Feministing Reads: QLit Best Sellers

Long winters with lots of snowstorms are a perfect opportunity to cuddle up with some good books to keep you warm.

I checked in with the staff at Glad Day Bookshop, the oldest LGBT bookstore in the world, about some of their favs and top sellers over the past month. With more and more offerings on the shelves from Black, Indigenous and Folks of color, I came up with a list of some of my pics for January’s favorite and top selling selections in QLit (Queer, Trans, 2 Spirit Literature)

1. Dirty River by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarasinha

This book has been reviewed multiple times and made many a list and it’s easy to see why. ”A transformative memoir by a queer disabled woman of colour and abuse survivor. In 1996, poet Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, carrying only two backpacks, caught a Greyhound bus in America and ran away to Canada.”

1. I’ll Never Write My Memoirs the autobiography of Grace Jones

I watched Grace Jones on stage at Afropunk topless rocking an entire park of people at 67 in 2015 and when she mentioned her upcoming biography, I couldn’t wait to find out what took her down this path. From her roots in Jamaica, to a career spanning decades, the book doesn’t disappoint, it is grand from beginning to end.

1. Falling In Love with Hominids by Nalo Hopkinson

I’ve been a fan for at least a decade, Brown Girl In The Ring is one of the most important books I have read. Junior Díaz calls her one of ‘our most important writers’ and this current offering is nothing short of greatness. Falling in Love with Hominids presents more than a dozen years of Hopkinson’s new, uncollected fiction, much of which has been unavailable in print, mixing sci-fi and Afro-Caribbean folklore, her stories are vivid and varied.”

1. All Inclusive by Farzana Doctor

Named Best Author in NOW Magazine’s 2015 Best of Toronto poll, Doctor tackles sex and her own inner prude in a book about a woman who works at an all inclusive resort in Mexico, from Hamilton, Ontario who explores swinging. In her interview with the CBC she also talks the tension created in these environments by the disparities she noticed as a child visiting these resorts.

1. Indigenous Men & Masculinities edited by Robert Alexander Innes & Kim Anderson

A collection of 16 essays building on Indigenous knowledge systems and queer theory, this book is much needed. Indigenous Men and Masculinities highlights voices of Indigenous male writers, traditional knowledge keepers, ex-gang members, war veterans, fathers, youth, two-spirited people, and Indigenous men working to end violence against women. It offers a refreshing vision toward equitable societies that celebrate healthy and diverse masculinities.”

Whether you have a long commute or just looking to stock up before the next east coast blizzard, any one of these books is a great addition to your collection.