp that Charlie is at recreates this expedition for teenage girls.

We learn really early on that Charlie is not much of a hiker and on the first day, Charlie is paired up with another camper, Sydney, to be in charge of filling the water supply. In a private moment, Sydney shares with Charlie that she is trans, but no one else at the camp knows. It’s pretty clear that if this information was known, it would probably be even less of a welcoming space. Sydney and Charlie bond over the shared experience of being in a space that was never intended for either of them.

As the Crow Flies is not a complete story and it looks as though the creator is taking a hiatus from updating the webcomic so it’s unclear when more comics and subsequent volumes will be available. Still, I think this story is one worth getting into.

I remember this graphic novel being very popular back when I was in graduate school in the library science program and each time I reread it, it still holds up. For most of the book it seems like there are three different stories being told in alternating chapters that have a similar theme, but at the end it all comes together and you learn the deep interconnection between the stories and the characters.

In one story we meet the Monkey King who is a prominent figure in Chinese mythology and learn how the other deities do not accept him because he is just a monkey. He masters many various disciplines of kung-fu and repeatedly tries to prove himself as a fellow god, even changing his body shape so he is more human-like. But the gods just keep saying, “No, you’re a monkey. Quit trying to be anything other than that.”

The second story being told is that of Jin Wang, a Chinese-American boy who wants to be white and blend in instead of standing out. Part of the reason is because he has a crush on a girl who is white and the other giant part is because of the anti-Asian racism he has to deal with all the time. The microaggressions and flat out aggressions are just a constant onslaught. Two months after Jin arrived at his new middle school, another student arrived. This student, Wei-Chen Sun, just moved to the U.S. from Taiwan. In an effort to reject his own heritage, Jin initially rejects the friendship of Wei-Chen but that doesn’t last for long and they become best friends.

The third storyline of this book is told as if it were a sitcom with a laugh track. It’s about a high school boy named Danny, who appears white, but gets a yearly visit from his cousin Chin-Kee who is a wildly racist caricature of a Chinese person. It’s incredibly awful. It makes me so uncomfortable to even read. Danny is deeply ashamed of his cousin and doesn’t want to be associated with him at all.

This graphic novel expertly explores internalized racism, self-hatred, and eventually self-acceptance and it’s a great read.

This is a young adult romance short story collection of interconnected stories. The premise is that it’s early summer in New York and it’s already very, very hot. There’s a city-wide blackout that simultaneously ruins a bunch of plans and brings a few unexpected couples together.

There are six authors and six stories, though one story is broken up into multiple chapters while all the others are single-chapter stories. That story is “The Long Walk,” by Tiffany D. Jackson and it begins the book as well as has an installment every other chapter. “The Long Walk” starts with Tammi, who is in Harlem turning in her paperwork for a summer internship. Her ex, Kareem, shows up for the same internship. There is confusion but then they are plunged into darkness because of a city-wide Blackout. They are told to go home and return on Monday to sort things out. Since there is a blackout, there are no trains. Turns out they need each other and begrudgingly walk toward home in Brooklyn all the way from Harlem. Kareem has a block party to get to.

“Mask Off” by Nic Stone is a queer M/M romance that takes place through some flashbacks and during the present blackout, where our protagonists, Tremaine and JJ are stuck underground on a subway train that has stopped. These two boys are also on their way to a block party in Brooklyn. JJ is on the basketball team and is definitely not out as queer, which Tremaine is very much the opposite.

“Made to Fit” by Ashley Woodfolk is a queer F/F romance and so incredibly sweet. Nella is a teen in a senior living home visiting her grandfather. The blackout happens and all the residents are in the common area, playing cards. Suddenly, in walks one of the most beautiful girls Nella has ever seen. This girl is Joss and she has a therapy dog named Ziggy that she usually brings to the home on Tuesdays. Shenanigans commence.

Dhonielle Clayton has a really fun story that takes place trespassing in the library during the blackout. Angie Thomas’s story takes place on a double-decker tour bus. Nicola Yoon’s story starts in a rideshare. I love the mix of straight and queer romances. Each time I learned how the characters in the stories are connected to each other, it felt like a little surprise gift.

In the intro, the author tells us that he wants this book to be truthful and that he will be sharing some very heavy things that people don’t necessarily talk about. He went through some very hard things as a child and young adult and likewise, many young adults are going through hard things right now. That is Johnson’s point in telling things truthfully. He wishes that when he was a young adult, he had stories to turn to such as this so he’s hoping that his story can help some young people today. Yes, it’s YA, but it’s a memoir that offers multiple places for connection for a variety of readers.

I would be lying if I didn’t say I was biased, myself a Black & queer person (as is the author). So much of his story resonated with me. His family, like mine, aren’t necessarily academics when it comes to queer history but they were loving always. I couldn’t help but cry every time I read about his close relationship with his grandmother. It’s just so full of unconditional, active love. I found it extra hilarious that he didn’t learn his first name until he was around six because his family and school called him by his middle name because I have the same story.

What I love about this book is that yes, the author tells his story but it is only partly memoir. It is also a manifesto. He starts right off with telling the story of the day he was born and then leaps into how we have gender projected on us as infants or even as fetuses as well as the other societal projections and expectations which, for many people, are way off the mark. He talks about how all of this adds to the struggles of queer kids.

The author shares not only the traumas that can occur as a queer person or a Black person but at the intersection of being Black and queer. This book is such a wonderful addition to the growing collection of queer Black literature.

Content warnings for sexual assault including molestation, homophobia, racism including anti-Blackness, cancer, and death.

The city of Chattana is a city of canals and light. There are many different colored orbs that serve as power sources to light everything, power the boats, heat the stoves, etc. They are all full of light created by one person: The Governor. The Governor appeared in Chattana after the Great Fire and saved it from ruin. He brought light and prosperity, though it is clear that the brightest and most powerful lights (and related prosperity) only bless the upper class.

This story starts in Chattana, specifically in Namwon Prison. It’s a women’s prison, though if a child is born in the prison they stay there too, even if their mother dies. So it’s not only a women’s prison, but a prison of orphans. We meet two of the main characters here in Namwon Prison: Pong and Somkit, two boys who were born in the prison. Their mothers are no longer alive so they are prisoners until they are released when they turn 13. Everyone at Namwon Prison is tattooed with a symbol that gets crossed out when they are released. That way, it’s easy to tell 1) who has ever been in that prison and 2) who has escaped.

The opportunity to escape arises for Pong and he takes it. He ends up at a monastery that takes him in. Pong is allowed to stay at the monastery and remains under the tutelage and protection of Father Cham for years. One day, the family of the Namwon Prison warden visits the monastery. The warden’s daughter, Nok, recognizes Pong as the escapee. She is very eager to prove herself and thus the pursuit begins.

Pong escapes and is reunited with Somkit but that is far from the end. Remember, this is a fantasy so while it’s loosely a Les Mis retelling, it is in a world of magic all its own.

This lovely little comic is a super beginner’s guide for both people who are figuring out their own queer and/or trans identity as well as the people who are in their support network who want to learn more about queer and trans identities. By no means is the information in this book exhaustive as it’s small enough to fit into a large pocket. It manages to cover the basics of some really common questions without being overwhelming or academic.

The main characters are snails and some adorable non-humanoid creatures. It’s clear the authors don’t want you to assign gender to the characters, which is a really good thing to practice.

It’s written in a format where each little section is titled by a question, then some discussion about the answer or answers. It begins with “What is queer?” which is wonderful because that’s a question that a lot of people have. Many people who aren’t under the LGBTQ+ umbrella can be confused by it. The truth is that queer can mean different things to different people. Some people are also concerned that it used to be a slur and this book addresses that as well.

The book also offers simplified information on the definitions of and differences between gender, sex, sexual orientation or attraction, and gender expression. There’s also a section in this book that caught me by surprise but not in a bad way because it totally belongs here, and that is a section on relationship basics and what some signs of healthy relationships are and also what are some red flags. The thing is, a lot of us as teens learn about relationships from what is modeled in our life and what we see in the media. It’s rare that any of us, especially those of us in the LGBTQIA+ crowd, are given a resource before mistakes are made.

I love that this book exists. It can help alleviate some of the emotional labor involved in educating people about queer and trans identities and do so in a way that is thoughtful and fun.

As the title says, the common thread in this collection is Black girl magic, resistance, and hope; however, we Black girls have a wide range and so, too, do the stories in this anthology. In fact, the variety is one of the things that makes this collection so incredibly wonderful. They span so many genres from high fantasy to science fiction, from westerns to vampire fiction to historical fantasy. I got whiplash from changing gears so frequently but I am not complaining. Each story was a new thrilling adventure that I had no idea where it was taking me.

There are also so many badass characters I fell in love with. We meet an enslaved girl who can manipulate metal and another who makes a deal with the gods of the desert. A vampire-obsessed teen who meets her match. The daughter of a mermaid and a young woman who becomes a goddess. We learn of folk magic to repair and replace hearts. And an auntie whose hair braiding skills are not what they seem. A teen who can stop time.

One of my favorites is the story by Justina Ireland, “Melie,” about a girl who desperately wants to be a sorcerer and keeps getting the run-around. Another of the stories I really enjoyed was Patrice Caldwell’s “Letting The Right One In.” It is a story about a Black girl who loves vampires and honestly, I can’t get enough stories about Black girls who love vampires because I am one (a Black girl who loves vampires, not a vampire). And also stories about Black vampires. Give them all to me.

This collection was such a delightful, fun, empowering read. There are a few stories I return to again and again when I need a mood boost. It’s definitely one to have on the shelf.