Happy Pride! Enjoy this book rec list of fiction books with LGBTQ+ and Black representation, written by Black authors! Goodreads and Bookshop.org links and text version of the list below the cut.

Some of these books involve some pretty heavy content, be careful to check content warnings! 

wislawa szymborska, “cassandra” (x)

seamus heaney, “mycenae nightwatch” (x)

annie finch, “chain of women” (x)

adam zagajewski, “persephone goes underground again” (x)

louise glück, “persephone the wanderer” (x) and “the empty glass” (x)

kathleen raine, “medea” (x)

elizabeth ballou, “ariadne and the minotaur” (x)

p.k. page, “this heavy craft” (x)

peter kline, “minotaur” (x)

alfred lord tennyson, “demeter and persephone” (x)

ted hughes, “prometheus on his crag” (x)

margaret atwood, “orpheus (1)” (x), “orpheus (2)” (x), “eurydice” (x) and “siren song” (x)

H.D., “sea-heroes” (x), “delphi” (x), “eurydice” (x), “helen” (x), “thetis” (x), “leda” (x), “hermonax” (x), “apollo at delphi” (x), pallinode, and eidolon

jack conway, “the agamemnon rag” (x)

marina tsvetaeva, “praise to aphrodite” and “the sibyl” and “eurydice to orpheus” (x)

blas falconer, “to orpheus” (x)

jorge luis borges, “to the one who is reading me” (x) and “oedipus and the riddle” (x)

sappho, “hymn to aphrodite” (x) and fragment 102, “blame aphrodite” (x)

william carlos williams, “landscape with the fall of icarus” (x)

muriel rukeyser, “waiting for icarus” (x)

josé emilio pacheco, “new sisyphus” (x)

anne sexton, “to a friend whose work has come to triumph” (x)

edna st. vincent mallay, “daphne” (x)

shakespeare, venus and adonis and “orpheus” (x)

christopher marlowe, “hero and leander”

derek walcott, omeros and “sea grapes” (x) and “europa” (x)

denise levertov, “hymn to eros” (x)

judy grahn, “paris and helen” (x)

alice oswald, memorial

dorothy parker, “penelope” (x)

anne carson, autobiography of red

yusef komunyakaa, “infidelity” (x)

rainer maria rilke, “orpheus. eurydice. hermes.” (x)

She Hid   -    Sabine Beyerle , 2019

German, b,1975-

It is remarkable that she had such a strong practise and had great influence at 16. Despite various disruptions that caused her to stop painting, she returned to her practise from the 60s until the end of her life.

It was within her work that Baya found freedom. The world she painted, after all, is one where women assert their individuality and are free from the men who attempt to brand them with labels, keep them inside the home, or hold them back in any way. “If I change my paintings, I will no longer be Baya,” the artist said in 1991, after her husband died and she’d returned to painting. “When I paint, I am happy and I am in another world.”

Gothic Architecture - Lacock Abbey / Fountains Abbey