Mulan meets The Song of Achilles in Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became the Sun, a bold, queer, and lyrical reimagining of the rise of the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty from an amazing new voice in literary fantasy.
To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything
“I refuse to be nothing…”
In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…
In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.
When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother’s identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.
After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother’s abandoned greatness.
Representation Includes
- Genderfluid lesbian protagonist (Zhu Chongba) who is Chinese and also
spoiler
becomes an amputee (missing hand) partway through the book. - The other main character/protagonist is Ouyang, who is both gay and a eunuch.
- Ma, a major POV character and Zhu Chongba’s love interest, expresses attraction towards multiple genders
Content Warnings
Gender dysphoria, mentions of sexual assault, mentions of slavery (Ouyang’s backstory involves slavery, war themes, murder, death, violence, child murder (off-page), starvation, death of parents, death of sibling, misogyny and patriarchy, misgendering, internalized homophobia, ableism, amputation, non-consensual castration, brief mention of cannibalisms, hurt to an animal, death of an animal, mention of vomiting, plague, mass illness, quarantining, off-page torture, bombs, death by fire, death of queer character’s love interestReviews
- Utopia State of Mind’s Review
- May’s review
- Liz Bourke’s review (Tor)
- Liz Bourke and Alex Brown’s review (Locus)
- Lee Mandelo’s review
Where to Find
- Amazon
- IndieBound
- WorldCat
Hadriana in All My Dreams, winner of the prestigious Prix Renaudot, takes place primarily during Carnival in 1938 in the Haitian village of Jacmel. A beautiful young French woman, Hadriana, is about to marry a Haitian boy from a prominent family. But on the morning of the wedding, Hadriana drinks a mysterious potion and collapses at the altar. Transformed into a zombie, her wedding becomes her funeral. She is buried by the town, revived by an evil sorcerer, and then disappears into popular legend.
Set against a backdrop of magic and eroticism, and recounted with delirious humor, the novel raises universal questions about race and sexuality. The reader comes away enchanted by the marvelous reality of Haiti’s Vodou culture and convinced of Depestre’s lusty claim that all beings–even the undead ones–have a right to happiness and true love.
From the introduction by Edwidge Danticat:
Despestre offers us the kind of tale we rarely get in the hundreds of zombie stories featuring Haitians, stories set both inside and outside of Haiti. In Hadriana in All My Dreams we get both langaj–the secret language of Haitian Vodou–as well as the type of descriptive, elegiac, erotic, and satirical language, and the artistic license needed to create this most nuanced and powerful novel.
Representation Includes
- Female central character who expresses attraction regardless of gender, and has sexual experiences with women and men
Content Warnings
Very sexual, with frequent and in-depth depictions of sex and rape; Sexual assault and sexual violence; death of queer characterAwards
- Winner of the Prix Renaudot
Reviews
Where to Find
Details
- Originally published in French in 1988
- Original title: Hadriana dans tous mes rêves
- Translated into English in 2017 by Kaima L. Glover
- ISBN13: 9781617755552
In a space-faring civilization where a single woman is increasingly disenfranchised, the star pilot Silence Leigh is defrauded from her inheritance by a greedy competitor. Forced to ally with two men, Silence is dragged into a deadly political struggle, and is tantalized by the hints of the legendary Earth, as well as the dread and the glory of Magi’s power. Her dreams of having her own ship and of escape from the Hegemony’s oppressions take on new direction and focus when she joins the crew of “The Sun-Treader”
Representation Includes
- Polyamorous F/M/M triad marriage
- Reads as a demisexual narrative; see more in Bogi Takács’s review
Content Warnings
Pervasive misogyny as part of the laws and cultureReviews
Where to Find
Details
- Published April 1st 1985 by Baen
- Paperback ISBN13: 9780671559526
- Out of print
Haunted pasts, haunted houses, trans bodies haunted now and in the future by the controlling reach of society—the fiction of Gillian Ybabez breaks with reality and takes us into high-tech futures and fantasy worlds, brings us in touch with extraterrestrials, but it is always grounded by a profound emotional core.
Each strange tale evokes a series of questions which tear open our hearts. In the title story “Homeward Bound,” for instance, it might be: what if we can’t find home again, what if we remembered it wrong all along and that home never existed, what are we without a past to build the remainder of our lives upon, what remains possible now? While the final story, “Forget Me,” hints at perhaps not a resolution but a return: that even without a past, setting aside all that we’ve done and all that’s been done to us, that it is possible to start again.
The worlds Ybabez describes, like our own, are largely worlds that cry out to be utterly torn apart: heavily industrialized, based on exploitation, profoundly violent and alienating. But it’s heartening to see Ybabez point out the cracks in the walls holding up these worlds just as in ours. In the presence of these caring ghosts, hidden trees, and lesbians that gloriously live and live again we find the empathy and love that might save us all.
Representation Includes
- Flash fiction collection; has stories about trans women and lesbians
Content Warnings
Transmisogynistic comments (called out and apologized for) in “Body Renewal”; Danger to children in “Ghostly Defense”; Medical procedure, car crash and death of loved one in “What’s the Last Thing You Remember?”Reviews
Where to Find
Details
- Published May 18, 2018 by the Trans Women Writers Collective (now River Furnace)
- Trans Women Writers Collective booklet series #1
Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World That Wouldn’t Die is an anthology of post-apocalyptic fiction centering queer joy and community in the face of disaster. What does hope look like when everything is lost? Now, more than ever, we need to revel in the bright spots amidst the darkness.
The twenty-three stories (and two poems) contained here, as well as the roleplaying game Dream Askew by Avery Alder, imagine queer community in myriad futures interrupted by collapse. Post-apocalyptic futures glittering and bleak, challenging and eerie.
Glitter + Ashes is here to hold up a torch. Come gather round the fire.
Representation Includes
- 23 short stories, two poems, and a TTRPG
- Various queer identities, including but not limited to:
- Drag queens
- Jewish lesbians
- Queer Native American women
- Multiple trans protagonists and trans writers
Content Warnings
Help grow this entry by commenting below or emailing queersffbooks@theillustratedpage.net.Reviews
Where to Find
Details
- Published September 2020 by Neon Hemlock Press
- Paperback ISBN13: 9781952086106
Seersana University is worlds-renowned for its xenopsychology program, producing the Alliance’s finest therapists, psychiatric nurses and alien researchers. When Jahir, one of the rare and reclusive Eldritch espers, arrives on campus, he’s unprepared for the challenges of a vast and multicultural society… but fortunately, second-year student Vasiht’h is willing to take him under his wing. Will the two win past their troubles and doubts and see the potential for a once-in-a-lifetime partnership?
Representation Includes
- Two male alien/genetically-engineered characters with a very close queerplatonic-like relationship
- Jahir is, according to the author, bisexual
Content Warnings
Death of children; portrayal of asexuality experience that relies on tropes about lack of hormonesReviews
Where to Find
Details
- Publication Date: July 2, 2013
Fifteen-year-old Jack Bishop has mad skills with cars and engines, but knows he’ll never get a driver’s license because of his epilepsy. Agreeing to participate in an experimental clinical trial to find new treatments for his disease, he finds himself in a completely different body—that of a girl his age, Jacqueline, who defies the expectations of her era. Since his seizures usually give him spazzed out visions, Jack presumes this is a hallucination. Feeling fearless, he steals a horse, expecting that at any moment he’ll wake back up in the clinical trial lab. When that doesn’t happen, Jacqueline falls unexpectedly in love, even as the town in the past becomes swallowed in a fight for its survival. Jack/Jacqueline is caught between two lives and epochs, and must find a way to save everyone around him as well as himself. And all the while, he is losing time, even if he is getting out of algebra class.
Representation Includes
- Protagonist with epilepsy who is AMAB and switches between bodies, exploring gender feelings and presentations (genderfluid-ish)
Content Warnings
Medical procedures; fireReviews
- Cooper Lee Bombardier’s review (and interview with the author)
- C. K. Combs’s review
- Meredith Katz’s review
- Bhavya’s review
Where to Find
Details
- Published July 22nd 2016 by Lethe Press
- Paperback ISBN13: 9781590216613
Derek is LitenVärld’s most loyal employee. He lives and breathes the job, from the moment he wakes up in a converted shipping container at the edge of the parking lot to the second he clocks out of work 18 hours later. But after taking his first ever sick day, his manager calls that loyalty into question. An excellent employee like Derek, an employee made to work at LitenVärld, shouldn’t need time off.
To test his commitment to the job, Derek is assigned to a special inventory shift, hunting through the store to find defective products. Toy chests with pincers and eye stalks, ambulatory sleeper sofas, killer mutant toilets, that kind of thing. Helping him is the inventory team — four strangers who look and sound almost exactly like him. Are five Dereks better than one?
Representation Includes
- Protagonist is one of five clones who make up the main cast; three of the clones are male, one is female, and one is non-binary/genderfluid
- Hints of M/NB romance
- Protagonist is strongly coded as autistic
Content Warnings
Gun violence; animal death; abusive workplace; detailed depiction of illness, including coughing up blood; minor body horror; some ableist and transphobic comments (pushed back against); hints of romance between two clonesReviews
Where to Find
Details
- Published April 20th 2021 by Tordotcom
- ISBN13: 9781250787491
Lethe Press is excited to be releasing the debut short story collection by Bogi Takács. Takács may be known more for their recent editorial efforts, winning a Lambda Literary Award for Transcendent 2: The Year’s Best Transgender Themed Speculative Fiction. But Takács is a talented storyteller and poet. An uplifted octopus finds a strange capsule in the water and wonders if one of the long-vanished humans might be found inside; a team of scientists perform some reverse-engineering on a space station and shapeshifting becomes political; and other tales of AI, hybrids, and the far future.Representation Includes
- Queer, Jewish protagonists
- Many non-binary protagonists in particular
Content Warnings
Content warnings for each story are listed at the back of the book.Awards
- Nominated for the Lambda Literary Award (Transgender Fiction)
Reviews
Where to Find
Details
- Published October 7th 2019 by Lethe Press
A computer program etched into the atmosphere has a story to tell, the story of two people, of a city lost to chaos, of survival and love. The program’s data, however, has been corrupted. As the novel’s characters struggle to survive apocalypse, they are sustained and challenged by the demands of love in a shattered world both haunted and dangerous.
Representation Includes
- Main couple who go through various iterations of selves; who are sometimes men and sometimes women, sometimes gay, straight, or bi; sometimes romantically involved, sometimes familially related
Content Warnings
Misgendering; self-sacrificial death of a trans character for cis character; suicide; wasting illness; murder; loss of a loved one; domestic violenceAwards
- Nominated for the Locus Award for Best First Novel
- Nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award
- Otherwise Award honor list
Reviews
Where to Find
Details
- Published December 1st 2014 by Aqueduct Press
- Paperback ISBN13: 9781619760530