brownroundboi

These poems written by trans men in the 1980s have got me emotional tonight.

These poems written by trans men in the 1980s have got me emotional tonight.

We Deserve Monuments by Jas Hammonds is a vivid, beautiful novel, put together perfectly, that combines YA coming-of-age story with simmering southern gothic mystery. Young pansexual Avery sticks out like a sore thumb as one of the only Black girls at the "good school" in Bardell, Georgia. She doesn't know why her family is even here—years after her mom fled the town for good, they're back to see her dying grandmother, but the two women do nothing but fight. But once she's adopted by Simone and Jade, and begins to sow small seeds of connection with Mama Letty, Avery starts to carve out something like a comfort with Bardell. Unfortunately, getting to know Bardell will mean getting to know its secrets.

Hammonds brings into rich, crystalline tension the way that small towns hold onto their secrets, with combinations of open rumor and rigid silences. Their characters are vivid and complex people who you can see as you read, and it enhances the heartbreaks, the tears, and the hugs that come in these pages. From the clumsy web of being queer and Black to the violence of generational trauma and how it's passed down, this book is layer upon layer of story, and yet it's easy to read—in fact, it's near-impossible to put down, and I gulped it down like a frosty iced tea on a hot humid summer day, all in one long, savoring chug. It's a powerful book about both family and friendship, about facing a difficult past with eyes wide open and also about finding new pocket-spaces where you feel accepted and at home.

It gets one of my dearest compliments to a book, because it's rare and usually speaks to the writer's talent: it made me want to write. It sparked that creative rush, and made me want to tell another story. To cap it all off, I loved the pansexual representation, and the book was part of my list of nonbinary/gender non-conforming authors to read this Pride Month.

For every day of Black History Month, I will be posting one LGBTQ+ book by a Black author.

Make sure to check the trigger warnings because some of the books I'll be posting deal with heavy and difficult topics. Also note that in some of the books I post, the romance will be a subplot only.

002. We Deserve Monuments (YA)

→ Jas Hammonds

❧ Sapphic Romance

❧ Contemporary

❧ Slow Burn

❧ Mystery

❧ Family Secrets

❧ Small Town

so i started responding to another similar ask by @unitedstates0fdakota but i accidentally posted it when it was incomplete so i decided to continue here! check out that post for the first two recs, george abraham's birthright and romeo oriogun's sacrament of bodies

more than organs, kay ulanday barrett

kay ulanday barrett is a poet, performer, and educator, navigating life as a disabled filipinx-amerikan transgnder queer in the u.s. with struggle, resistance, and laughter. pamela sneed, one of the reviewers quoted on the back of more than organs, describes the collection as about “hunger that is physical, spiritual, and queer”, and i think hunger is an excellent way to put it. i love how the pieces in this collection oscillate between visceral and playful – there’s a poem called “pain, an epistle” but also one called “actually, jenny schecter wasn’t the worst”.

you googled “authentic” / & now are seated next to me. / as I speed walk you to the cart / aunty gives me the last dish / gets the idea that I’ve waited too long / for something to just taste right. / I wish for a dumpling stuff / of bullet skins to be the shrapnel / in every white man’s throat. / go ahead / say the word oriental / at my table / one more time. —  “I just want dimsum undisturbed by wypipo”

a theory of birds, zaina alsous

zaina alsous is a prison abolitionist, a daughter of the palestinian diaspora, and a movement worker in south florida. the blurb for a theory of birds describes it as “putting ecological conservation in conversation with arab racial formation, state vernacular with the chatter of birds”, and as someone who wanted to be an ornithologist as a child and now works in climate policy, it feels like she wrote this to speak to my soul.

Inside the dodo bird is a forest, Inside the forest a peach analog, Inside the peach analog a woman, Inside the woman a lake of funerals, disappointed male lovers, scientists, Inside the lake a volcano of whale songs, Inside the volcano a language of naming, Inside the language an algorithm for de-extinction, Inside the algorithm blued dynamite to dissolve the colony’s Sun, twinkle twinkle, I didn’t mean to fall in love with failure, its molting rapture, I didn’t mean to name myself from a necklace of silent vowels, I didn’t go looking from for the bird, I entered through the empty cage, hips first —  “Bird Prelude”

boy with thorn, rickey laurentiis

rickey laurentiis is a poet who was raised in new orleans, louisiana, to study light. this is true for a lot of poetry imo, but every piece in boy with thorn requires reading at least twice in a row, because laurentiis’s use of language is so deft and stuffed with meaning that i needed to experience it from different angles. the description for the collection tells us “in a landscape at once the brutal american south as it is the brutal mind, boy with thorn interrogates the genesis of all poetic creation—the imagination itself, questioning what role it plays in both our fascinations with and repulsion from a national history of racial and sexual violence”.

Therefore, my head was kingless. I was a head alone, moaning in a wet black field. I was like any of those deserter slaves whose graves are just the pikes raised for their heads, reshackled, blue and plain as fear. All night I whistled at a sky that mocked me, that fluently changed its grammar as if to match desire in my eye. My freedom is possible, it said. —  “Conditions for a Southern Gothic”

eye level, jenny xie

this is kind of cheating because i first read eye level when it came out in 2017, but i recently reread it so i feel like it counts! jenny xie was born in anhui province, china, and now lives in the united states. eye level travels with xie from phnom penh to corfu to hanoi to new york city, and her descriptions piercing, sensual, and bottomless.

Sunday, awake with this headache. I pull apart the evening with a fork. White clot behind the eyes. Someone once told me, before and after is just another false binary. The warmed-over bones of January. I had no passport. Beneath the stove, two mice made a paradise out of a button of peanut butter. Suffering operates by its own logic. Its gropics and reversals. Ample, in ways that are exquisite. And how it leaves —not unlike how it arrives, without clear notice. —  “Zuihitsu”

Thirsty: A Novel

Category: Fantasy, Young Adult Fiction & Science Fiction

Hello, allied resistance forces! Carrie here, and I’m in the Be the Change driver’s seat this week to talk about a crucial point in all protests and campaigns: accessibility.

I know it’s a dry word that you might not think applies to you. But guess what: you’d be wrong! Because you know someone with access needs whether you realize it or not. And even if you’re able-bodied, you’re gonna want to know this stuff for your own use eventually (whether thanks to a sprained ankle, an acquired disability, or good old-fashioned aging). In order to successfully throw sand in the gears, we need as many people out there throwing it as possible — and that means a movement that includes all kinds of bodies and minds.

I’ll be honest: my protest experience so far has been a mixed bag there. Using a wheelchair during the Women’s March made it marginally easier to battle the crowds (as did having a girlfriend from Brooklyn who knows how to unleash an “OUT OF THE WAY, SIR!” like I’ve never heard). I’ve seen my fair share of disabled folks waving signs in the street. But for every one of us, there are ten fellow protesters who bump into our chairs without regard or who still think the worst thing about Trump’s disability politics is that he was mean once. For every one of us, there are countless more who aren’t there because the organizers overlooked them. But the good news is that for every one of us, there’s another disabled activist leading the charge toward a more inclusive movement.