- Zita R.
- Thursday, June 15, 2023
Richland Library's Rainbow Committee shares a few of their favorite LGBTQ+ books for Pride Month
1. Zita's Pick:
The Beatrix Gates
Rachel Pollack is an award winning author, comic writer, and tarot expert. All that background in myth and magic pour through the pages of these short stories.
"Beatrix Gates" tells the myth of Kara who was born into the Tribe of Red, but longed for the food and clothes of the Tribe of Green. This desire plagues her and she can't make sense of it until she suspects a fellow Red in her life was formerly a Green and learns about a legendary place called The Gates.
Packed full of emotion, symbolism, and anthropological goodness- "The Woman who didn't Come Back" will tear your heart open and leave you with feelings and thoughts about yourself and community that you didn't know you had. I first read this story 3 years ago and I still think about it constantly.
2. Tammy's Pick:
My Government Means to Kill Me
This is the debut novel of Rasheed Newson, writer and producer of The Chi, Narcos, and Bel-Air.
Trey, a young gay black man in New York during the 1980s, struggles with the burgeoning AIDS pandemic and a background of family tragedy.
This is an excellent read if you want to be entertained while being educated about the AIDS pandemic and other gay rights battles of the time. This is a book that consistently name drops significant people, places, and events from the era, from Banyard Rustin to Fred Trump, from iconic queer meeting places to the landscapes of New York City. Footnotes are included for clarification of what is fact or fiction.
Caution: this book is not for the faint of heart!
3. Ellen's Pick:
The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho
"A bandit walks into a coffeehouse, and it all goes downhill from there." Zen Cho's novella is a delightfully queer, Malaysian-flavored wuxai adventure story. What happens when a nun joins a bandit clan? There are gender feelings, a little romance, and quite a bit of intrigue as this lovable bunch of rogues run around the countryside. It's a great introduction to Cho, whose humor and headstrong protagonists never fail to delight, and the loyalty and soft feelings between her characters draw you into a world that wraps up almost too soon.