Diversifying your bookshelf is incredibly important. It widens your worldview, helps you reevaluate ingrained biases and beliefs, and, hopefully, exposes you to incredible new authors and books you might not have discovered if you only ever explored stodgy old lists of classics featuring solely straight cis white authors. These 10 Black authors of LGBTQ books are a great place to start, exploring experiences, both fictional and non, of what it means to be queer and Black. There has never been a time more crucial to amplify the voices of Black LGBTQIA+ activists, authors, and creators.
1. Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby
Samantha McKiver Irby is an American comedian, essayist, blogger, and television writer. She is a recipient of the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for bisexual nonfiction. Quietly Hostile makes light as Irby takes us on an outrageously amusing tour of all the gory details that make up the true portrait of life behind the screenshotted depression memes. Relatable, poignant, and uproarious, Irby is the tonic we all need to get by. In her fourth collection of essays, Quietly Hostile, the bestselling author and television writer renews her love/hate vows with the human race and her relationship with her flaws and failings.
2. You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson
Leah Johnson is an author of award-winning books for children and young adults. In 2021, Time named You Should See Me in a Crown one of the 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time.. Representation is a cause close to Johnson’s heart, and her works allow many readers to finally see themselves – the good, the beautiful, and the messy – reflected at themselves. The book follows Liz Lighty, who has always believed she’s too black, poor, and awkward to shine in her small, affluent, prom-obsessed midwestern town. Liz has a plan that will get her out of Campbell, Indiana, forever: attend the uber-elite Pennington College, play in their world-famous orchestra, and become a doctor. Will falling for the new girl keep Liz from her dreams or make them come true?
3. Coffee Will Make You Black by April Sinclair
April Sinclair was born and grew up in Chicago during the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. This book, her debut novel, was named Book of the Year (Young Adult Fiction) in 1994 by the American Library Association, and it received the Carl Sandburg Award from the Friends of the Chicago Public Library. She worked for fifteen years in community service programs and has taught reading and creative writing to inner-city youth. Coffee Will Make You Black is the moving and entertaining tale of a young black woman, Jean Stevenson. As readers follow her journey during a harrowing time, they will learn what it was like to be black before black was beautiful. Sinclair writes frankly about a young black woman’s sexuality and the confusion Jean faces when she realizes she’s more attracted to the school nurse—who is white—than her teenage boyfriend.
4. I Don’t Want to Die Poor by Michael Arceneaux
Michael Arceneaux is an American writer and author of the 2018 essay collection I Can’t Date Jesus, a New York Times bestselling book. Arceneaux graduated from Howard University, where he majored in broadcast journalism. After college, he moved to Los Angeles, where he began his writing career. He has written for The Guardian, Essence, Rolling Stone, Teen Vogue, BuzzFeed, Vulture, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. I Don’t Want to Die Poor is an unforgettable and relatable examination of what it’s like leading a life that often feels out of your control. Arceneaux has never shied away from discussing his struggles with debt, but in I Don’t Want to Die Poor, he reveals how much it impacts every facet of his life.
5. Right Where I Left You by Julian Winters
Julian Winters is a bestselling and award-winning author of contemporary young adult fiction. His 2018 and 2019 novels, Running With Lions and How to Be Remy Cameron, received accolades for their positive depictions of diverse, relatable characters. This book follows Isaac Martin, who is ready to kick off summer. His last before heading off to college in the fall where he won’t have his best friend, Diego. Knowing his time with Diego is limited, Isaac enacts a foolproof plan, but an unexpected run-in with Davi—Isaac’s old crush—jeopardizes his plan.
6. Friday I’m in Love by Camryn Garrett
Camryn Garrett is an American writer. Her work has appeared in outlets such as Rookie and MTV. Garrett wrote the first draft of her first published novel, Full Disclosure, in 2016 during National Novel Writing Month. She was inspired to write the story because she wanted to understand the lives of young people living with HIV. In 2018, Garret was chosen as one of Teen Vogue’s 21 Under 21: Girls Who Are Changing the World. Friday I’m in Love is a letter to romantic comedies, sweet sixteen blowouts, Black joy, and queer pride.
7. Rainbow Milk by Paul Mendez
Rainbow Milk is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Paul Mendez. Mendez is a Black British author based in London, and this book is his debut novel. Mendez is studying for an M.A. in Black British Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has been a performing member of two theatre companies and worked as a voice actor, appearing on audiobooks by Andrea Levy, Paul Theroux, and Ben Okri, most recently recording Ian Wright’s A Life in Football for Hachette Audio. An essential and revelatory coming-of-age narrative from a compelling new voice, Rainbow Milk follows nineteen-year-old Jesse McCarthy as he grapples with his racial and sexual identities against the backdrop of his Jehovah’s Witness upbringing.
8. The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus
Junauda Petrus is a writer, pleasure activist, filmmaker, and performance artist, born in Dakota land of Black-Caribbean descent. Petrus has written works for the stage, screen, and page. Her work centers around wildness, queerness, Black-diasporic-futurism, ancestral healing, sweetness, shimmer, and liberation. The Stars and the Blackness Between Them was awarded the 2020 Coretta Scott King Honor Book Award. Petrus’s debut brilliantly captures the lush and lyrical voices of Mabel and Audre as they conjure a love stronger than hatred, prison, and death and as vast as the blackness between the stars.
9. The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass
Ryan Douglass is a queer horror author and freelance writer from Atlanta, Georgia. He received his BA in theater studies from Hofstra University. His work on media representation has appeared in HuffPost, Atlanta Black Star, LGBTQ Nation, and the National Council of Teachers of English, among others. This book follows 16-year-old Jake Livingston sees dead people everywhere. He sees the dead around him all the time. Most are harmless. But then Jake meets Sawyer. A troubled teen who shot and killed six kids at a local high school last year before taking his own life. Now a powerful, vengeful ghost, he has plans for his afterlife–plans that include Jake.
10. The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi
Akwaeke Emezi is a multidisciplinary artist and writer based in liminal spaces. Born in Umuahia and raised in Aba, Nigeria, Emezi is currently working on their sixth novel. Emezi’s art practice is deeply rooted in the metaphysics of the Black spirit, using the lens of indigenous ontologies to focus on embodiment, ritual, and rememory. The Death of Vivek Oji is a novel about family and friendship that challenges expectations—a dramatic story of loss and transcendence that will move every reader. Raised by a distant father and an understanding but overprotective mother, Vivek suffers disorienting blackouts and moments of disconnection between self and surroundings. As adolescence gives way to adulthood, Vivek finds solace in friendships with the warm, boisterous daughters of the Nigerwives, and foreign-born women married to Nigerian men.
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Boitumelo Masihleho is a South African digital content creator. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Rhodes University in Journalism and Media Studies and Politics and International Studies.
She’s an experienced multimedia journalist who is committed to writing balanced, informative and interesting stories on a number of topics. Boitumelo has her own YouTube channel where she shares her love for affordable beauty and lifestyle content.
