Here are 100 books that The Complete Works of Pat Parker fans have personally recommended if you like
The Complete Works of Pat Parker.
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I’m a novelist and a professor of black queer and feminist literature at Georgetown University. But the truth is, my connection to these books goes deeper than that. These books give me life. When I was a little girl, I spent more days than I can count scouring my mother’s small black feminist library in the basement of our home in Harlem, poring over the stories of girls like me: fat, black, queer girls who longed to see themselves written in literature and history. Now I get to create stories like these myself, and share them with others. It’s a dream job, and a powerful one. It thrills me every time.
This book is so expansive, Audre Lorde invented a whole new genre for it. She terms it “biomythography,” bringing together autobiography, mythology, fiction, poetry, and other forms of writing to tell her story of queer life.
I fell in love with Zamiin college back in the day and have been re-reading it ever since. From her childhood in 1930s and 40s Harlem to her coming out as the self-proclaimed fat black lesbian “warrior poet,” who would come to shape black feminism in the late 20th century and beyond, Zamicharts the life, loves, and transformative ideas of one of our most important writers.
Zamiis both muse and guide, showing us how the iconic feminist writer came to be, and how pleasure, power, creative expression, and community are indispensable to our own freedom today.
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'
If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive
A little black girl opens her eyes in 1930s Harlem, weak and half-blind. On she stumbles - through teenage pain and loneliness, but then to happiness in friendship, work and sex, from Washington Heights to Mexico, always changing, always strong. This is Audre Lorde's story. A rapturous, life-affirming autobiographical novel by the 'Black, lesbian, mother, warrior poet', it changed the literary landscape.
I’m a novelist and a professor of black queer and feminist literature at Georgetown University. But the truth is, my connection to these books goes deeper than that. These books give me life. When I was a little girl, I spent more days than I can count scouring my mother’s small black feminist library in the basement of our home in Harlem, poring over the stories of girls like me: fat, black, queer girls who longed to see themselves written in literature and history. Now I get to create stories like these myself, and share them with others. It’s a dream job, and a powerful one. It thrills me every time.
Justin Torres’s exquisite novel will make you want to beam and bawl and fight in all the best ways.
It tells the story of a clear-eyed, tender-hearted boy navigating a world where true safety is hard to find. As he comes of age in rural New York State in the 1980s, messages about masculinity, race, sexuality, and the expectations of family swirl around him, often violently, punctuating the world of inquisitive play he and his two older brothers create together.
We witness as Torres’s narrator fights for a vision of his own freedom, a complex fight that resists tidy endings, offering echoing truths instead.
Three brothers tear their way through childhood - smashing tomatoes all over each other, building kites from rubbish, hiding when their parents do battle, tiptoeing around the house as their mother sleeps off her graveyard shift. Paps and Ma are from Brooklyn - he's Puerto Rican, she's white. Barely out of childhood themselves, their love is a serious, dangerous thing. Life in this family is fierce and absorbing, full of chaos and heartbreak and the euphoria of belonging completely to one another. From the intense familial unity felt by a child to the profound alienation he endures as he begins…
I’m a novelist and a professor of black queer and feminist literature at Georgetown University. But the truth is, my connection to these books goes deeper than that. These books give me life. When I was a little girl, I spent more days than I can count scouring my mother’s small black feminist library in the basement of our home in Harlem, poring over the stories of girls like me: fat, black, queer girls who longed to see themselves written in literature and history. Now I get to create stories like these myself, and share them with others. It’s a dream job, and a powerful one. It thrills me every time.
It features the voices of over forty contemporary lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and intersex African writers who reflect on queer life and experience. With work from renowned photographer Zanele Muholi and acclaimed writers like Olumide Popoola, Audrey Mbugua, and Pamella Dlungwana, Queer African Reader explores how queerness, trans identity, disability, feminism, and colonialism intersect on both personal and political levels.
It’s full of stories, poems, and essays that move us beyond a US-centered view of sexuality, rooting us in the complexities of queer life and the possibilities of queer freedom in Africa and beyond.
As homophobia and transphobia threaten to silence the voices of African lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people, this account is a testament to the resistance and unrelenting power of these communities across Africa and its diaspora. It brings together academic writings, political analysis, life testimonies, conversations, and artistic works by Africans that engage with the struggle for LGBTI liberation. The book aims to engage the audience from the perspective that various traits of identity—such as gender, race, and class—interact to contribute to social inequality. Including experiences from diverse African contexts, this work breaks away from the homogenization of…
I’m a novelist and a professor of black queer and feminist literature at Georgetown University. But the truth is, my connection to these books goes deeper than that. These books give me life. When I was a little girl, I spent more days than I can count scouring my mother’s small black feminist library in the basement of our home in Harlem, poring over the stories of girls like me: fat, black, queer girls who longed to see themselves written in literature and history. Now I get to create stories like these myself, and share them with others. It’s a dream job, and a powerful one. It thrills me every time.
This is the kind of book you want to savor, line by line. It’s a powerful and necessary exploration of black gay writing and life in the 1980s and 1990s.
Bost transports us to the world of important writers like Essex Hemphill, Joseph Beam, and Melvin Dixon, showing us how their writing, their living, and their loving were all intertwined. With gorgeous, poetic prose, Bost shows how violent structures like racism, classism, homophobia, and AIDS may shape aspects of our lives, but they cannot stop our living.
Evidence of Beingexplores how these writers used their work to create community, belonging, and survival. My favorite thing about this book is that Bost gives us a vision of what he calls “black/queer optimism,” in which shared experiences and creative expression form a basis for LGBTQ+ life far into the future.
Evidence of Being opens on a grim scene: Washington DC's gay black community in the 1980s, ravaged by AIDS, the crack epidemic, and a series of unsolved murders, seemingly abandoned by the government and mainstream culture. Yet in this darkest of moments, a new vision of community and hope managed to emerge. Darius Bost's account of the media, poetry, and performance of this time and place reveals a stunning confluence of activism and the arts. In Washington and New York during the 1980s and '90s, gay black men banded together, using creative expression as a tool to challenge the widespread…
I grew up rebelling against the roles I was expected to take on as a girl. I grew up not knowing that girls could fall in love with girls. I grew up with a strong sense of injustice and a desire to do something about it. The books on my list all feature strong female protagonists experiencing and/or taking on injustices of one kind or another. They are written by interesting women who write brilliantly. Some of the books are dear to me because nature provides comfort and strength beneath the chaos of human chatter, as it does for me.
I first discovered T.S. Eliot Prize Winner Joelle Taylor through a poetry performance online. I was so moved that I immediately bought her poetry book. I found lines in this book that literally took my breath away, made me laugh out loud in recognition, or took me back to people and places dear to me.
The poems tell stories of butch lesbians in the 1980s and 1990s, stories seldom told, and she tells them brilliantly, with heart, humor, and compassion. Joelle now has a novel out, The Night Alphabet, in which a woman gets all her tattoos connected with one single thread—of blood—connecting her to her past, present, and future—another amazing read.
C+nto enters the private lives of women from the butch counterculture, telling the inside story of the protests they led in the '90s to reclaim their bodies as their own - their difficult balance between survival and self-expression. History, magic, rebellion, party and sermon vibrate through Joelle Taylor's cantos to uncover these underground communities forged by women.
Part-memoir and part-conjecture, Taylor explores sexuality and gender in poetry that is lyrical, expansive, imagistic, epic and intimate. C+nto is a love poem, a riot, a late night,…
Ever since I was a little guy, I've been told that I complicate things unnecessarily. I overthink and over-communicate, and often, my feelings are outsized to the situation. These are not things I do on purpose, but involuntary, like a sneeze or the way you reflexively clench with cuteness aggression when you see a grizzly bear’s little ears, even though you know it can hurt and eat and kill you. I love to find books with narrators who seemingly share this affliction. It makes me feel less alone, but more importantly, I love to see how other people's Rube Goldberg machines function.
I had the incredible fortune of seeing Alabi read from Against Heaven about a month ago, and what I most remember is the feeling of calm that came over me as they read. It's the kind of calm you get when you're in the presence of incredible beauty—like a waterfall, a mountain, or a vast crowd of protestors—and you realize that this is what life is for.
These poems are dear to me because of the way Alabi wrestles biblical language into meanings that they, and we, need. I wish I could feel all the time the way I feel reading this book.
Kemi Alabi's transcendent debut reimagines the poetic and cultural traditions from which it is born, troubling the waters of some of our country's central and ordained fictions-those mythic politics of respectability, resilience, and redemption. Instead of turning to a salvation that has been forced upon them, Alabi turns to the body and the earth as sites of paradise defined by the pleasure and possibility of Black, queer fugitivity. Through tender love poems, righteous prayers, and vital provocations, we see the colonizers we carry within ourselves being laid to rest.
Against Heaven is a praise song made for the flames of…
I have created art from an early age. Years later, my studies in civil engineering allowed me to combine my love for the arts with my belief in an orderly world. Meanwhile, reading and writing have always been my favorite pursuits. While collaborating as an editor with other authors, assisting them in their writing endeavors, in 2014, I wrote and published my first book. Sharing my writing on Instagram gave birth to the idea of my first poetry book, something like, published in 2018. Since then, two more poetry collections have been published: A TriAngle in 2019 and something like in reverse in 2020.
Pillow Thoughts is a collection of poetry and prose about heartbreak, love, and raw emotions. It is divided into sections to read when you feel you need them most.
I'm the author of Penelope’s Purple Passions. I've been in love with writing poetry since I was a little girl. I would go under the bunk bed at night with my flashlight and write all these poems about love, not that I knew anything about love, but what I did know was how writing poetry made me feel. I believe love is truly the most valuable gift we can give to another soul in our lifetime. I want my poetry to empower people and be that beacon of light in people’s lives. Poetry is the avenue where I can spread love and hope globally to anyone who picks up my books.
This book was chosen because of the deep, profound love that is displayed throughout the book. It speaks to how vulnerable a person makes themselves when they love deeply and how scary that can be. It also speaks to how you can feel so totally lost in loving another person that you forget to love yourself. I could identify with loving so intensely also and having my heart broken. I also identified with the journey of coming to loving oneself again and with that being open to finding someone better.
In the spirit of her bestselling series, Pillow Thoughts, Courtney Peppernell returns with a new, empowering collection of poetry and prose. From heartbreak to dreaming of and finding a new love to healing the heart to ultimately finding peace, the themes in this book are universal but also uniquely individual to readers.
Just as moving and endearing as Peppernell's previous books, I Hope You Stay is a reminder of the resilience and hope needed after heartache and pain. The book is divided into five sections, with poems ranging from free verse to short form. These words are a light in…
When I was young and just figuring out the whole gay thing, I had to cross state lines to see the one gay movie and smuggle out the one library book I was too afraid to check out. In the 1970s and 80s I grew up knowing I was part of a group that was rarely talked about, aside from jokes. I've enjoyed so many stories that didn't represent me. If the struggle is real, I want to see, hear, and feel the whole messy bunch of it. I like the uncomfortable process of writing, and make promises that I later break: I can always tone this part down later…and then I never do.
I loved this book because it was the ultimate slow-burn romance coupled with an older woman coming out story, which was truly original at the time. As is almost always the case, the novel is better than the movie, but this one brilliantly made the transition to the film renamed Desert Hearts, which was helped by the amazing chemistry between the actresses and a director that did not shy away from sex scenes which were both graphic, yet beautiful.
Set back in the 1950s, this sizzling & heartwarming matchup is the trifecta of opposites attract: class, age, and attitude towards coming out, this book was a romance with substance, sprinkled with a bit of comedy, my favorite recipe.
Set in the late 1950s, this is the story of Evelyn Hall, an English Professor, who goes to Reno to obtain a divorce and put an end to her disastrous 16-year marriage. While staying at a boarding house to establish her six-week residency requirement she meets Ann Childs, a casino worker and fifteen years her junior. Physically, they are remarkably alike and eventually have an affair and begin the struggle to figure out just how a relationship between two women can last.
Desert of the Heart examines the conflict between convention and freedom and the ways in which the characters…
I grew up in a religion and family where being gay was most definitely more than frowned upon. Now as a queer author and parent (and former academic who studied queer lit and video games!), I’m thrilled to be bringing a “book baby” into the world during Pride Month that is pure historical romantic fantasy in which two women embrace who they are and one another. When I first started reading queer fiction, much of it was gritty and realistic, sure, but also extremely grim. I think we desperately need a balance of the grim and the gleeful and that is what I hope this little list gives you! Happy endings are possible in fiction and reality. Happy Pride Month, dear readers!
A fantastic, quick-read of a novella featuring a class-difference romance between a lady's maid/thief and a prim and proper lady's companion. When the two women find themselves forced to share a room – and a bed! – things quickly become steamy. But there is more to the story than spice. Revenge upon a villain must be enacted. And of course, Alice and Molly must work to achieve their happy ever after.
I loved my first foray into Cat Sebastian because it is pure historical fantasy, yes, but it's tingly, heart-warming wish-fulfillment of the best kind. We don't need more dead Dumbledores. We need stories that show queer love is possible and can win the day. Amiright?!
Lady’s maid Molly Wilkins is done with thieving—and cheating and stabbing and all the rest of it. She’s determined to keep her hands to herself, so she really shouldn’t be tempted to seduce her employer’s prim and proper companion, Alice. But how can she resist when Alice can’t seem to keep her eyes off Molly?
Finds her own heart
For the first time in her life, Alice Stapleton has absolutely nothing to do. The only thing that seems to occupy her thoughts is a lady’s maid with a sharp tongue and a beautiful mouth. Her determination to…
