Connecting with LGBTQ+ Librarians, Authors, Book Bloggers, and Other Queer Bookish Folks on Social Media

Posted on September 27, 2017 by CaseytheCanadianLesbrarian

rainbow booksFor a lot of LGBTQ+ people when they’re first coming out and beyond, especially ones living in rural areas, the internet—social media being an important part of that—is the go-to place for information. For one thing, it can feel a lot more private and therefore safer than say, checking out a big gay book from your school or public library. Another thing that so many LGBTQ+ folks find on the internet is community; often, in fact, reliable information about being LGBTQ+ comes from LGBTQ+ communities. Although in urban areas there are now some pretty awesome in-person resources like GSAs (or other more inclusively named LGBTQ+ clubs) for teens, finding like-minded people on the internet to know that you’re not alone can be empowering and fun and potentially life-saving, particularly at a young age.

One of the amazing things about finding LGBTQ+ community on the internet and social media in particular is that you can find niches of queer people and build up a community that you might never be able to in person, simply because of sheer numbers. For me, when I first started my other blog Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian, that community was queer women book lovers. One of my other first forays was starting to write reviews for the amazing, comprehensive, enormous resource that is The Lesbrary, a lesbian book blog run by Danika Ellis and featuring reviews of all different kinds of books featuring LBT women, as well as round-ups about every two weeks on queer women’s bookish stuff happening on the internet. There is an awesome rotating group of women who write for the blog—which I obviously recommend checking out—but that community was only the beginning.

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When I started my own blog, I really had no idea the journey of networking with LGBTQ+ bookish people that it was going to put me on. I also had no clue how exactly to go about getting followers, which has happened very gradually and probably reached its peak (after all, people interested in LBTQ+ Canadian fiction are a pretty niche group). But one thing I did do initially to reach out to people, in addition to promoting my blog on my personal facebook page, was join twitter.

It was on twitter where I really discovered the array of LGBTQ+ librarians, authors, book bloggers, publishers, and other queer bookish folks there were. (I say LGBTQ+, although most of the bookish people I’ve connected with via twitter are LBT women, actually). It was pretty cool when I realized I had actually started networking with librarians way before I was even in library school! And it was awesome to see what the perspectives of LGBTQ+ librarians on their profession were.

Like with the followers on my blog, it has taken me quite a while to build up my network on twitter, but a few things I’ve noticed that help make connections are:

1) Not just retweeting someone, but adding your own comment so they know you’ve actually read the article they’re linking to (and sometimes written themselves), understood the context of their tweet, etc.

2) Asking for help / advice from people by directly tagging them! I’ve been so surprised at how complete strangers—sometimes people I don’t even follow on twitter—are so willing to offer their expertise and knowledge when I’m doing research for my LGBTQ+ reader’s advisory column or just looking for personal recommendations. LGBTQ+ people like sharing what they know—I guess it’s all a part of the idea of community and all of us knowing how hard it can be to find the kind of queer books you want!

zoe3) Complimenting people! I pretty much always tag an author—if they have twitter—in a tweet about my positive review of their book and I get responses from a lot of them! At first I was pretty star-struck when I first started communicating with authors via twitter (I remember being super pumped when Zoe Whittall said thanks for and retweeted a review I had done of one of her books), but realized that authors really appreciated that I was essentially promoting their books for free!

4) Ask interesting and sometimes difficult questions—they’ll spark a conversation. I ended up tweeting with Malinda Lo (who’s kind of a big deal in the LGBTQ+ YA world!) after I tweeted my blog post about how hard it is to find LGBTQ+ fiction and how the blurbs on back covers often disguise queer content.

Oddly enough, I’ve begun to realize lately that I’ve been so immersed in the queer women’s bookish online world that if I want to be more well-rounded as a librarian—one specializing in LGBTQ+ materials and just in general—I should probably actually start reading some books by/about/for GBT men and—gasp!—non-queer books. So I guess that is kind of coming full circle. But the queer women’s book world will always have a special place in my queer heart.

 

Posted in Social Media Lesbrarian | 1 Comment

A Tiny Gem of a Book: A Review of Graphic Novel STEAM CLEAN by Laura Ķeniņš

Posted on September 26, 2017 by CaseytheCanadianLesbrarian

Steam Clean by Toronto-based comic artist and writer Laura Ķeniņš is one of those tiny little gems of a book that takes you by complete surprise. The unadorned, colourful illustrations are deceptively simple. And for a small graphic novel that’s easy to read in an hour or two, it has surprising depth and punch.

Steam Clean takes place over a single night at a queer women’s sauna party somewhere in Northern Europe on a cold autumn night. If you’re the kind of comics reader who wants lots of “action,” you might be disappointed with this book, because it’s the kind of story where the conversation is the action. It reminded me viscerally of communities of queer women that I’ve been a part of, the good parts and the bad. It also made me think of Dykes to Watch Out For, another (more famous) comic centred on a group of queer friends, in that it feels like a glimpse into an intimate group of queer women friends written with a queer audience in mind.

kenins_itsnicethat_steamclean24The people attending this queer women’s sauna all have distinct personalities—an impressive feat in such a short span of space. One of the attendees is there reluctantly because their ex dragged them there even though they don’t identify as a woman anymore. Other characters include a woman navigating the nasty world of queer online dating while being trans, an opinionated woman who bullies her friend about how she views her past sexual relationships with men, a bisexual goddess—yeah, literally a mythological goddess—who needs some motivation to come out of in the closet, and a woman dealing with systemic sexism in the workplace.

In the quiet story of Steam Clean, these people get sweaty in the sauna, verbally airing their tensions as the heat works the tension out of their muscles. Sometimes they get up to cool off—literally and figuratively—outside or in a cold pool. The seeds of a small, budding romance appear. Friendships are tested. New ideas take root in some people’s minds. And then at the end of the night, everybody goes home. Nothing is solved, nothing dramatic happens, the world is much the same as it was before. It’s like the literary equivalent of actually going to hang out with some friends for a sauna. In other words: Steam Clean is a lovely slice of life comic. I’m excited to read whatever Laura Ķeniņš does next!

Posted in Bisexual, Canadian, comics, Fiction, Graphic, Lesbian, Non-Canadian, Queer, Trans, Trans Feminine, Transgender | 3 Comments

“This is what I did with my heartache”: A Review of THE CLOTHESLINE SWING by Ahmad Danny Ramadan

Posted on September 25, 2017 by CaseytheCanadianLesbrarian

The Clothesline Swing by Ahmad Danny Ramadan is one of those books that makes me feel privileged just to have gotten the chance to read it. One of the most amazing things about reading (and there are many) is how it allows you to get a glimpse into other people’s lives and places that you might otherwise never have access to. The Clothesline Swing is set partially in Vancouver (where I live!) but also Syria and it features a gay Syrian couple who end up coming to Canada as refugees. it’s so special to get to spend some time seeing the world from the perspectives of these people. But The Clothesline Swing is not only an incredible window for readers different than the main characters and a mirror for readers similar to them. It’s also a beautiful piece of literature reminiscent of some of my favourite living writers.

The Clothesline Swing is a poetic, elegiac novel, Ramadan’s first published work in English (he’s also the author of two short story collections in Arabic). The structure surprised me when I started the novel with the knowledge that it was about Syrian refugees coming to Canada. Instead of chronicling the journey chronologically going from Syria to Canada and leaving the story with a “happy ever after” after they have arrived in Canada (this expectation likely stems from my Western position and its fondness for linear narratives), Ramadan makes the fascinating choice to tell the story from the perspective of one of the men as he is elderly. I tell you, when did you last read a queer book from the perspective of a gay elder? This elderly gay Syrian man is unnamed but you know him as Hakawati, which means storyteller. So, of course, he is the narrator of the novel and spends the narrative telling stories as he looks back on his life while his partner is dying.

The stories go back and forth in time, taking place in Canada, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Turkey. Hakawati tells us about his childhood in Damascus, early queer relationships, homophobic violence he suffered at the hands of supposed friends and family, leaving Syria only to return to war, meeting the man who became his life partner, and the surreal experience of trying to maintain a semblance of a life as war rages around you in your beloved hometown. He also tells traditional, fairy tale-like stories that sometimes stand on their own and are sometimes embedded within other stories. All of these stories are addressed to a ‘you,’ making the narration feel startlingly intimate, even though you know the ‘you’ is Hakawati’s partner.

Although the setting changes often, the spectre of Syria lies heavy in most of the stories, even in the ones told in the present of the novel (which is actually the future). Hakawati says: “We were all children of this dying nation; although our mother’s steady march toward death brought us destruction, we didn’t want to abandon her.” This haunting affects the tone of the whole novel; the ache of missing a place that exists only in your memories, the pull of wanting to return to a home that is no longer there, these feelings permeate Hakawati’s stories. In addition to the more figurative haunting of the country both men left and that in reality doesn’t exist anymore, there is also a literal haunting: that of death himself, who’s hangs out in the couple’s apartment, joining their conversations, drinking their coffee, smoking their joints, and generally eavesdropping on their lives.

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Ahmad Danny Ramadan, via harbourpublishing.com

The timeless, fairy tale feel of Hakawati’s stories reminded me of both Helen Oyeyemi and Jeanette Winterson, other writers who manage simultaneously to write about specific historical times and places while making their stories feel eternal and ancient. Hakawati’s sacred job as storyteller through which Ramadan narrates the novel adds to its timeless feel; readers feels more like listeners, as if gathered at the feet of a wise queer Syrian elder. When Hakawati asks near the approach of his partner’s death “What’s a storyteller without a listener? … Who will listen to my stories without him?,” the answer might be us, the readers.

Although The Clothesline Swing is dark at times (content includes suicide, mental illness, gay-bashing, and sexual assault), the book is ultimately life-affirming as well as healing. I know it was for me as a reader and I imagine it would be for other readers as well as the author himself (who is a gay Syrian refugee like his protagonist), for his dedication reads: “To the children of Damascus, This is what I did with my heartache…What about yours?” To reference the aptly chosen epigraph from Gabriel García Márquez, which describes a person “unable to bear in his soul the crushing weight of so much past,” the end of The Clothesline Swing feels like a magnificent lifting of a burden too long shouldered.

Posted in Canadian, Fiction, Gay, magic realism, Queer, Vancouver | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Bisexual Erasure and Monosexism in Rainbow Rowell’s CARRY ON

Posted on September 22, 2017 by CaseytheCanadianLesbrarian

Bisexual erasure is always a piece of poopy garbage, but it’s especially disheartening to encounter it while reading a book during Bi Visibility Week. Let me explain:

I recently read the fantasy YA book Carry On by Rainbow Rowell. I had a few apprehensions before starting it, to be honest, because I tried to read Eleanor & Park earlier this year and found it boring as well as a pretty sloppy handling of race by a white author. But the two women of one of my favourite podcasts Witch Please were going to discuss the book in the context of it being a part of the Harry Potter world (it’s legitimized Harry Potter fanfiction, essentially). The old English Lit student in me could not bare to listen to the podcast episode without having read the book. (Sidenote: if you like Harry Potter and the idea of two self-described lady scholars talking about Harry Potter with equal parts affection and critical eyes, you should definitely be listening to Witch Please, it is awesome).

At first, I loved Carry On! I loved the interrogation of so many of the details of the Harry Potter and Hogwarts world–like, house elves aren’t necessary if the students just do some of their own fucking chores. I also loved how Rowell used linguistics as the basis of magic. Magicians, aka witches and wizards, use nursery rhymes, song lyrics, and popular phrases to cast spells! I loved that Penelope/Hermione was explicitly brown! I was even amused at Agatha, a person with magic who kind of just wanted to forget about it and live in the normal world and ride horses and get manicures. And I was soooo into the Harry/Draco Simon and Baz queer romance, at least at first.

But then this book disappointed me in a way that makes me angrier and angrier the more I think about it. Namely: the way Carry On deals with queer sexuality is so deeply monosexist (enforcing the assumption that people are either gay or straight and therefore erasing bisexuality) that I want to chuck it at the wall. Unfortunately I was listening to the audiobook so I had nothing tangible to throw.

In case you haven’t read Carry On: the character named Simon who is essentially Harry Potter is in his 8th year at Watford, aka Hogwarts, and has a roommate named Baz who is pretty obviously Draco. I mean, he even slicks his hair back like Draco. For the first part of the book Simon has a long-term girlfriend Agatha, who breaks up with him. It’s clear their relationship is not great and they’re just kind of going through the motions so it’s not surprising. Pretty early on in the story we get Baz’s perspective (one of the other interesting changes Rowell has made to Rowling’s formula is that she offers readers direct points of view from multiple people). Baz tells us straight up that he’s gay and hopelessly in love with Simon. Simon never tells readers directly his sexual orientation or that he’s interested in Baz before they kiss, although many readers will likely suspect something since Simon is kind of obsessed with this guy he claims is his enemy. Some other plot stuff happens, but what we care about is that eventually Simon and Baz kiss. Squee!! So great. Unfortunately, after Simon and Baz get together there isn’t much time for adorableness before monosexism rears its ugly head.

I want to be clear I understand gay people have many different paths to how they came into their sexuality. Many gay people have stories of having different gender relationships they knew they didn’t want, especially as young people, because of the overwhelming pressure of compulsory heterosexuality. I also know some gay people who never had viscerally negative reactions to different gender relationships (sometimes only feeling a kind of ‘meh’) but feel infinitely more excited and fulfilled by same gender relationships in a way that made them realize they’re gay. If Simon had either of those experiences, that’d be great! Yay for showing the complexities of sexual identity.

But Simon’s relationship with Agatha is not presented in either of those ways. Readers are not given any indication that he dated her for three years because of heterosexist pressure or that he discovers something new with Baz that he never felt with Agatha. In fact, all I could see in my reading is that Rowell gives us evidence that Simon had genuine romantic and/or sexual feelings for Agatha, and even continues to have those feelings after she breaks up with him. In particular, Rowell shows that Simon has feelings for Agatha because he is (ironically) jealous of what he thinks might be a burgeoning relationship between Agatha and Baz. If you’ve read this book and have a different interpretation of Simon and Agatha, please let me know in the comments!

In the context of what I understood about Simon’s dating history, Simon wondering “if he is gay now” after kissing Baz and Baz badgering him about “not even knowing if he’s gay or not” are just hurtfully monosexist, even if they are realistic given the monosexist culture we live in. Not one person mentions the word bisexual or the concept of a sexual orientation of attraction to more than one gender. It is as if Simon’s newfound feelings for Baz completely negate any previous feelings he had for Agatha. I kept hoping that even the possibility of bisexuality would be brought up until near the end of the book, but the last comment about sexuality is where Simon flippantly says “I guess I am gay.”

What’s worse is that Rowell is actually using monosexism as a narrative device: a lot of the tension of whether Simon could possibly reciprocate Baz’s feelings hinges on the fact that he has/had a girlfriend and therefore could never also like a boy. I don’t think I’m alone in having found the signs that Simon was into Baz from the beginning pretty obvious, but one way Rowell gets away with that is by using readers’ assumptions that Simon must be straight because of his relationship with Agatha. The romance is essentially structured around the erasure of bisexuality! And it’s especially crappy because there are so few fiction books with bisexual boy/men characters; this is a serious missed opportunity!

Despite all the good this queer relationship in a mainstream YA novel will do and probably has done for some queer teens, I’m really sad that this unequivocally “gay now” narrative is what Rowell is presenting readers. These narratives are really harmful for bi people. The very least Rowell could have done is mention the possibility of a non-monosexual identity even if she didn’t give want to give any explanation for Simon’s dating history. I simply can’t forgive stories like this anymore because I realize looking back that they’re the kinds of cultural narratives that made me not be able to come out as bi and actually see bisexuality as a valid sexual identity until I was almost 30, over 10 years after realizing I was queer.

On a happier bisexual note, you should check out some of the other writing I’ve been doing for Bi Visibility Week, including a 100 Must-Read Bisexual Books post for Book Riot and 15 Must-Read Bisexual Nonfiction Books for Autostraddle. And in case you missed it, my last post on Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian was 10 Canadian Bisexual Books to Read for Bi Visibility Week.

(By the way, I realize this post has no Canadian content but y’all said you wanted more opinion pieces and personal essays. So here you go!)

Posted in Bisexual, Fantasy, Fiction, Non-Canadian, Queer | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

10 Canadian Bisexual Books to Read for Bi Visibility Week

Posted on September 20, 2017 by CaseytheCanadianLesbrarian

Whether your jam is urban fantasy, food memoir, erotica, graphic coming-of-age, epic fantasy, romance, or contemporary queer realism, there’s a bisexual Canadian book on this list for you!

She of the Mountains by Vivek Shraya

“In the beginning, there is no he. There is no she. Two cells make up one cell. This is the mathematics behind creation. One plus one makes one. Life begets life. We are the period to a sentence, the effect to a cause, always belonging to someone. We are never our own. This is why we are so lonely.” This is just a beautiful, poetic novel that I think everybody should read. It tells two stories, reimagining more than one Hindu mythological tale and combining that with the contemporary narrative of an unnamed bisexual protagonist “he.” It’s an exploration of queer identity, but also the body and emotions, and how all of these are tied together. What does it mean to love who we love?, the book asks. The illustrations by Raymond Biesinger (see the cover for an example) are delightful and add so much to the experience of reading the book.

What the Mouth Wants by Monica Meneghetti

This mouthwatering, intimate, and sensual memoir traces Monica Meneghetti’s unique life journey through her relationship with food, family and love. As the youngest child of a traditional Italian-Catholic immigrant family, Monica learns the intimacy of the dinner table and the ritual of meals, along with the requirements of conformity both at the table and in life. As Monica becomes an adult, she discovers a part of her self that rebels against the rigours of her traditional upbringing at the same time that she is discovering her sexuality in the wake of her mother’s death from breast cancer. And as the layers of her bisexuality and polyamory are revealed she begins to understand that like herbs infusing a sauce with flavour, her differences add a delicious complexity to her life.

The Change Room by Karen Connelly

The Change Room is a beautifully written literary novel with a lot of graphic, lovingly depicted sex—between women and between men and women—with a lot of attention to the emotional aspects of sex but also just pleasure for pleasure’s sake. In fact, the novel is about searching for erotic and sensual pleasure amidst the weight of mid-life middle class married life with young children. Eliza Keenan is a woman in her early forties who lives in Toronto with her beloved family. She loves her math professor husband Andrew—who is adorably described as “deliciously rumpled.” Eliza runs her own high-end floral business. They have two young sons to whom both parents are tenderly dedicated. They own a house (plus a mountain of debt from renovating it). She is living the middle-class dream. How could she possibly ask for more? See my full review here.

All Inclusive by Farzana Doctor

If someone had told me, hey, Farzana Doctor’s All Inclusive is a critical look at all-inclusive resorts, bisexuality, swinging and polyamory, spirituality, death, and terrorism, I probably would have said, are you kidding? But Doctor manages to make her third novel a huge success. As always with Doctor’s novels, there’s her trademark sharp insight into the human psyche and this gentle, calming, empathetic lens as she explores her characters. Ameera is the late twenties biracial (white and Indian) main character. She works at an all-inclusive in Mexico, where she’s discovered since arriving that she’s bisexual and enjoys having sex with (mostly man-woman) couples. But just when you’re settling into her story, the perspective shifts, and we get someone named Azeez, but back in 1985 instead of Ameera’s 2015. You guess immediately that Azeez is Ameera’s father and you know that he’s never been a part of her life. But you’ll never guess why he disappeared… (Full review here).

Long Red Hair by Meags Fitzgerald

Long Red Hair is a graphic memoir of coming-of-age, bisexual coming out, and teenage rebellion. It’s heartbreaking when Meags tells her friend: “I just want to be gay or straight. Being bisexual is way too confusing … If I’m bi that means I don’t have a soulmate and I’ll never be satisfied loving just one person for the rest of my life. It’d be like … a curse.” This memoir is also full of the kind of weird stuff I was super into when I was a teenager: conducting séances and chanting Bloody Mary at sleepovers, wanting to be a witch / identifying very strongly with witches, watching scary movies, and being obsessed with make-believe and the powers of your imagination at an age when you’ve supposed to have grown out of that already. It’s also chock-full of 90s witchy pop culture references from Buffy to Charmed to Sabrina the Teenage Witch to Hocus Pocus. Full review here.

Indigo Springs by A.M. Dellamonica  

Amazing, unique world building?  Dynamic bisexual main character whose sexuality is named and not a big deal?  Where have you been hiding, Indigo Springs, oh wonderfully imaginative, queer fantasy novel? Indigo Springs is based on a tried-and-true formula that there is magic hidden beneath our everyday, and that this magic might have dangerous and unexpected consequences. Joining Astrid the main character on this magical journey are her best friend Sahara and ex-stepbrother/friend Jacks.  They make quite the interesting trio: Astrid is quiet, smart, accommodating, and constantly refereeing conflicts between the two people most important to her: Sahara, a charismatic but manipulative woman, and Jacks, an almost-too-sweet outdoorsy sweetheart.  This is a love triangle but in an unexpected way. You can bet that these three are not going to be able to agree on how to deal with the bright blue liquid magic that is spewing out of a hole in their living room floor. See my full review here.

Sister Mine by Nalo Hopkinson

Our (bisexual) protagonist is Makeda and she has a unique yet familiarly dysfunctional relationship with her twin sister Abby.  They were born conjoined and Abby was left physically disabled –she uses crutches – and Makeda has been left with a distinct lack of celestial magic as a result of their separation. But that’s the ‘normal’ part of their life, because their father is a demi-god.  Their dad’s family wasn’t exactly thrilled with his choice of a human partner so they’ve punished him by turning him into a mortal and Makeda’s mom into a giant silver lake creature. When her father goes missing Makeda is forced to reconcile with her sister and jump back into the magical world she tried to leave. Tackling themes of sibling rivalry as well as reimagining sexuality that lacks the taboos of queerness, polyamory, and incest, Sister Mine is set in a fantastical world informed by Afro-Caribbean mythology, but this is mixed with a realist, contemporary Toronto. Full review here.

Holding Still For As Long As Possible by Zoe Whittall

Reading Zoe Whittall’s Toronto-set novel Holding Still For As Long As Possible is kind of like reading a wittier, more exciting version of my urban early-to-mid-twenties queer life in the 2000s. I mean, in a very specific and limited but amazing way: these are white, bike-riding, middle-class background, artsy, educated, FAAB queers. Holding Still is about two cis queer/bisexual women and a straight trans guy, with a kind of bisexual love triangle, character-driven storyline. Billy is an ex-teen girl singer-songwriter who used to be famous in the hey-days of Lilith Fair—a has-been at the ripe old age of 25 dealing with anxiety and a lack of direction in life. Josh is the sweetest of the three characters and the most grown-up: he’s got a ‘real’ job as a paramedic. Amy is a sometimes self-righteous and hypocritical hipster who wants to look broke and bohemian for lots of money, and she’s a filmmaker. Also, she’s hilarious and so is Zoe Whittall. Read my full review here.

The Way of Thorn and Thunder series by Daniel Heath Justice

One of the main characters in this queer feminist Indigenous fantasy is Tarsa: a bisexual former warrior whose destiny to be a Wielder—a kind of healer/priestess/witch. Abruptly ripped from her community because of her now marked difference, she begins a journey with her aunt to learn how to be what she has now discovered she is. This journey, however, is fraught with danger, because everything is changing for the different peoples in the once-peaceful Everland: Men are threatening their sovereignty, with an eye to their natural resources. The love triangle that has been dangling on the edges of Tarsa’s story swings more towards centre focus in the third book, as she is now travelling with two love interests: Jitanti, a female Kyn warrior, and Daladir, a male Kyn diplomat. Bisexual drama! You might be interested to know that this storyline takes a polyamorous turn, which is fun and totally appropriate for the world building. Check out my review of the first, second and third books in this fantastic series.

Spelling Mississippi by Marnie Woodrow

Spelling Mississippi begins with an extraordinary event: Cleo, a Canadian in her late twenties visiting New Orleans, witnesses a striking older woman jump headfirst into Mississippi river in the middle of the night, wearing full evening dress including a tiara and high heels. Cleo, assuming the dive is a suicide, is momentarily stunned and then runs panicked from the scene. This initial encounter between Cleo, a traveller in search of meaning and belonging, and Madeline, the bisexual diving diva who it turns out is not suicidal but seeking the exhilaration of danger, is the catalyst for a moving love story. Although at first terrified to face the consequences of what she saw, Cleo becomes obsessed with the mysterious midnight swimmer once she discovers that the woman is still alive, ending up haunting the streets of New Orleans’s French quarter, a kind of detective hunting down clues about Madeline’s eccentric life and, consequently, falling in love with her. Read my full review here.

Posted in Asian, Bisexual, Black, Canadian, Caribbean, comics, Coming-of-age, Erotica, Fantasy, Farzana Doctor, Fiction, Graphic, Indigenous, list, memoir, Nalo Hopkinson, Queer, Romance, South Asian, Young Adult | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments