The majority of this book is set in a single room in which two gay men- one young, one dying- talk about, around, and through queer histories. The unlikely pair met years before during a brief overlapping stay in a mental institution. The older, Juan, shares the story of a real-world lesbian researcher, Jan Gay, who helped facilitate a series of interviews with queer people in the 1930s, which later formed the bases of a book titled Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns. Juan has a personal connection with Gay, as well as a copy of Sex Variants, with much of the clinical jargon blacked out to highlight queer people's stories in their own words. Excerpts of these blacked out pages as well as photographs and drawings are included in the text of this book, which is billed as a novel, but clearly contains a strong vein of history. Frankly, I would rather have just read a nonfiction book about Jan Gay's life, or of queer life in the 1930s. The novel elements, formal elements, and history all sat kind of awkwardly side by side for me. I read this in a queer book club, and we were all underwhelmed by it. All of us are aware of the persistent problem of the erasure of queer history; all of us wished the author had taken the theme farther; and all of us had seen more interesting and creative examples of blackout poetry on tumblr or in zines. 

This is a rich and inventive book which goes far beyond a simple retelling of "Huckleberry Finn" from Jim's POV. This story winds through multiple generations of Jim's family as they tell and retell Jim's story, from the kidnapping of his enslaved wife and children, his voyage on the Mississippi, battles in the Civil War, and time spent as an agent of the Underground Railroad. Jim is the main character here, and his courage is front and center. His story is retold in scenes set in the 1930s, 1980s, and 2020s, as grandparents speak to grandchildren, show family photos, and stress the important of memory, retelling, and writing. History is not always told by the victors, Jim's great-great-great-grand daughter says, but by those who take the time to put pen to paper and record it. 

This is a beautifully drawn, aesthetically powerful memoir of the author's life up until his late 30s. Raised by Dutch immigrants in blue-collar Toronto in the 1970s, Vellekoop writes about the art, music, movies, and books which fired his imagination as a child, of the bullying and gay-bashing he suffered from in school and in his twenties, of influential teachers, friends, failed loves, and his growing art career. A cherub and a demon, manifestations of the author's optimism and pessimism, often comment from the sides of the panel as he wrestles with a life-long depression and self doubt. The book ran a little long for me- I think the last third could have been edited down- but I also happily read this over just a few days and luxuriated in the colors and visuals. 

In the early 2000s, high school Oli struggles with frustration over the state of the world. The adults around her are preoccupied by jobs, dishes, credit card debts, and keep pressuring her to make choices about college or her future. The news is full of disasters, wars, inequality; she just wants to go somewhere were she can live meaningfully, unplugged from the system and doing no harm. She comes up with the scheme: run away after high school with her two best friends to a commune she's learned about on an island off the coast of Vancouver. But Oli isn't very good at planning. She's hotheaded and reckless, and the runaway trip gets off to a rocky start after a fight a school and loosing the backpack of camping supplies she carefully packed. Can she even find the commune, and if she can, what will it look like when she arrives? What about the other teens she's dragged into her haphazard search for an ethical life? This is a wonderful comic, well paced, funny, adventurous, and wise. The characters feel authentically human, full of yearning and good intentions, but often making bad choices or painful mistakes. Highly recommend! 

A powerful and diverse collection of stories, essays, poems, comics, and information on how book bans are affecting authors, schools, teachers and communities. If you want to know what the authors of frequently challenged books have to say about it, this is a good place to start! I am biased, because I have a comic in this book, but it's a very strong collection. 

I love an Arthurian retelling and this one was inventive and original. Young Hag is the daughter of a witch and a granddaughter of a witch, but she is disappointed to learn after her naming ceremony that there is no more magic in Britain. Fifty years earlier, Merlin was sealed into a tree, the sword Excalibur was broken, and the doors between the human realm and the Otherworld were shut. But who closed them, and why? And what does it mean when human babies are suddenly getting replaced by Faerie changlings, and knights ride giant cats, and old secrets begin coming to light? The art is scratchy and wild, coloring done in a limited palette that suits the magically shadowed and misted landscapes of this world of story. If you enjoyed Spear by Nicola Griffith or The Winter Prince by Elizabeth Wein or The Once and Future King by TH White you should read this one as well. 

This story centers 11 year old Tony, a nerdy Black writer and anime fan, who is bullied at school to the point of becoming suicidal before his parents intervene and move him to a different school. At the new school, and with a therapist, Tony rebuilds his confidence and makes friends with the other quirky kids in the literature club. This book is clearly in part based on the author's life, and in part fictionalized; it ended up feeling a bit awkwardly caught between memoir and fiction for me. I loved the book's ultimate message, but I think I am not it's target audience. 

Unfortunately this is the weakest of the series so far, but the next one is a full length novel instead of a novella so I'm excited to see what happens next! 

Bujold continues to enjoy throwing Penric into Situations, often ones where he seems to be doing the Bastard god's will in the world of humans but with no specific directives. But when Penric's ship is captures by pirates (claimed by the Bastard) and he is thrown into the hold with a pair of orphans (claimed by the Bastard), who are daughters of a sex worker (claimed by the Bastard), Penric can take the broad hint that his task here is to rescue them. But he must at the same time rescue himself! 

With deep compassion and ferocious wit, Curato introduces a Seattle-based queer Asian friend group in all of their messy glory. The Boy Luck Club, as they style themselves, are searching for love, for sex, for jobs, for safety, for community and a place to belong. Between brunches and drag shows they fight and make up, learn how to love each other, learn how to love themselves, show up for each other, fail to show up for each other, and then show up a hundred times more powerfully in glitter and heels. I've been hunting for books like this my whole life; this story broke my heart and healed it. I had the extreme pleasure of reading this book early and giving it a blurb, but it's out on shelves now! I highly recommend you check it out! And look up Mike Curato on insta, he has a pretty extensive book tour planned this summer. Maybe you can see him in person :D