Day 23: JOMPBPC: Autumn Spring Colours

It's Spring here in Australia, so I took a photo of some beautiful Spring coloured books! 💚

Fav Books with Lesbian Characters

Oh ho ho it is Lesbian Visibility Week?? We have books for that.

There are SO MANY good books with lesbian characters out there these days! In my day, we had to walk 15 miles in the snow uphill both ways for just a lingering look between two ladies that might be interpreted as sapphic. Now we have CHOICES. Here are just a few of my favs:

The Wayward Children Series (particularly Down Among the Sticks and Bones and Come Tumbling Down) by @seananmcguire

I'll stop reccing Wayward Children when everyone has read it. The whole series features queer characters, but Down Among the Sticks and Bones (book 2) and Come Tumbling Down (book 5), featuring horror twins Jack (lesbian mad scientist) and Jill (I won't spoil it) are particular favorites of mine. And don't be intimidated by how many books are in the series - they're novellas!

All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages edited by Saundra Mitchell

Speaking of not having time for full-length novels, how about an anthology of short stories? It's so wonderful to have story after story centering queer characters, especially for historical fiction fans. You'll find plenty of wlw rep in several iconic eras, from the 1700s to the 1950s.

The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir

Yes, yes, we've all heard the lesbian necromancers in space tagline, but a catchy tagline isn't the only reason people rave about this book. The storyline is absolutely wild, and so is the writing style - a dizzying blend of baroque gothic intensity and modern linguistic turns of phrase. And that's before you even get to whatever is going on in book 2 (second person???? How? Why??) It shouldn't work, but it does. There are murders, conspiracies, politics, duels, horrors beyond human ken, and yes, lesbians. Start with Gideon the Ninth.

The Great Cities duology by @nkjemisin

New York City is awakening into a Great City, and each of its boroughs has manifested a human avatar. There's a big cast of characters, but you'll never feel confused about who is who, or bored with one particular viewpoint. The character work in this book is phenom. There's also Lovecraftian horrors, very little romance, the best found family on the Eastern Seaboard, and a lot of love for New York. If you liked Neverwhere by @neil-gaiman, you'll like this. Start with The City We Became.

See more of Robin's recs

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JOMP BPC - September 22nd - Autumn Spring Colours

some soft colours that remind me of the flowers in my garden and around my neighbourhood 💐

Transmogrify! by g. haron davis

Transness is as varied and colorful as magic can be. In Transmogrify!, you’ll embark on fourteen different adventures alongside unforgettable characters who embody many different genders and expressions and experiences—because magic is for everyone, and that is cause for celebration.

Featuring stories from:

AR Capetta and Cory McCarthy

g. haron davis

Mason Deaver

Jonathan Lenore Kastin

Emery Lee

Saundra Mitchell

Cam Montgomery

Ash Nouveau

Sonora Reyes

Renee Reynolds

Dove Salvatierra

Ayida Shonibar

Francesca Tacchi

Nik Traxler

My piece for @rainbowcrate’s June book box.

Saundra Mitchell’s Out There: Into the Queer New Yonder.

What's a book that makes you feel seen?

It's only within the last few years that I've seen myself and my experiences regarding my sexuality in books. One of those books is The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun.

Charlie's experience with discovering his demisexuality, along with his anxiety, really spoke to me. Not that I was on a dating show to rehabilitate my image or anything. I was in college trying to survive the hardest year of my degree plan. This book was the first time I'd seen demisexuality written from a discovery standpoint. Most other ace rep I'd read up til this point was about characters who already knew they were ace or their sexuality wasn't even a point of the book. Even though this is an achillean book with gay main characters, much of what Charlie goes through spoke to me. Especially when I didn't find my own queerness until I was an adult.

Since then, I've added a few more books to the list that make me feel seen: Never Been Kissed by Timothy Janovsky and Loveless by Alice Oseman.

Remember: whether you are out or not, know you are greatly loved and my account is a safe space. 🌈 Bigots can't and won't win.

It seemed to me that they'd have been a lot less likely to get gunned down if Bonnie had just had the sense to be Clyde.

Saundra Mitchell, from “Bonnie and Clyde”

57. All Out, ed. by Saundra Mitchell

Owned: No, library Page count: 342 My summary: A collection of stories about queer teens through the ages - from a doomed soldier in 1870s Mexico to two girls mourning Kurt Cobain, from apprentice painters sketching a naked man to forbidden love in a sixteenth century convent, from two men making merry in Nottingham to who a rollerskating girl doesn’t kiss, this book collects stories across many LGBT+ identities. My rating: 3/5 My commentary:

Of course I picked this one up. I'm a sucker for LGBT+ fiction in general, and I have a habit of reading young adult literature despite the fact that I am nearing my thirties. It drew me in with the idea of retelling fairytales and telling stories of LGBT+ youth throughout the ages, the stories having taken place at various points in the past, ranging from the 1300s to the 1990s. While overall I liked the individual stories in this collection well enough, I do have to take issue with one specific aspect of the whole, which I'll get into under the cut.

First of all, before I begin to talk about individual stories, I must first address a glaring omission. See, this book has gay characters, lesbian characters, transmasc characters...and no real transfem representation. It could be argued that one character who contains multiple personalities, the most prominent of which is female, could be transfem, but that's still a drop in the ocean compared to the other identities. It was really obvious to me throughout that transfems weren't going to get a word in, which is annoying given that 1) they are obviously also a part of this community and 2) transfems are some of the most marginalised people in this community. If the editors and collectors of this book want to make a followup, there should be more transfeminine representation.

As always with short stories, I'm only going to discuss the few that jumped out to me. And the first of those is the very first story in the collection - Roja. It's a loose reimagining of the Little Red Riding Hood story, with the wolf in question being reinterpreted as a trans soldier boy nicknamed 'la Loupe', and the Red Riding Hood figure being a young woman thought to be a witch by her community. This is both an LGBT+ retelling and a Latina retelling, given that the action has been changed to 1870s Mexico and draws on the real-life story of Leonarda Emilia. I really liked this one! The romance between the two outcasts was sweet, and Emilia's stubborn refusals to give her lover up and let him be killed was really engaging, especially as this apparently begins her life as an outlaw.

The next story I want to talk about is The Dresser and the Chambermaid, and I'm really not sure how to explain my feelings towards this one. It features the slow romance of Mary and Susanna, a newly-appointed lady's maid and a chambermaid respectively in the palace, and their clandestine meetings below stairs. While I was greatly fond of the story (another of my weird special interests is the history of domestic service) I thought it was too brief for how vast in scope it was. The girls fall in love almost instantly and have a depth of attachment to each other that I found to be somewhat unrealistic given the short timeframe. Ideally, the story would have taken place over months rather than days - though I acknowledge that this wouldn't have made it a short story.

Finally, the last story I want to talk about is And They Don’t Kiss At The End. It's a simple little tale where a teenage girl in the 1980s tries to understand her lack of feeling towards a boy that she should be in love with, but isn't. I like the story's exploration of aromanticism in a time period where the term had not yet been coined; Dee really struggles to understand what it is she's experiencing and put a name to it. As an aro/ace, I get it. It can be hard to prove a lack of something as opposed to a presence of something, especially when that thing is as nebulous as attraction, and I think this story portrays that well, as well as the complicated emotions that can arise when someone's spent their life under a heteronormative culture.

Next up, a young girl is resigned to a life of taking on other people's sins.

Title: The Prom

Author: Saundra Mitchell, Bob Martin, Chad Beguelin, Matthew Sklar

Series or standalone: standalone

Publication year: 2019

Genres: fiction, LGBT+, romance, contemporary

Blurb: 17-year-old Emma Nolan wants only one thing before she graduates: to dance with her girlfriend at the senior prom...but in her small town of Edgewater, Indiana, that’s like asking for the moon. Alyssa Greene is her high school’s it girl - popular, head of the student council, and daughter of the PTA president. She also has a secret: she’s been dating Emma for the last year and a half. When word gets out that Emma plans to bring a girl as her date, it stirs a community-wide uproar that spirals out of control. Now, the PTA - led by Alyssa’s mother - is threatening to cancel the prom altogether. Enter Barry Glickman and Dee Dee Allen, two Broadway has-beens who see Emma’s story as the perfect opportunity to restore their place in the limelight...but when they arrive in Indiana to fight on Emma’s behalf, their good intentions go quickly south. Between Emma facing the fray head-on, Alyssa wavering about coming out, and Barry and Dee Dee basking in all the attention, it’s the perfect prom storm. Only when this unlikely group comes together do they realise that love is always worth fighting for.

All Out edited by Saundra Mitchell

This is a collection of queer fairytales. This is great for tweens and teens. There are tales of trans men, lesbians, gay men, witches, and thieves. It's a book where all types of queer people can see themselves. Absolutely beautiful.

Day 3: JOMPBPC: Intersectional Feminism

"Now I understood what my abuela had wanted, for me to keep my heart soft but the edges of me hard enough to survive the world as it was." - Roja, Anna-Marie McLemore

Fave Five: Queer YA About Prom

Fave Five: Queer YA About Prom

The Prom by Saundra Mitchell You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson How (Not) to Ask a Boy to Prom by S.J. Goslee The Gay Girl’s Guide to Ruining Prom by Siera Maley Spin Me Right Round by David Valdes

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I just finished reading Out There: Into the Queer New Yonder, by Saundra Mitchell.

Out There: Into the Queer New Yonder | Can't-Wait Wednesday

Out There: Into the Queer New Yonder | Can’t-Wait Wednesday

Why am I waiting on this title? Science fiction has never been a genre I’ve leaned towards, but anthologies certainly are. When I saw this anthology announced, I was torn. On one hand it was a queer anthology exploring all sorts of different characters of diverse queer identities. On the other hand it was science fiction with stories taking place in the future and in outer space. I wasn’t…

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