The shortlist of titles considered for the Over the Rainbow final bibliography for books published in 2021 are the following:
Fiction and Poetry
And Then The Gray Heaven. R.E. Katz. Dzanc Books, 2021. B, expert museum diorama designer & artist, has had a freak accident at home and ends up in the hospital. Because Jules, their partner, is not any legally recognized form of “family”, they are not allowed in to see B. When B passes away, Jules is permitted to attend the funeral and the family is convinced to give Jules ⅔ of B’s ashes. But what to do with them? What follows is a quietly humorous look back at B’s and Jules’ lives before they met, interspersed with Jules’ journey to bury B…in all the museum exhibits they ever helped curate.
Black Girl, Call Home. Jasmine Mans. Berkley, (Penguin Random House), 2021. Jasmine Mans’ poetry is specific to a Black girl’s experience. From the different ways they do their hair to their complicated feelings about their parents. It is also an homage to Black mothers, to the way they imparted knowledge and wisdom through their actions, their worries, their triumphs, and their mistakes. Mixed in with movements on pop culture, women’s history, and writings about the gentle awe of falling in love with a woman, the poems of this collection are powerful, moving, and timely.
Detransition Baby: A Novel. Torrey Peters. One World (Penguin Randomhouse), 2021. Peters’ debut novel explores womanhood and relationships as it follows Reese, a trans woman longing to become a mother, who is approached by her de-transitioned ex to raise a child with his pregnant, cisgender boss and lover.
Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse. Melissa Lozada-Oliva. Astra House. 2021. Lozada-Oliva has written something which defies explanation and will prompt many a conversation. The narrator, Melissa, manages to resurrect Selena Quintanilla, and then has to live with her. Part dream, part surrealist nightmare, part existential dread, entirely beautiful, this novel will make you ask yourself the questions you’ve been avoiding about authenticity, celebrity, obsession, and loss.
A Master of Djinn. P. Djèlí Clark. Tordotcom, 2021. Egypt in 1912 is a world power, but it has some help from djinn, and all manner of fantastical creatures. Fatma el-Sha’arawi, a government agent who investigates mystical goings on (and saved the universe), is called to solve the murder of an entire secret society dedicated to a famous, and famously absent, mystic Al-Jahiz, who may or may not have returned. Clues abound, including references to the great djinn powers still locked away. Fatma must find the person claiming to be Al-Jahiz before they release the most powerful djinn in the universe. This steampunk alternate historical mystery is a wild ride.
Milk Fed. Melissa Broder. Scribner, 2021. Broder explores different types of hunger in this novel about Rachel, a 24-year old woman with a highly restricted diet, a fascination with the Orthodox Jewish woman running her frozen yogurt shop, and a therapist who encourages her to examine her relationships with others and with herself.
One Last Stop. Casey McQuiston. St. Martin’s Griffin, 2021. August’s move to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist. A few weird roommates and a job at a 24 hour pancake house shouldn’t change that. But then she sees Jane on the subway everyday. Dazzling, charming, mysterious…her subway crush. Except Jane doesn’t just look like a 1970s punk rocker – she’s actually displaced in time from the 1970s and August will need to use every skill she has to help her.
Patience & Esther: An Edwardian Romance. SW Searles. Iron Circus Comics, 2021. A steamily romantic graphic novel about the love between Patience, a Scottish parlor maid, and Esther, an Indian-born ladies’ maid. Searles’ art portrays lovingly drawn characters of different body types and sizes, and highlights themes of class, race, and orientation in a realistic, yet hopeful, way.
Persephone Station. Stina Leicht. Gallery/Saga Press. 2021. Angel, an ex-soldier turned merc, just wants to get paid and fly under the radar. She and her crew, a motley assortment of skills and personalities, take on assignments for which no one else has the guts. Under the surface, though, a timeless battle of wills rages for control of space itself. Stina Leicht has crafted an entertaining mercenary space opera that is as grand as it is expansive that puts women and nonbinary queer folk at the forefront.
Sorrowland. Rivers Solomon. Farrar, Strauss & Giroux. A novel about a mother trying hard to survive in a land of fiends. The novel shifts backwards and forwards through time, encompassing the lives of Vern, Howling, and Feral, and the people that circulate around them. Solomon belongs in the tradition of Toni Morrison and Jesmyn Ward.
Stone Fruit. Lee Lai. Fantagraphics, 2021. An emotionally honest graphic novel about three women navigating complex familial and romantic relationships while caring for a six-year-old girl. Lee Lai’s beautiful illustrations evoke the wildness of the liminal spaces where love, duty, and identity intersect.
Under the Whispering Door. T.J. Klune. Tor Books, 2021. Wallace Price is not ready to be dead, and is certainly not ready to move on to whatever mysterious “hereafter” he can expect. Hugo, a ferryman who guides souls to the afterlife, tells Wallace he can stay with him at his tea shop, Charon’s Crossing, until Wallace is ready to go. But as Wallace begins to realize all the beauty, compassion, and love he missed in his life, how will he prepare himself for death?
With Teeth. Kristen Arnett. Riverhead Books, 2021. Kristen Arnett’s dark irreverence and visceral storytelling bring to light the unspoken difficulties of queer relationships, motherhood, self-hood, and the limits of each. It will leave you deeply uncomfortable, as it deals with truths easily ignored and rarely dwelt in, with a main character who will frustrate you to no end, but you will recognize in an instant.
Nonfiction
Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness. Da’Shaun Harrison. North Atlantic Books, 2021. This title is in conversation with Sonya Renee Taylor’s The Body is Not An Apology, but instead looks through a wider lens explaining how anti-fatness is also anti-blackness, using modern examples and drawing from others’ work. An excellent read for understanding anti-fatness as anti-blackness and for beginning to imagine what a more just and loving world could look like.
Black Boy Out of Time. Hari Ziyad. Little a, 2021. Hari Ziyad was raised by their Hare Krishna mother and Muslim father in a blended family, growing up in Cleveland with eighteen siblings. Ziyad, who is the editor in chief of RaceBaitr, writes with tender rage about what it means to live beyond imposed narratives of race and gender.
The Breaks: An Essay. Julietta Singh. Coffee House Press and Daunt Books Originals,, 2021. A “messay” (the newly coined Memoir/Essay) disguised as a letter to the author’s daughter that challenges what a queer family can look like without every defining what it must be. Addressing climate change, race, colonialism, identity, and inheritance, Singh asks us how we can choose to move forward through each of these challenging realities, and offers some guidance on how to do so.
Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir. Akwaeke Emezi. Riverhead Books, 2021. In a series of letters addressed to the people in their life, Akwaeke reflects on the various journeys they’ve taken: embracing their identity, navigating the world of publishing, encountering heartbreak, and arriving at a spiritual truth, among other difficult and beautiful experiences. It joins, and shines within, a recent spate of publishing non-traditional and genre-defying narratives centering historically oppressed voices.
Everybody (Else) Is Perfect: How I survived Hypocrisy, Beauty, Clicks, and Likes. Gabrielle Korn. Atria Books, 2021. A collection of essays touching on the author’s own experience with feminism, sexuality, beauty standards, self-esteem, and other women-centered issues, as the editor-in-chief of Nylon. Though narrow in scope and perspective, many of the points in these essays will resonate with women in similar positions.
A History of Scars. Laura Lee. Atria Books, 2021. This collection of essays delves into the mind of someone who has schizophrenia. The book names and opens discussions around family history, trauma, and healing. Highly lauded by the likes of Roxane Gay, this belongs on the same shelf as other contemporary illness non-fiction narratives.
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. Mannie Murphy. Fantagraphic Books, 2021. In this work of graphic nonfiction that takes the form of an illustrated diary, a nostalgic reminiscence about River Phoenix becomes the thread that Murphy follows deep into the heart of Portland, Oregon’s history of white supremacy. Murphy traces the connections between White Aryan Resistance founder Tom Metzger, filmmaker Gus Van Sant, and the street kids like Ken Death who appeared in Van Sant’s films.
Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing. Lauren Hough. Vintage, 2021. A collection of contemporary essays telling about the author’s childhood growing up in a cult; young adulthood in the military; and adulthood working as a bartender and “cable guy” in and around Washington DC as a butch lesbian. Hough’s work will have you both laughing and near tears from her experiences. At times a peer to Tara Westover’s Educated.
Like a Boy But Not a Boy: Navigating Life, Mental Health, and Parenthood Outside the Gender Binary. Andrea Bennett. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020. In a series of essays, Bennett explores the experiences of being a non-binary parent, growing up queer in a small town, and balancing creative work with the necessities of survival. Interspersed throughout is “Everyone is Sober and No One Can Drive,” sixteen biographical sketches based on interviews with other queer Millennials who grew up in small towns in Canada.
The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood. Krys Malcolm Belc. Counterpoint LLC, 2021. As a nonbinary, transmasculine parent, giving birth to his son Samson clarified Krys Belc’s gender identity. And yet, when his partner, Anna, adopted Samson, the legal documents listed Belc as “the natural mother of the child.” In interlocking essays, illustrated with legal documents and other official paperback, Belc examines his experiences and his ambivalent relationship with tidy “before” and “after” transition stories.
The Queens’ English: The LGBTQIA+ Dictionary of Lingo and Colloquial Phrases. Chloe O. Davis. Clarkson Potter Publishers, 2021. Do you know what a “bear” is? When did “sickening” start to mean “something amazing”? This comprehensive dictionary provides an in-depth look at queer language, from Sappho to “Ru Paul’s Drag Race.” Full color illustrations and photographs throughout, as well as profiles of the people and events that shaped LGBTQIA+ history and culture.
Sapphic Crossings: Cross-Dressing Women in Eighteenth-Century British Literature. Ula Lukszo Klein. University of Virginia Press, 2021. Details cross-dressing women in various genres, prompting readers to rethink the roots lesbian and transgender identities. Advances the field of gender and sexuality. Well-documented.
Three Dads and a Baby: Adventures in Modern Parenting. Ian Jenkins. Cleis Press, 2021. The story of a polyamorous throuple (three boyfriends) and their efforts to conceive a baby. A heartfelt adventure. Well-documented with sources.
