Charlie's Picks
A wonderful political awakening novel from a communist Italo-Cuban writer that will delight fans of Elena Ferrante, Elsa Morante, and Annie Ernaux, among others. This is a fascinating account of a young woman's attempt to evade the fate of women under patriarchy and free herself from tradition to blaze forward a path of her own design. I am so happy this 1949 novel will be reaching new eyes and ears around the world.
Emily Zhou's Girlfriends is an exceptional debut story collection that marks the arrival of both a tremendous writer and an equally exciting publishing press in LittlePuss. Her stories of trans girls' relationships (to each other, to cis queers, to men) are tender, realized portraits of young womanhood. The lesbian apartment drama in one of the stories was hilarious and all too real. There's a lovable vapid nature to some of the dialogue in these stories; Zhou's social critique runs along and right beneath the text of these stories and ultimately reveal profound compassion and respect for young trans writers and artists like herself, and for that matter, all young people attempting to establish their identity beyond their hometown, families, or checkered pasts. I read this book in a day!
Sharp, devastating, and life-affirming; this novel, reminiscent of Nabokov in the best way, asks, and ultimately answers, if love is all you need. This book will shock you.
This is the first memoir from a trans Italian person to be translated into English. I have long been looking forward to this publication, and it is nothing short of spectacular. Marcasciano brings to life a vivid portrait of radical queer spaces in Italy in the 1970s-80s and beyond. Her experimental vocabulary and syntax, rendered into English masterfully by Francesco Pascuzzi and Sandra Waters, highlights the intransient space left between language and reality that trans folks so frequently inhabit. She puts the margins at the center, and I am so grateful for her work.
I have never been so moved by a memoir; Sinclair has penned an instant classic that I'm sure will be read for generations. This is a story about the lifesaving power of literature; about poetry's capacity to render the future visible and possible—to make real one's deepest desires and dreams. Safiya was raised in a very strict Rastafari household where she and her younger siblings and her mother were subject to physical and near constant verbal abuse from their troubled father. This book tracks Safiya's early childhood through her eventual escape from Jamaica. She was destined to be a poet; I'm sure this book will encourage legions of future writers for whom writing will save, too.
Gabriela Wiener's autofictional novel, UNDISCOVERED, is an exploration of inheritance, colonialism, queerness, and migration (both by choice and by force). Taking herself as the protagonist, Wiener's character/self-stand-in is attempting to track down further details of her great-great-great grandfather, Charles Wiener, who published a major ethnographical account of Peru and Bolivia in late nineteenth century France. Gabriela Wiener is a mixed woman of color deeply concerned by the racism of her country and family's near and distant past. But where this book shines brightest is in its exploration of polyamory, queerness, and desire; Wiener writes of her triad relationship with intimate lucidity and unflinching self-criticism. She is a reliable narrator because she holds nothing back. A brilliant translation by Julia Sanches. Excited to see this in print!
Do you hear those squeals of delight? This little piggy is ecstatic! sam sax is back with a brilliant collection that playfully and expertly renders the pig and its symbols in politics alive on the page.
This novel tore my heart up—in the very best way. Our narrator is a semi-recently-out trans woman in her forties, she is an ex-wife, a mother separated from her son, and largely between stable work (a former writer, whose metafictions pepper the text). Friendships real and invented provide a mirror of reflection in which our narrator turns the mundane into profound. This is a portrait of a woman who has so much love in her heart as she slowly learns to afford herself some of that love.
Phoebe, an Irish trans woman studying for her PhD in Copenhagen suddenly finds herself feeling uncomfortably close to her pre-transition early adulthood, when her ex-girlfriend, Grace, shows up at her door after 6 years of no contact. Over the course of one weekend, the two women attempt to make sense of their relationship, past and present, as they navigate their traumas and confront the most transient of topics: the self. Emmanuel's prose is shrewd, funny, coy; her genius is glittered throughout this novel. When I finished this novel, the first thing I wanted to do was start it over again.
I don't read much horror, but this genre-bending saga blew me away. Full of magnificent prose (expertly translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell), profound political analysis, and an unraveling tapestry of a plot, I cannot wait for Enriquez's other novels to be translated, too. She is an rightfully eminent voice in Argentinian literature, one with the tradition of Borges, Aira, Ocampo, Cortazar, but something uniquely her own.
A riveting debut story collection from an author I am so excited to read more from. These stories are at turns both horrifying and hilarious; each story illuminates the complex identity of Hawai'i's mixed-Japanese Kanaka Maoli population. Kakimoto crafts her stories seamlessly, no story felt too short or too long (though I could definitely read hundreds of pages of the story "Madwomen") and her characters are realized and resonant throughout.
Sisters Gloria and Kit are grieving, and by that I mean they are road-tripping through New Mexico selling jars (or trading them for fuel) with labels such as OPALESCENT CLOUDBIRST, MEMORY OF A FOREST UPROOTED, and BREATH OF MEMORY on the side of the highway out of the trunk of the Honda of their recently deceased mother (always referred to by her first name, Bonnie). These girls have an ability to capture and to listen for experiences, voices, spirits, and other ephemeral items of various levels of (non-)existence. The people they meet on their journeys treat the girls and their offerings with respect and dignity that I fear wouldn't exist in the real world. But into this fictional space Colleen Burner breathes life and credibility; their prose is vivid and impossible to pin down. A really great summer read.
This book is hot!! Patrick's prose is the closest I've ever read to a 21st-Cent. Virginia Woolf. A queer modernism for our times; the unnamed narrator of this novel is bold yet highly self-conscious. She is drawn to Mrs. S, as everyone at the boarding school our narrator recently became the matron of seems to be. But Mrs. S has her eyes on our narrator. The romance of this book is so tactile, so juicy. Relentlessly sexy--the perfect queer summer romance read.
Your new favorite queer-mountain-lion-novel is coming this June from MCD books. Narrated by a queer mountain lion in present-day "ellay" (Los Angeles)—Henry Hoke's genre bending novel is a quick read of profound depth. Hoke weaves the topics of ecosystem destruction and climate collapse, implicitly classist and racist policing, and our country's despicable treatment of unhoused individuals into this tale seamlessly. Equal parts bildungsroman, thriller, and camp (feline cruising, playful spelling, and much more), Open Throat is a fable for our times that cements Henry Hoke as an essential voice in experimental and deliciously queer fiction. By the end, you will be roaring, too.
In the words of Lana Del Rey: "This is my comittment... my modern manifesto" I really really loved this book; down to the sentence level I felt well fed as a reader. Giovannitti writes with profound depth—her work is one crafted only after the dozens of texts she writes about so elegantly, cites at length and with nuanced appreciation. I felt the lineage was present and coherent throughout. I learned a lot which is what I prize most in my nonfiction, second only to writing style. This book excels and abounds in all above and beyond.
A stunning, brutal, and relentlessly visceral read that scrutinizes the violence (state, interpersonal, sexual) between individuals and inflicted by the police, gangs, and anyone who may take advantage of young women (i.e., all men). Set in the author's native Haiti, A Sun to Be Sewn has a universality to it like a fable. Hard to read at times, this novel requires a lot of energy. But D’Amérique’s prose, and Kehou’s translation, are well worth it.
Geeta did not kill her husband, but often wishes she had. Inspired by the life of Phoolan Devi, Geeta and the women in small town in India band together to free themselves from their abusive husbands. This is a sharp, hilarious, fast-paced stunner of a debut.
Stevens stuns in her debut novel that stars a hundreds-year-old ghost with an obsessive desire for the mystifying and androgenous visitor of the remote Mallorcan monastery she haunts: THE George Sand. Reality defying chaos ensues, as does profound lesbian longing.
An epic feminist bildungsroman from Iceland's only Nobel Laureate in Literature; this novel is a warm exploration of independence, class struggle, and girls who want to wear pants! (Or otherwise do not conform to a sexist society's rigid expectations). Please, please, PLEASE read this novel. You can thank me after!
This debut novel is unlike anything I've ever read -- maze-like, spellbounding, and literally crawling with compassion for the natural world. A powerful literary voice from Kenya, I can't wait for what Oduor does next!
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Li's stunning memoir about adopting a new written language, literature seeing her through impossibly dark times, and illuminating the power of the written word stands toe to toe with the best of her fiction. Have your tissues nearby.
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Leave it to Toews to make you laugh so heartily while reading a novel about suicide. Heartwarming and bold, overflowing with compassion for those affected in any way by suicide.
