It’s a testament to the growth and the diversity of LGBTQ books that so many novels and memoirs discuss not just sexuality and gender but race, economic precariousness, immigration, and more. Here, we take a look at forthcoming titles that together shed light on the breadth and complexity of the LGBTQ experience.
All My Mother’s Lovers
In Masad’s debut novel, Maggie struggles to process the death of her mother, who never fully accepted that her daughter is a lesbian. PW’s starred review said the book “reflects the strangeness and beauty of coming to see one’s parent fully as a human being.”
Amora
This collection of 33 short stories and poems, which won Brazil’s prestigious Premio Jabutin in 2016, explores love among women. PW said these “tense and twisty tales” offer “a poignant look at women alternately broken down and resilient.”
Fairest
Talusan, a contributing editor at Condé Nast’s LGBTQ outlet Them, was, in her words, born an albino boy in a village in the Philippines. The book, which PW’s starred review called “an assured debut memoir with a cinematic flair,” describes her immigration to the U.S., where she was assumed to be white, and her decision to transition, experiences that inform her perspective on race, disability, and gender.
Good Boy
A New York Times opinion writer discusses the seven dogs she’s owned over the course of her life in a book PW’s starred review said is “filled with insight and remarkable candor.” “As a transgender woman who began life as a boy,” Boylan said in a prepub interview with her publisher, “it’s in the dogs I owned pre-transition that I can now best understand men, and the person I once was, a long time ago.”
I Don’t Want to Die Poor
Arceneaux writes about his struggles with student loans, as he did in a 2018 op-ed in the New York Times, and how education debt affects his daily life. He does so with humor, often in the context of his sexuality. “I was in Washington,” he wrote in the op-ed, pondering alternative ways he might have paid for his education. “Why didn’t I try to date some closeted politician and be his well-compensated secret?”
Memorial
A gay couple in Houston—Mike, who’s Japanese-American, and Benson, who’s African-American—see their life together upended when Mike learns that his estranged father is dying. Washington is a National Book Award 5 under 35 honoree for 2019’s Lot.
Plain Bad Heroines
Acclaimed YA author Danforth (The Miseducation of Cameron Post) makes her adult debut with the darkly comedic story of a cursed New England boarding school. At the turn of the 20th century, two rebellious girls fall in love and die grisly deaths; in the present day, Hollywood arrives to film their story.
Swimming in the Dark
Two young men in 1980s Poland fall in love and later find themselves on opposing sides of a political divide. “Jedrowski’s dazzling debut,” PW’s starred review said, “charts an evocative sexual awakening and coming of age.”
