Author: Erica Ezeifedi

Yes, chocolate chip cookies are a little basic, but they’re also really good. And Buzzfeed’s Tasty people reviewed 50 recipes and found the best one. I felt like that was knowledge I should share with you. Here’s a link to the video as well as the page with the recipe listed out.

This is a natural place to start for this list. This is the first novel that tells Miles’ story, and it being written by Jason Reynolds is beyond perfect. Miles is a seemingly typical teenager in Brooklyn — he goes to school, plays video games with his bestie, and has a crush on another student. But the added responsibility of being Spider Man weighs on him. Lately, his powers have felt off, he gets suspended from school, he’s having recurring nightmares —and all of this is starting to make him doubt his ability to be a hero. This adds some of the very real elements that come with being a Black kid going to a mostly white private school to a comic book character’s story.

At the beginning of the 20th century, January, a mixed girl, is living comfortably in Vermont. Kind of. Though she has everything she needs, she’s also kind of treated like a prop by those in high society. Her father is employed by Mr. Locke, for whom he travels the world to procure odd creatures. After her father disappears, she finds a book that uncovers secrets about doors to other worlds. As she travels to these worlds, she learns more about herself and the truth of things.

Read this because of Bigolas Dickolas, but also because it’s a beautifully written epistolary romance blended with truly creative speculative worlds. Red and Blue are two agents fighting on opposite sides of a time war. Blue’s side is a sort of organic hive mind, while Red’s is peak technology. Throughout the book, the two women travel through time on missions to change the outcome of the war and eventually notice the other’s handiwork. This leads to what is, at first, an exchange of taunting letters, but turns into admiration and love. Technically, they aren’t really traveling to parallel universes, but the times they travel to are so different that they feel like different worlds.

In this award-winning, world-hopping story, traveling the multiverse is possible, under one condition: the counterpart of the person traveling can’t still be alive. Cara’s other world counterparts often die, which means she’s able to travel to the more than 300 worlds her world knows to exist. Because of this, Cara is recruited by the Eldritch Institute of Earth Zero to travel the multiverse gathering information. This job somewhat boosts her social status, but her family still lives in what’s called “the wastes,” and she doesn’t fit in the privileged world, nor the marginalized one. Eventually, she uncovers something that could change life for everyone.

I love the freshness of this gyro recipe — whose chicken you can replace with tofu if you’re meatless. The recipe involves marinating a chicken breast in Greek yogurt, minced garlic, oregano, salt and pepper, baking it at 375, and letting it cool before dicing into cubes. The cucumber salad topping needs cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, lemon, parsley, and the tzatziki sauce Greek yogurt, minced garlic, lemon, dill, and salt. Then you need lightly toasted pita bread, of course.

There’s a lot of crunchy freshness going on here, and side note, but all bodies are summer bodies. Enjoy!

It’s barely been a year since Titus Crowne became the first Black sheriff in Charon County, VA when there’s a school shooting. And before he can talk down the young suspect and get him to surrender, he’s shot by Crowne’s deputies. The subsequent investigation leads to Titus uncovering that the shooter — and other Black kids like him — were victims of abuse by the slain teacher. As he continues down his path of inquiries and finds secrets, bodies, and a killer, he must contend with the deep-seated racial vitriol of his surroundings.

We stan a gun-totin’, revenge-gettin’ queen, and 16-year-old Bridget is exactly that. After her raggedy father dies from a snakebite, Bridget must cross the Kansas prairie with no money and her one mule. When she reaches Dodge City, her red hair attracts one of the women who runs the Buffalo Queen Saloon, a respected brothel run by women. She takes to being a “sporting woman,” a sex worker, even enjoying her time with the other women. Like, she really enjoys it, and comes to realize her sexuality through them — particularly the gender-bending gunslinger Spartan Lee. But the peace she’s found through the Buffalo Queen eventually becomes unsettled.

Oliva — whose family has an intimate relationship with the U.S.-Mexian border and who has worked as a translator for people coming into the U.S. — lays out the complexities of immigrating to the United States. She reflects on how refugees’ trauma must be mined and packaged for the immigration system, ponders who should be considered worthy of American citizenship, explores how many immigrants are not immediately welcomed but end up handling our most precious industries, like food harvesting, and more.

I’ve seen this messy book referred to as belonging to the millennial genre, and I appreciate how millennials are seen as quintessentially messy. I truly love that for us. Here, 21-year-old Rachel is about to be granted her degree in English in 2009, just as the recession fosters job insecurity. She develops a crush on Dr. Byrne, her married English professor, and her friend James encourages her to pursue him. James also has a makeout session with Dr. Byrne that Rachel walks in on. Interestingly enough, Rachel doesn’t feel a type of way about it. Instead, she gets closer to James, and the novel follows them and all their messy decisions.

This is such a good idea for a light-feeling food that also feels kind of fancy. I love the combination of shrimp, sriracha, Kewpie mayo, and crispy rice. It’s also fairly simple, as all you need are:

-Shrimp

-mayo

-scallions

-rice

-breadcrumbs

– soy sauce

And a little technique!

Here, Snorton details the rich history of Black transpeople, especially how they have been cut out of the narrative of trans and queer history. By using the narratives of enslaved people seeking freedom, Afro-modernist literature, journalism, and other sources, Snorton shows just how much race has determined how topics like queerness and gender have been represented.

In this unique collection, Rose documents the many voices of queer people across the country. Various members of different queer and trans communities — from activists to artists to healers — speak on their experiences. We hear about the dire issue that is Black mental health, disability healthcare, the issues Pacific Islander writers face, and more — all illustrated through colorful and interesting artwork that embodies each individual.

This award-winning book shows how the U.S. has been in the business of homophobia. Many know, for instance, of the Red Scare, but the Lavender Scare of the ’50s was a similar moment in U.S. history when queer people were considered a threat to the country. Through declassified documents, interviews with people who worked in D.C. at the time, and a lot of research, Johnson details just how damaging this persecution was. He also highlights how it led to the Gay Rights movement.

This collection of essays is essential reading for any intersectional feminist, queer history, Black history, or social justice reading list. In it, Lorde dissects the various ways each social justice movement — of the time, and now in many ways — falls short of their purported goals. She speaks about her experiences as a Black queer woman, and all the ways Western patriarchy is damaging. But she also offers a way towards healing, too.