Happy Thursday, friends! I’m currently making my way through The Black Period by Hafizah Augustus Geter, which is a queer memoir that really embodies the personal as political, weaving together her story with the legacy of racism, colonialism, and other oppressions that converge on her body. It’s beautifully written and challenging in the best way.
In today’s Riot Recs, I answer a reader’s request for books about older gay and bi men! Feel free to let me know if there other topics you’d like to see in future Riot Recs.
Are you looking for the perfect Valentine’s gift for your bookish boo? Gift Tailored Book Recommendations. Your boo will tell our professional book nerds about what they love and what they don’t, what they’re reading goals are, and what they need more of in their bookish life. Then, they sit back while our Bibliologists go to work selecting books just for them. TBR has plans for every budget. Surprise your bookish boo with Tailored Book Recommendations this Valentine’s and visit mytbr.co/gift.
Speaking of queer elders, LGBTQ people often face discrimination in care communities and senior housing, forcing some back into the closet. The queer community isn’t free until all of us are free, including our elders. SAGE USA offers advocacy and resources for LGBTQ+ elders, and you can help at their donation page.
Bookish Goods
Gay on the Range Canvas Print by CheeseBoyProducts
I often feature lesbian pulp in Bookish Goods, because I have my own collection and love the campiness. But, of course, there were also gay pulps! This one is particularly campy, and you can get it as a canvas print. $27
New Releases
As You Walk On By by Julian Winters (Queer YA Contemporary)
This one promises to be The Breakfast Club meets Can’t Hardly Wait! When Theo’s promposal at a party goes embarrassingly wrong, he hides in a bedroom, but soon he’s visited by a cast of characters who have their own reasons for wanting to hide, and they turn out to have a lot in common.
While Another Dimension of Us by Mike Albo (Queer YA Speculative Fiction)
Funnily enough, this is also being compared to The Breakfast Club, but The Breakfast Club meets Stranger Things! Tommy is a teenager in 1986, in love with his best friend, Renaldo. Pris is a teen from 2044 who begins having dreams about Tommy. Then, the two meet on the astral plane, and have to work together to save Renaldo from a demon. Just like in The Breakfast Club!
Tears in the Water by Margherita Scialla (Pansexual, Gender-Questioning YA Contemporary)
They, He, She: Words for You and Me by Andy Passchier (Trans-inclusive Board Books)
Adachi and Shimamura (Light Novel) Vol. 10 by Hitoma Iruma, Non, and raemz (Yuri YA Light Novel)
For more new releases, check out our New Books newsletter!
Riot Recommendations
I got an email from an OQS reader asking for recommendations of books about older gay or bisexual men, so here are a few! I was disappointed by how few novels I could find with queer men over 50, especially since I can think of a few queer women ones off the top of my head. I hope that we see more published soon, because it’s not just teens and twenty-somethings that are queer!
A related title you might also want to check out is the photography book Legends of Drag: Queens of a Certain Age by Devin Antheus and Harry James Hanson.
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
This is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, so I feel a little silly recommending it, but it does have a gay main character who turns 50 over the course of the novel! Arthur Less is a has-been novelist who receives an invitation to an ex-boyfriend’s wedding. To avoid it, he spontaneously accepts every invitation he’s gotten as an author, taking him on a trip around the world, where he might just bump into a new love.
Unprotected: A Memoir by Billy Porter
This is the story of how Billy Porter went from being an abused, bullied Black gay boy in Pittsburgh to an Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award winner and an icon now that he is in his 50s.
Another memoir that fits in this category is I Was Better Last Night: A Memoir by Harvey Fierstein.
All the Links Fit to Click
Amid record book bans, queer writers come out swinging in 2023
Quiz: What Queer Book in Translation Should You Read?
Autostraddle: This Is “-Ussy”: Why I’m Excited About and Wary of Mainstream Culture’s Embrace of Queer Language
INTERVIEW: Amy Chu and Soo Lee tease the mystery that is Carmilla: The First Vampire
Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt was reviewed at Autostraddle: “In a time when so many popular examples of queer art have their edges sanded down, Alison Rumfitt’s Tell Me I’m Worthless is all edge.”
I Keep My Exoskeletons To Myself by Marisa Crane was reviewed at Them: This Dystopian Sci-Fi Novel Puts a Queer Twist on 1984 and The Scarlet Letter.
That’s it for me this week! Until next time, you can find me at my sapphic book blog, the Lesbrary. You can also hear me on All the Books or you can read my Book Riot posts.
Happy reading!
Danika