Queer Harder: 12 Favorites From Past Challenges

This YA dystopia is set in a grim future in which everyone except for Indigenous people has lost the ability to dream. Because lack of dreaming leads to sickness, white people have begun capturing Indigenous people to mine their bone marrow. Frenchie is a teenager who narrowly escapes a recruiter, and begins traveling with a group of other Native teens and adults who become his family. It’s a harrowing story that deals with the legacies of residential schools, but it’s also full of moments of joy, and the power of story and chosen family.

Task: Read a genre book by an Indigenous, First Nations, or Native American author.

In this lyrical and vivid debut, two Chinese American siblings travel across the post–Gold Rush American west on a quiet to bury their recently deceased father. It’s a richly layered story that deals with colonialism, immigration and xenophobia, land theft, queerness, siblinghood, and a whole lot more.

Task: Read a historical fiction with a person of color or LGBTQ+ protagonist.

This beautiful family saga centers a mother and son, exploring how secrets and silences have shaped their relationship, and their family’s life. A year after her husband’s death, Renu is ready to sell the family home and move back to London. Her son Akash is a gay man struggling to get his life together: his music career is going nowhere and his drinking is out of control. When he returns to the Chicago suburb where he grew up to help Renu pack up the house, they begin to untangle the threads of loss, hurt, resentment, and shame that exists between them.

Task: Read a book set in the Midwest.

In this memoir, George M. Johnson writes with so much honestly and warmth about their life. They touch on childhood, family, college experiences, sexual and romantic relationships, gender, self-discovery, and a lot more. It deals with racism and homophobia, but it’s also a celebration of Blackness and queerness, a loud and beautiful declaration of self.

Task: Read a YA nonfiction book.

Tommy Pico is a real treat to listen to on audio. IRL is one long poem, a dizzying mess of words, and Pico’s brilliant narration brings it to life. He writes about the internet, New York, Indigenous identity, dating, desire, colonialism, language. It’s full of movement, funny and tender and harsh, full of surprising ideas and lines that cut right to the heart of a thing.

Task: Read an audiobook of poetry.

This quiet and meditative novel follows Mei, a Chinese Canadian trans woman whose beloved cousin has just died. He leaves his house to her, so she leaves her life in the city and moves in. She spends a year grieving and remembering, reconnecting with her past and learning stories about her family’s history she never knew. It’s about queer and trans lineage, immigration, friendship, small towns, the cost of silence, generational memory.

Task: Read a debut novel by a queer author.

Amrou Al-Kadhi was born and Bahrain and grew up in an Iraqi Muslim household in Bahrain and the UK. In this hilarious and heartwarming book, they share their journey toward themself: their early sense of not fitting in anywhere, their attempts to assimilate into white British culture, their discovery of drag, and how queer and drag community helped them rediscover and reclaim their Muslim identity on their own terms.

Task: Read a memoir by someone from a religious tradition (or lack of religious tradition) that is not your own.

This sprawling epic of a novel is a true doorstopper! It follows a group of queer filmmakers, mostly women, involved in a movie about a 20th century girls boarding school with a cursed history. The narrative jumps around in time, following several interconnecting plots. It’s creepy and weird, full of wonderfully flawed characters, and very, very gay.

Task: Read a doorstopper (over 500 pages) published after 1950, written by a woman.

This is one of those under-the-radar historical queer romances I want to shove into everyone’s hands! It’s a beautiful polyamorous love story set in 1906 London. Lucien is a working-class journalist who doesn’t usually have the time of day for people like Aubrey, son of an earl. Aubrey is already in a committed relationship with his best friends, a married couple. He’s not looking for another relationship. Until he stumbles into one. Communication, processing, radial politics, tenderness, many kinds of love and intimacy, fiery supporting characters with agency — this book has everything.

Task: Read a historical romance by an author of color.

I never would have picked up this 1943 novel if not for Read Harder, and I’m so glad I did. Genet write (and then rewrote) the book while incarcerated in a French jail. It’s a strange, dreamlike collection of linked stories about a group of queer and trans characters, mostly sex workers, as they fall in and out of love, fight with each other, change their lives, don’t change their lives, seek out pleasure, and deal with the harsh realties of the world they live in.

Task: Read a book written in prison.

I’ll never stop shouting about this book: it’s both a perfect retelling and a perfect romance. Austin Chant reimagines Peter Pan as a trans man perceived by his family as Wendy Darling. As a child, Neverland was the one place where he could be himself. When he returns there as an adult, desperate to get away from his transphobic family, he finds it changed in ways he never imagined. He ignites his old battle with Hook, which slowly turns into a tender, complicated, and moving love affair.

Task: Read a book that is a retelling of a classic story (fairytale, Shakespearian play, classic novel, etc.)

Maria is a trans woman living in New York City. She’s smart and snarky and very observation; her narrative voice is brilliant. After a falling out with her girlfriend, she ditches her overwhelming, falling-apart life and takes off on a cross-country road trip that turns into a different kind of journey.

Task: Read a book by a person whose gender is different from your own.