Master List Of My Book Rec Posts

Master List of My Book Rec Posts

I figured it’d be useful to gather links to all my main book rec posts into one place. I’ll try to keep updating this as I add more posts.

Newer Queer SFF Posts

Massive Queer SFF Rec Post

Trans SFF

F/F SFF

Ace Spectrum SFF

Bi and Pan SFF

Queer SFF Books by Authors of Color

Tag Yourself: Sapphics in Space

10 Queer Fantasy Short Stories (for free online)

10 Queer Science Fiction Novels

7 Fantasy Stories with Aro Leads (okay, not new but IDK where else to put it)

Old Pride Flag Posts

10 Queer SFF Books by Authors of Color

SFF Books with Lesbian Leads

SFF Books with Ace Spectrum Protagonists

Queer SFF Books by Black Authors

Queer SFF Books by Asian Authors

F/F Science Fiction and Fantasy Books

SFF Books with LGBTQIA Protagonists

SFF Books by Nonbinary and Trans Authors

SFF Books with Trans and Nonbinary Leads

SFF Books with Bisexual Protagonists

SFF Books with Trans Woman Leads

Upcoming Releases

October 2019 Queer SFF Releases

November and December 2019 Queer SFF Releases

Other Diversity in SFF Posts

Adult Science Fiction Books Not Written by Straight White Men

Adult Fantasy Books Not Written by Straight White Men

Science Fiction and Fantasy Books by Authors of Color

Disabled/Neurodivergent/Mentally Ill SFF

Other SFF Posts

Science Fiction and Fantasy Books with Low to No Romance

Original Fiction that Appeals to People Who Like Fanfiction

Answers to Asks

Poly SFF

Disabled/Neurodivergent SFF 

‘nfwmb’ by hozier except he’s a siren singing out to you beyond the crashing waves in the dead of night, drawing you in until you eventually dive underwater and dissolve into the ocean. (headphones recommended) (youtube)

Practical tip for those dealing with wildfire smoke now: you can make a very effective air filter for a reasonable amount of money using a box fan & one of those filters meant for your furnace.

Also, I've managed to pick up 2 of the box fans for very cheap/free from yard sales. Make sure you get a filter rated for wildfire smoke, I think this one cost about $20.

These make a huge difference in the indoor air quality.

Read this:

“I want to tell a story about an invisible elephant.

Once upon a time, when I was in graduate school at UCSB, the department of religious studies held a symposium on diasporic religious communities in the United States. Our working definition for religious diaspora that day was, “religious groups from elsewhere now residing as large, cohesive communities in the US.” It was a round table symposium, so any current scholar at the UC who wanted to speak could have a seat at the table. A hunch based on hundreds of years of solid evidence compelled me to show up, in my Badass Academic Indigenous Warrior Auntie finery.

There were around 15-20 scholars at the table, and the audience was maybe fifty people. There was one Black scholar at the table, and two Latinx scholars, one of whom was one of my dissertation advisors. The other was a visiting scholar from Florida, who spoke about the diasporic Santería community in Miami. But everyone else at the table were white scholars, all progressively liberal in their politics, many of whom were my friends. Since there was no pre-written agenda, I listened until everyone else had presented. I learned a tremendous amount about the Jewish diaspora in the US, and about the Yoruba/Orisha/Voudou, Tibetan Buddhist, Muslim, and Hindu communities, and even about a small enclave of Zoroastrians.

As they went on, I realized my hunch had been correct, and I listened to them ignore the elephant, invisible and silent, at that table.

So I decided to help her speak the hell up. “Hello, my name is Julie Cordero. I’m working on my PhD in Ethnobotany, Native American Religious Traditions, and history of global medical traditions. I’d like to talk about the European Catholic and Protestant Christian religious diaspora in the United States, as these are the traditions that have had by far the greatest impact on both the converted and non-converted indigenous inhabitants of this land.”

Total silence. And then several “hot damns” from students and colleagues in the audience. I looked around the table at all the confused white faces. My Latinx advisor slapped his hand on the table and said, “Right!!?? Let’s talk about that, colleagues.”

The Black scholar, who was sitting next to me, started softly laughing. As I went on, detailing the myriad denominations of this European Christian Diaspora, including the Catholic diocese in which I’d been raised and educated, and the brutal and genocidal Catholic and Protestant boarding schools that had horribly traumatized generations of First Nations children, and especially as I touched on how Christians had twisted the message of Christ to try and force people stolen from Africa to accept that their biblically-ordained role was to serve the White Race, her laughs grew more and more bitter.

The Religious Studies department chair, who’d given a brilliant talk on the interplay between Jewish and Muslim communities in Michigan, stopped me at one point, and said, “Julie, I see the point you are so eloquently making, but you’re discussing American religions, not religious diasporic communities.” I referred to the definition of diaspora we had discussed at the start of the discussion, and then said, “No, Clark. If I were here to discuss religions that were not from elsewhere, I’d be discussing the Choctaw Green Corn ceremony, the Karuk Brush Dance, the Big Head ceremonial complex in Northern California, the Lakota Sun Dance, or the Chumash and Tongva Chingichnich ritual complex.”

It got a bit heated for a few moments, as several scholars-without-a-damn-clue tried to argue that we were here to discuss CURRENT religious traditions, not ancient.

Well. I’ll let you use your imagination as to the response from the POC present, which was vigorously backed by the three young First Nations students who were present in the audience (all of whom practice their CURRENT ceremonial traditions). It got the kind of ugly that only happens with people whose self-perception is that they, as liberal scholars of world cultures with lots of POC friends and colleagues, couldn’t possibly be racist.

Our Black colleague stood and left without a word. I very nearly did. But I stayed because of my Auntie role to the Native students in the audience.

I looked around at that circle of hostile faces, and waited for one single white scholar to see how unbelievably racist was this discursive erasure of entire peoples - including my people, on whose homeland UCSB is situated.

Finally, a friend spoke up. “If we are going to adhere to the definition of diaspora outlined here, she is technically correct.”

And then my dear friend, a white scholar of Buddhism: “In Buddhist tradition, the Second Form of Ignorance is the superimposition of that which is false over that which is true. In this case, all of us white scholars are assuming that every people but white Americans are ‘other,’ and that we have no culture, when the underlying fact is that our culture is so dominant that we’ve deluded ourselves into thinking it’s the neutral state of human culture against which all others are foreign. Even the Black people our ancestors abducted and enslaved we treat as somehow more foreign than ourselves. And, most absurdly, the peoples who are indigenous to this land are told that we belong here more than they do.”

People stared at their hands and doodled. The audience was dead quiet.

And you know what happened then? The elephant was no longer invisible, and my colleagues and I were able to have a conversation based on the truths about colonialism and diaspora. We were THEN able to name and discuss the distinctions between colonial settlements and immigrant settlements, and how colonial religious projects have sought to overtake, control, and own land, people, and resources, while immigrant and especially refugee diasporic communities simply seek a home free from persecution.

As we continue this national discussion, it is absolutely key to never, ever let that elephant be invisible or silent. You are on Native Land. Black descendants of human beings abducted from their African homelands are not immigrants. European cultures are just human cultures, among many. And the assignation of moral, cultural, racial superiority of European world views over all non-Euro human cultures is a profound delusion, one that continues to threaten and exterminate all people who oppose it, and even nature itself.

I hope that this story has comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable.”

- Julie Cordero-Lamb, herbalist & ethnobotanist from the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation

A few resources to help, learn, and promote:

TO HELP AND DONATE:

Black Lives Matter carrd with info, petitions, donation sites they recommend, and readings they suggest

President Obama’s List of orgs to help, things to read, and ways to get engaged

Black-led LGBTQ+ Organizations posted by Alexis Michelle

TO LEARN AND UNLEARN:

5 Ways to Take Action for all non-black people by The Conscious Kid

10-Steps to Non-Optical Allyship by Mireille Cassandra Harper 

How to Be Actively Anti-Racist by Good Good Good Co

Victoria Alexander’s recommendations on Anti-Racist Literature

TO SUPPORT AND PROMOTE:

Abelle Hayford’s #drawingwhileblack Directory of Black Creatives to hire

Author Oge Mora’s List of Children’s Books by Black Authors - also check out Oge Mora’s beautiful books!

A Twitter Thread from Melissa See on Black YA novels

Karina Yan Glasser’s 100 Must-Read Children’s Books by African-American Authors

10 Black-Owned Online Bookstores to buy all these lovely books from!

Bookshop.org’s List of Independent Black-Owned Bookstores