Must-Read Queer Writers of Color

A dazzling novel about a young Black woman who walks the streets of Oakland and stumbles headlong into the failure of its justice system–the debut of a blazingly original voice that “bursts at the seams of every page and swallows you whole” (Tommy Orange, bestselling author of There There).

In this highly anticipated and deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, Vuong’s poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break.

In National Book Award–winner Jacqueline Woodson’s novel, a 16-year-old girl named Melody stands at the threshold of womanhood on the staircase of her grandparents’ brownstone in Brooklyn. As the novel’s beginning unfolds, Melody confesses that she herself is “a narrative, someone’s almost forgotten story. Remembered.” With lyrical eloquence, Woodson tells the story of two families whose fates are stitched together by Melody’s birth. With every page, Red at the Bone envelops its reader within the luminous song of a masterful storyteller.

As in Nigeria, vagabonds are those whose existence is literally outlawed: the queer, the poor, the displaced, the footloos, and rogue spirits. Eloghosa Osunde’s brave, fiercely inventive novel traces a wild array of characters for whom life itself is a form of resistance. Blending unvarnished realism with myth and fantasy, Vagabonds! is a vital work of imagination that takes us deep inside the hearts, minds, and bodies of a people in duress–and in triumph.

Visceral and astonishing, Paul Tran’s debut poetry collection investigates intergenerational trauma, sexual violence, and U.S. imperialism in order to radically alter our understanding of freedom, power, and control. At once grand and intimate, commanding and deeply vulnerable, All the Flowers Kneeling revels in rediscovering and reconfiguring the self, and ultimately becomes an essential testament to the human capacity for resilience, endurance, and love.

A singular and stunning debut novel about the forbidden union between two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation, the refuge they find in each other, and a betrayal that threatens their existence.

Yrsa Daley-Ward’s memoir begins with a memory about her little brother and his ability to decipher “why adults said the things they said. And why they didn’t mean the things they said and even less what they did.” The Terrible’s episodic and unconventional structure makes each remembrance breathtaking and deeply intimate. Daley-Ward sifts through her past with courage and a tenderness that makes each page shine. The story of an unapologetic queer Black woman finding her voice, The Terrible is a reminder of why honoring and telling your story is necessary.

An acclaimed poet reclaims her origin story as the queer daughter of a Muslim Nigerian immigrant and a Black American visual artist in this groundbreaking memoir, combining lyrical prose, biting criticism, and haunting visuals.

From a brilliant new voice comes an electrifying novel of a young immigrant building a life for herself–a warm, dazzling, and profound saga of queer love, friendship, work, and precarity in twenty-first century America.

From Marlon James, author of the bestselling National Book Award finalist Black Leopard, Red Wolf, the second book in the Dark Star trilogy. This time, Sogolon the Moon Witch takes center stage and gives her own account. Part adventure tale, part chronicle of an indomitable woman who bows to no man, it is a fascinating novel that explores power, personality, and the places where they overlap.

Filled with humor and heart, Meaty is the sort of essay collection best devoured in one sitting. Beginning with a list of shortcomings, needs, and wants, Meaty wastes no time before candidly diving into the deepest depths of Irby’s psyche, her relationships, and an array of her frustrations and struggles. From the pain of racism to the gritty complications of Crohn’s Disease, and the memory of her childhood habit of thumb-sucking, Irby’s dynamic musings prove that she’s a masterful storyteller who knows how to pull at her audience’s heartstrings while also making them laugh.

An essential and revelatory coming-of-age narrative from a thrilling new voice, Rainbow Milk follows nineteen-year-old Jesse McCarthy as he grapples with his racial and sexual identities against the backdrop of his Jehovah’s Witness upbringing.

Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, among other locales, Another Country is a novel of passions–sexual, racial, political, artistic. Stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, this “brilliantly and fiercely told” (New York Times) book depicts men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime.

Startling stories that center the bodies, memories, myths, and relationships of Asian American women. With each tale, K-Ming Chang gives us her own take on a surrealism that mixes myth and migration, corporeality and ghostliness, queerness and the quotidian. Stunningly told in her feminist fabulist style, these are uncanny stories peeling back greater questions of power and memory.

A funny and profound story about family in all its strange forms, joyful and hard-won vulnerability, becoming who you’re supposed to be, and the limits of love.

A multigenerational narrative about family, love, and belonging, Bright Lines follows Ella as she wrestles with the aftermath of her parents’ murder and the tumultuous atmosphere of post–9/11 New York. In addition to grief and political tension, Ella is forced to reckon with family secrets that challenge her understanding of the past and her definition of devotion and love.