100 books like Roving Pack

This is the spark that lit me on fire and showed me that all the features of queer adolescence I thought were impossible to write about in “books for teens” are totally possible to write about.

Juliet, Puerto Rican teen from the Bronx, feels the weight of her community’s and family’s homophobia, and attempts to build her resume and find a wider world by interning for her favorite feminist writer—a thirtysomething eccentric, woo-woo white Oregonian, who despite having friends and exes of color and apparently genuinely hoping to offer Juliet wisdom, care, and research opportunities, is lackadaisical, irresponsible, and more than capable of shrewdly using Juliet to market herself and her books.

Juliet’s encounters with racist microagressions, feminist approaches to menstruation, weed, heartbreak, and the problem of regionally-specific queer buzzwords pull no punches. Rivera asks us to look at what responsibilities might be involved in “community”, including the responsibility to… show more.

I don’t usually love coming-out stories, since the coming-out narrative tends to replace anything else that happens for trans people, but this one shines—in part because Sasha Masha’s emergence precedes her contact with queer community, but only starts to actually makes sense in the context of knowing other gay and trans people.

It’s one of the only trans girl YA novels I know of, and it feels like it’s written for someone who is, like Sasha, half-out and tripping down the final steps. This is a fantastic book about how we may find our most real selves alone, but it might take a one-sided romantic friendship, a community showing of Querelle, or a couple old drag queens showing you their hallway of photos of Queer Icons to feel like you aren’t going crazy. 

This one has messy right in the title! Freddy keeps getting dumped by Laura Dean over and over. She gets so blinded by her “love” for Laura Dean that she takes her friends for granted. It’s a classic story with an LGBT+ twist. Part of what makes it stand out is the beautiful visual storytelling. I actually learned a lot from this one, as it’s quite different from the superhero comics I grew up with. There are moments in here where two hands will say a thousand words. 

This graphic novel fits into one of my favorite categories, hopeful science fiction. It’s got fantastic world-building, gorgeous art, and very interesting things to say about power dynamics and perpetuating harmful cycles. It also has complex and interesting young trans characters as the two leads.

My favorite thing about it is how it defies the reader's expectations for a love story, and instead features two characters blossoming and growing through their friendship. 

This queer memoir takes us to New York City to explore the unfolding queer life of a child of Bengali immigrants in her difficult decision to divest from parents, colleagues, and friends’ expectations for her life. After taking up architecture as a career and attending Harvard to the delight of her parents, Anjali realizes that her real interest lies in creating graphic literature. This coincides with another journey away from the expected future marriage and family toward exploring and affirming her sexuality and attraction to women. In often spare and simple settings with clean lines that let readers fill in the gaps – for example, with picture frames containing blank canvasses rather than pictures – Anjali creates her own pictures, both as a graphic artist and in imagining her own life. 

Love lies at the heart of this fictionalized memoir. A full recipe from Anjali’s father’s repertoire, a culinary interest… show more.

Melissa Scott takes worldbuilding to fascinating extremes in her 1995 novel, Shadow Man. Due to changes in human biology, there are five recognised sexes in Scott’s far-flung society, with man and woman joined by fem, herm, and mem – yet despite the variety in body types, the isolated and backward planet of Hara forces its residents to choose between a simple binary. With its bold depictions of gender discrimination and violence, Shadow Man is relevant to our own social battles while also indulging in a fast-paced plot and thought-provoking speculation, all while being just different enough from our own world that it scratches that escapist itch.

River McIntyre is a swimmer; at least that’s one element of their identity that’s safely and publicly established. But when he ends up “swimming” in the wrong place—a shark tank—it kicks off a journey of self-discovery that will change them forever. It’s such a brilliant path, taking place over the course of years and through different IDs and realizations, and I love the way everything—including River’s chosen name—always comes back to the water. 

I always love finding work that challenges how I see things and shifts my perspective in some way. This is one of those books!

Even better, whenever I teach a group about this book and the arguments it makes about games a handful of people have a deep transformation about their understanding of games.

Reading this book will shake up how you think about video games, what they do, and how they work. And you might be in that group of people who can’t stop seeing the world in a different way because of your new perspective!

As a pastor’s kid, this light, lyrical book about a church community gathering awakens my earliest memories: the bells and banners, candles and choir, warm greetings, and toddler wiggles. This community offers something many of us lacked: “A church for all!” From the first image of a mixed-race queer family waking early for church to the assembling “Weak and healthy/ Neat and messy/ Poor and wealthy/ Plain and dressy” chatting and worshiping together—this brightly illustrated book captures a true spirit of inclusion. Like many queer people, I had to leave my first faith community. Later I was amazed to find houses of faith like this one. I even married a pastor. Young me couldn’t have imagined living out, opening a service with a book like A Church for All.

This was the first published book I read with a nonbinary main character. That alone makes it one of the most personally important books I have ever read. The fact that I encountered it just after writing my own novel about a nonbinary figure skater made this beautiful book hit even harder.

It showed me that even though two books may have the same hook and some of the same basic ingredients, the execution can be diverse and take those ingredients in directions you never expected. It sparkles, both in its descriptions of figure skating and in its nuanced and honest exploration of identity. It also makes for an excellent read-aloud book.