Queer Book Recommendations

Every once in a while I like sharing some queer book recommendations on here as I read a lot and I get requests to share some of the books I love, so here we go! 

Tell Me I'm Worthless: Three years ago, Alice spent one night in an abandoned house with her friends Ila and Hannah. Since then, things have not been going well. Alice is living a haunted existence, selling videos of herself cleaning for money, going to parties she hates, drinking herself to sleep. She hasn’t spoken to Ila since they went into the House. She hasn’t seen Hannah either.

Our Wives Under The Sea: Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep sea mission that ended in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, that Leah may have come back wrong. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home. 

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty: Feyi Adekola wants to learn how to be alive again.It’s been five years since the accident that killed the love of her life and she’s almost a new person now—an artist with her own studio, and sharing a brownstone apartment with her ride-or-die best friend, Joy, who insists it’s time for Feyi to ease back into the dating scene. Feyi isn’t ready for anything serious, but a steamy encounter at a rooftop party cascades into a whirlwind summer she could have never imagined: a luxury trip to a tropical island, decadent meals in the glamorous home of a celebrity chef, and a major curator who wants to launch her art career.

Silver Under Nightfall: Remy Pendergast is many things: the only son of the Duke of Valenbonne (though his father might wish otherwise), an elite bounty hunter of rogue vampires, and an outcast among his fellow Reapers. His mother was the subject of gossip even before she eloped with a vampire, giving rise to the rumors that Remy is half-vampire himself. Though the kingdom of Aluria barely tolerates him, Remy’s father has been shaping him into a weapon to fight for the kingdom at any cost.

Disintegrate/Dissociate: In her powerful debut collection of poetry, Arielle Twist unravels the complexities of human relationships after death and metamorphosis. In these spare yet powerful poems, she explores, with both rage and tenderness, the parameters of grief, trauma, displacement, and identity. Weaving together a past made murky by uncertainty and a present which exists in multitudes, Arielle Twist poetically navigates through what it means to be an Indigenous trans woman, discovering the possibilities of a hopeful future and a transcendent, beautiful path to regaining softness. 

The Perks of Loving a Wallflower: As a master of disguise, Thomasina Wynchester can be a polite young lady—or a bawdy old man. She’ll do whatever it takes to solve the cases her family takes on. But when Tommy’s beautiful new client turns out to be the highborn lady she’s secretly smitten with, more than her mission is at stake . . . 

It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror: Horror movies hold a complicated space in the hearts of the queer community: historically misogynist, and often homo- and transphobic, the genre has also been inadvertently feminist and open to subversive readings. Common tropes—such as the circumspect and resilient “final girl,” body possession, costumed villains, secret identities, and things that lurk in the closet—spark moments of eerie familiarity and affective connection. Still, viewers often remain tasked with reading themselves into beloved films, seeking out characters and set pieces that speak to, mirror, and parallel the unique ways queerness encounters the world. 

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture: Everything you know about sex and asexuality is (probably) wrong. The notion that everyone wants sex–and that we all have to have it–is false. It’s intertwined with our ideas about capitalism, race, gender, and queerness. And it impacts the most marginalized among us. For asexual folks, it means that ace and A-spec identity is often defined by a queerness that’s not queer enough, seen through a lens of perceived lack: lack of pleasure, connection, joy, maturity, and even humanity.

"Bisexuality itself is inherently resistant to heteronormative frameworks. Because gatekeeping is shortsighted and unbecoming. Because desire and understanding do not always go hand in hand. The project of identifying false or performative queerness is dead in the water. Do not trouble yourself to rescue it. Do not grieve at its graveside. Kiss someone. Fuck someone. Think about fucking someone while kissing someone else. Let sex be unknowable, warm, thrilling, funny, erotic, terrifying."

-"Both Ways" by Carmen Maria Machado from It Came From The Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror edited by Joe Vallese

“You can be a stranger to yourself; you almost certainly will be, at some point or another. It is inevitable, as inevitable as the moment of rupture that sends you hurtling toward the self you were always going to be.”

—Carmen Maria Machado, Both Ways- from It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror edited by Joe Vallese

slay

Read this, lived it, loved it.

"When gender is not a site of trauma at the beginning of life, one is permitted a bravado most women are denied. I would grow into the sort of woman my father would want killed."

—"Bad Hombre," Sarah Fonesca, in It Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror

In queer culture, in the media and stories produced by queer people about ourselves, monsters represent our fears, traumas, aspirations, and desires. Mermaids, werewolves, cryptids, and witches all make regular experiences in works produced by queer storytellers. Because the monster embodies so much meaning at once, it remains a contradictory figure. It is our distorted mirror image, our secret self. We are as ambivalent toward the monster as we are toward ourselves.

Carrow Narby, “Indescribable,” It Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror

It Came from the Closet is a very good book

How little we know of ourselves at any moment; how distinctly human that is. There is such little grace given to the perfect messiness of desire. Even queers feel pressure to homogenize the experience into catchy slogans. The 'born this way' narrative, while politically expedient, has done untold damage to narratives of the queer experience, implying any number of horrible ideas: that you cannot move toward desire without some genetic component urging you to do so, that experimentation is inherently problematic, that you have to know your truest and deepest self to act on something. There were times in my adolescence where people asked me if I was gay and I said no, not out of a sense of self-preservation but because I truly believed it to be so. You can be a stranger to yourself; you almost certainly will be, at some point or another. It is inevitable, as inevitable as the moment of rupture that sends you hurtling toward the self you were always going to be.

from "Both Ways" by Carmen Maria Machado, her essay on Jennifer's Body in It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror (ed. Joe Vallese).

One of the clearest memories that I have of my first relationship is lying in bed with my then-girlfriend, our bodies intertwined and pressed together as closely as possible. In that moment, my most fervent desire was that she and I could somehow be even closer. That we could exist physically together without any boundary or separation. I still feel that familiar pang sometimes: the hunger for impossible intimacy, a desire to be known completely without first having to be seen and scrutinized. As I have come to know myself better, this fantasy of perfect intimacy has revealed itself to be inextricably intertwined with the problem of gender. Gender, among its other applications, is the primary framework through which desire and romantic intimacy are understood. We are gay or straight or bisexual or pansexual or asexual: we desire men, or women, or all genders, or no one at all. But if I am nothing, if I am without gender, how can I ever be desired? Is intimacy possible—that is, is it legible as intimacy—without some kind of interplay between femininity and masculinity?

—Carrow Narby, from “Indescribable” (It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror, The Feminist Press, 2022)

"Monsters represent our fears, traumas, aspirations, and desires. Mermaids, werewolves, cryptids, and witches all make regular appearances in works produced by queer storytellers because the monster embodies so much meaning at once, it remains a contradictory figure. It is our distorted mirror image, our secret self."

-"Indescribable" by Carrow Narby from It Came From The Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror edited by Joe Vallese

It Came From The Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror (Introduction by Joe Vallese)

I am so honored and excited to have been included in It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror. Check out my essay, "Indescribable," in which I draw from my personal experience, as well as The Blob (1988) and Society (1989), to talk about gender and embodiment in relation to the figure of the blob monster.

S. Trimble, A Demon-Girl’s Guide to Life from It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror

Horror movies hold a complicated space in the hearts of the queer community: historically misogynist, and often homo- and transphobic, the genre has also been inadvertently feminist and open to subversive readings. Common tropes—such as the circumspect and resilient “final girl,” body possession, costumed villains, secret identities, and things that lurk in the closet—spark moments of eerie familiarity and affective connection. Still, viewers often remain tasked with reading themselves into beloved films, seeking out characters and set pieces that speak to, mirror, and parallel the unique ways queerness encounters the world.

From “Notes on Sleepaway Camp” by Viet Dinh (It Came From the Closet)