Author: Patricia Elzie

I want to give content warnings for sexual assault, suicide, abuse, anti-trans violence, and racism up front because I’m going to talk about some of these things in this recommendation.

Kai Cheng Thom is the author of Fierce Femmes & Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir, which is an excellent bit of fantastical fiction and I am pleased to say that her nonfiction is just as good. I Hope We Choose Love is nonfiction about how we on the left/liberal side and specifically the queer community tend to eat our own. Our capacity for forgiveness and for allowing people room to improve and grow is sometimes non-existent, especially for people who we consider a part of our own community. Often the people in the queer community who aren’t allowed to be human, that is, to make mistakes, are also often queer people of color.

This book is organized into three sections: Let Us Live, Let Us Love, and Let Us Believe. It alternates between thoughtful, nonfiction essays and powerful, intimate poetry. She covers so many of the unnecessarily difficult and incredibly unhealthy things that happen in the liberal queer community that often aren’t talked about, such as the almost toxic self-righteousness, the culture of enabling, lack of internal and peer accountability, and more.

One of the essays about suicide I found particularly important. There is a sometimes extreme culture around allowing our peers and loved ones have the final say on what they do to their body, which, yes, my body my choice but stick with me. This then extends to the idea that if someone is determined to take their own life, then it is not anyone’s job to stand in their way. That author argues that hey, this is incredibly messed up and maybe what they need is someone to step up and say, no, I’m not letting you do this, even if you hate me for it. I’d rather you be alive and hate me, than not alive at all. The author also urges us to work harder on making the world a place where people want to stay living.

Another essay that I appreciate as a person who is childfree is about how radical queer culture is often about things like communal living but the reality is often people pairing off and creating a queer version of the nuclear family.

Phenomenal book that I highly recommend!

This delightful little graphic guide has information for a range of people, starting with information on what pronouns are to some advice for people who use gender-neutral pronouns themselves.

The Oxford English Dictionary traces the singular they back to 1375 and most of us are familiar with already using it. For example, if I’m sitting in a restaurant and a group of people at a table nearby leaves I may look over and say, “Oh, someone left their sunglasses.” This book focuses on using they/them pronouns as singular, especially for a person who is nonbinary.

Archie Bongiovanni uses they/them pronouns and their co-author Tristan uses he/him pronouns. I really like that they’ve co-authored because readers get information from both the perspective of the person who uses the pronouns for themself as well as from a person who uses gendered pronouns and has been learning to use gender-neutral pronouns and implemented their use at his restaurant.

There are a number of gender neutral pronouns that a person can use: ve, zie, per and more. While this book focuses on they/them pronouns, everything in this book can be applied to other gender neutral pronouns as well. If you’re looking for reasons why a person might use gender neutral pronouns, that information is not in this book. Truth is, there are many many reasons and it’s not necessary to know why in order to use them.

Archie talks a little bit about how it feels when people misgender them and use the wrong pronouns, and how impact matters more than intent. There’s advice on how to ask for someone’s pronouns (as well as how not to) and what to do if you get someone’s pronouns wrong.

The book also touches a bit on gender neutral pronouns for groups instead of saying “hey guys” or “hey ladies.” There are so many words you can use instead! The book suggests “hey everyone, hey y’all, and hey folks.” Personally, I like to add that “fools, peasants, and people of Earth” are also all gender neutral.

I really appreciate the section on what to do if you witness someone using the wrong pronouns for a friend because I know I tend to get like a deer in headlights when that happens around me so it helps to practice having something prepared while making sure to talk with your friend first. There’s also a section for folks who are non-binary where Archie gives some advice on coming out and finding support.

I love a book with footnotes and even more than that, I love a book that uses most of the footnotes just to add snark and sassy comments. This book does exactly that and more.

Elsa Sjunneson is a four-time Hugo Award finalist, a professor, a sword fighter, a dancer, and very, very witty. She is also a Deafblind woman with partial vision in one eye and bilateral hearing aids. Every time I read something from a disabled writer, whether it be a memoir, essay, or Tweet, I realize how my perceptions of certain disabilities have been shaped by media, which is tremendously shitty at portraying disability! Sjunneson really digs into this as this book is part memoir and part examination of how disability (primarily characters who are Deaf or blind) are portrayed in the media. She also writes about the intersections between Deafblind, being a woman, and being queer. I appreciate that before digging in, Sjunneson lays some groundwork and really asks readers to examine what we think when we hear that someone is Deaf, blind, or Deafblind, such as the assumption that all Deaf people speak ASL or that all blind folks can read braille. Both are far from true.

This is not a book to look to if you’re looking for inspiration porn. The only thing you should be inspired to do after reading this book is to tear down systemic ableism. It was an intense read, each page making me angrier and angrier (and then laughing at the author’s snark) and then breaking my heart.

Sjunneson tackles the subject of Helen Keller right near the beginning of the book which makes sense considering that Helen Keller may be the only Deafblind person many people know of. This chapter alone is worth the price of admission. I can be nothing other than absolutely horrified by The Miracle Worker. The author doesn’t shy away from calling out even the most beloved properties like Star Wars, Star Trek, and Daredevil.

She also talks about things like dating, catcalling, and sexual assault when a person is disabled. Content warnings for explicit depictions of ableism, school bullying, sexual assault and abuse and references to caregiver murder, police brutality, emotional abuse, and physical abuse.

The author first talks about the definition of love and how everyone seems to have a different definition. The love she is talking about is not a mere feeling. It’s not the idea of love you fall into, unaware and unavoidable. The love that hooks is talking about in this book is a choice. It’s an action and it’s something you choose to do over and over as well as something you choose to open yourself up to.

She goes on to write about how everyone assumes that people learn how to love in the homes they grew up in but that’s not necessarily true. She talks about the skewed idea that someone can both love a child and be abusive toward them. She posits that love cannot exist where there is abuse. Care can exist and kindness can exist but love cannot. She also writes about how love cannot exist in a place where there is no honesty.

I especially appreciated her chapters about community and healing, how no one heals alone, and healing as a communion. hooks writes a lot about how capitalism and narcissism and individualism make it practically impossible for us to love each other or ourselves and, in effect, make it impossible to heal.

There is a section on death that really made me see death in a different way because yes, in death there is love. She suggests that in the U.S. we have a fear of life. That we learn it’s dangerous to celebrate too much or to be optimistic or hopeful about something because we might get hurt. By not doing the celebrating and not having hope or optimism, we are denying ourselves the opportunity to love life.

This book was a heavy read but I’m really glad I read it and I hope you do too.

Rebecca Hall is a scholar, activist, educator, and former lawyer. Wake follows Rebecca as she researches slave revolts and specifically, slave revolts led by women. Until I read this book, I had no idea that slave revolts were so frequent. I am unsurprised I didn’t know this, given the way history is taught and not taught here in the United States. While instances of slave revolts can be found by digging around, most of the information available is about the men involved and very little about the women. Honestly, I learned more about the slave trade from this book than I did during school. The depths of depravity are astounding and I am both haunted and disgusted by the things I’ve learned, more than I already was.

At the same time, this book is also a great story about researching history and reading between the lines to piece together the things that are left unsaid and thereby being able to get a more full picture of what may have happened. Wake also includes dramatizations of such stories as imagined by the author who is trying to fill in the gaps. The artwork is completely in black and white, which I think in some ways helps to keep readers from being overwhelmed by the imagery, which includes a lot of violence, enslaved Africans on ships, and more.

In the interwoven memoir we also learn about the present-day barriers keeping academics like Rebecca Hall from unearthing this history. The existence of bureaucratic red tape that makes accessing archives and records sometimes impossible. For example, Lloyd’s of London is a huge insurance provider (that still exists today) which laid the groundwork for its empire by insuring slave ships. I’m sure you can imagine how they feel about people accessing their archives with slave ship details.

This book is pretty intense and very important. I learned so much through this short volume and it’s been important in filling in my mental gaps around history.

This book is under a hundred pages. The essay is first, then the short story. However, my recommended reading? Skip forward and read the short story first, then read Zadie Smith’s introduction, then read the story again. In Morrison’s own words, Recitatif is “an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial.”

The two characters are Roberta and Twyla and they are both eight-year-old girls from poor families. Their respective mothers dropped them off at the St. Bonaventure shelter, making them wards of the state. We learn many things about Roberta and Twyla. One has a sick mother, one has a mother who dances all night. One has a mother who is religious, one has a mother who wears too-tight pants. The girls are roommates at St. Bonaventure’s for four months and the story follows them there for a while, then they meet repeatedly when they are older.

One of the things we know about the two girls is that one is white and one is Black; however, we do not know which is which. Morrison deliberately does not tell us and this story is written in a way that it is impossible to tell. You can try to guess, but a few sentences later I promise your opinion will change and then flip flop again in the next paragraph. It’s very clear in the story that race is incredibly important to the tale and that crucial piece of information is deliberately kept from readers. Even details such as geographic setting don’t allow readers to determine the races of the two main characters.

I want to call out a big content warning for ableism and violence against a disabled character. The character is Maggie, who worked at the home where the girls were. The girls were very mean to Maggie and oddly, when Twyla and Roberta meet years later, they argue about what race Maggie was.

Recitatif is absolutely fascinating and Smith’s deconstruction and examination of the story is brilliant. It’s one of those stories that tells the reader more about themselves in the reading than it tells about the characters. I’m reminded of the phrase I’ve heard people use, the “I don’t see color.” Well, it’s not even an option in reading this story and it’s delightfully chaotic in that way.

This book is part biographical, a little bit autobiographical, and between these biographical bits are interspersed poems by author Ibi Zoboi. These poems are inspired by Octavia E. Butler, her life, her work, and the world she grew up in.

I remember seeing a Tweet from someone that said something like, “okay poets we get it, things are like other things” and that always makes me laugh but truly, poetry is a way of looking at something, whether it’s a physical thing or a feeling or a person or a life, in a way that we haven’t examined it before. Poetry can help us see things differently and this book is such a stunning, lovely example of that.

There is plenty more than biographical prose and poetry in this book. There are also photographs, including the earliest photo of Octavia Estelle when she was four years old. There are also some other historical images for context but there are a few that I am high-key obsessed with. One is a page from the first novel she wrote when she was ten. Octavia Estelle Butler was obsessed with horses. So she started writing a story about magical horses who live on an island. She was a shy and quiet child and would find solace in her writing and she would just write and write in her pink notebook. She knew she wanted to be a writer, even though her aunt told her that “Negroes can’t be writers.” Octavia Estelle was insistent.

Another of my favorite other images included in this book is one of the many notes of inspiration that Octavia E. Butler wrote to herself which turned into inspiration for my most recent tattoo. I adore this book and it’s a great recommendation for folks who are familiar with Octavia E. Butler as well as folks who are just learning about her.

So much of DEI work consists of well-meaning people with privilege and power who do not know what to do and so they look to those of us in more marginalized groups and ask what to do, what to say, etc. The author runs a DEI consulting company with a Social Justice lens and helps companies/organizations do this work. This book is an absolute gift that focuses on laying the groundwork necessary for transformative DEI work as well as how to turn those good intentions into actual actions. I kept highlighting things and then I’d look and I’d practically have highlighted multiple pages.

There are so many stand-out discussions in this book but I’m going to call out a few that were really compelling. First, which is a recurring theme, is the idea of comfort and how some people with privilege conflate being uncomfortable with being unsafe. This shows up multiple times but there’s a whole amazing section asking what you’re willing to give up for this work. Are you willing to give up your comfort and call someone out on their racist joke? Are you willing to give up your seat at the table to allow space for someone from a marginalized group? Are you willing to pay more money to buy something from a small local business instead of a big corporation? Are you willing to give up sentimental things or traditions like gender-reveal parties or Dr.Seuss? Personally, I immediately thought of the death-grip that some folks have on a certain wizarding IP.

This book is going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. There were definitely parts that made me reflect and sit with my own discomfort, which reminds me of another section where she talks about “sitting with your feelings.” Now, if you have never gone to therapy or maybe even if you have, you may not actually know what “sitting with your feelings” entails or how to do it and she walks readers through it, which itself is worth the price of admission.

This is such an important, relevant, and necessary read.

To say this is satire about a racial awakening is an understatement. It’s utterly hilarious and also I pretty much cringed the entire time I read it. Our main character is Ingrid Yang, a Taiwanese American woman in her eighth year of her PhD and she still has no idea what her thesis even is. She has been researching the renowned Chinese American poet Xiao-Wen Chao but it’s hard to write anything about him that hasn’t been completely researched into the ground. He was faculty at Barnes University (where Ingrid is) and was a big deal. A large part of the reason she’s doing this PhD is because there is a professorial chair that is about to open up; so she can get a cozy faculty position as the next expert on Xiao-Wen Chao, yet she has no idea what the heck she is going to do her dissertation on.

The East Asian Studies department that Ingrid is in has very few Asian people and many, many white people. Her advisor, Michael, is a white man who has gone all-in on Chinese culture and doubles-down in his orientalism time and time again. Ingrid’s fiance, Stephen Greene, is a white man who has taught himself Japanese (doesn’t actually speak it) but has made himself into a literature translator.

They frequently explain Chinese culture to Ingrid repeatedly and really terribly because she is Taiwanese and they just lump her in with Chinese culture like it’s all the same. If you haven’t caught on, there are massive amounts of anti-Asian racism in this book and lots of the particularly insidious type where it’s people pretending to have a respect for a culture when they are actually fetishizing it. Ingrid herself has very firm ideas of the “right way” a woman should be, especially an Asian American woman, and the “wrong way.”

This book is full of some amazing characters. Through it, Ingrid awakens to her complicity in her own subjugation and the white supremacist trash fire that is academia. Highly recommend it!

This was absolutely one of the best books I read the year it came out. I’m going to be weirdly vague about this book because it is full of surprises and I don’t want to ruin the joy of reading it therefore, I’m just going to tell you some snippets about some of the characters and the location.

It takes place in the San Gabriel Valley in Southern California which is truly a magical place once you get past the surface and the author catches all the nuance of the eclectic yet weirdly harmonious vibe of many of the locations down there.

There is a donut shop with a huge frickin’ donut on top of it. It’s a Los Angeles / Southern California thing. If you know, you know: Giant. Donut. The head of the family that owns the shop is Lan Tran. The family is actually aliens, like, from space, who have escaped a big bad across the galaxy.

We also have Katrina Nguyen, a transgender teen who runs away from an abusive home in the San Francisco Bay Area and ends up in the San Gabriel Valley. She has very little to her name, some clothes, some estrogen, a beat-up made-in-China violin, and does sex work both via webcam and in person to make money to survive.

Finally we have Shizuka Satomi, a woman who had made a deal with the devil for some fame. She played the violin. Now, to escape damnation, she needs to take on seven violin students and deliver their souls to Hell. As of the start of this book, she has already delivered six and of course, they can’t just be any old self-taught violinist. She travels the world looking for the final student, the final soul.

Yes, music is the main theme of this book and the story hits all the right notes. There’s an adorable, awkward queer crush/dating type thing going on. There’s a young trans teen finding her voice and finding family. There’s wonderful descriptions of food. There is also a chapter that I’m borderline obsessed with where it’s just a description of violin repair.

If you have not yet read this book I am incredibly jealous because I wish I could read it again for the first time. Content warnings for racism, specifically anti-Asian racism, transphobia, discussion of suicide, sexism, sexual assault, and abuse.