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Rainbow Reads January 2021
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Shuggie Bain : a novel
by Douglas Stuart
A young boy growing up in a rundown 1980s Glasgow public housing facility pursues some semblance of a normal life as his older siblings move on and his mother increasingly succumbs to alcoholism. A first novel.
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The death of Vivek Oji
by Akwaeke Emezi
In the wake of a southeastern Nigerian mother's discovery of her son's body on her doorstep, a family struggles to understand the enigmatic nature of a youth shaped by disorienting blackouts, diverse friendships and a cousin's worldly influence.
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Something that may shock and discredit you
by Daniel Mallory Ortberg
The writer of Slate’s “Dear Prudence” column presents an irreverent collection of essays and observations on all things pop culture, from a sinister reimagining of HGTV’s House Hunters to the beauty of William Shatner. 50,000 first printing.
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Boys of Alabama
by Genevieve Hudson
Thriving in his new Alabama home, a sensitive German teen pursues a relationship with a pangender classmate before the realities of the postwar South challenge their perspectives on identity. A first novel by the author of Pretend We Live Here.
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Bestiary : a novel
by Kristin Chang
Transforming into a manifestation of a tiger character from her Taiwanese heritage, Daughter falls in love with an equally remarkable girl while translating mysterious letters from female relatives who embody mythical archetypes. A first novel.
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Gay like me : a father writes to his son
by Richie Jackson
"When Richie Jackson's son born through surrogacy comes out to him at the age of 18, Richie - now in his 50s, a successful producer and happily married - feels compelled to write him a letter. Gay Like Me is both a celebration of gay identity and a sorrowful warning. Jackson talks of his own progress and growth as a gay man coming of age through decades of political and cultural change. We've come a long way, he argues: discrimination is now outlawed in most states, gay men and women can marry, and thereare drugs available to protect against AIDS. His son is going to be living in a newly liberated America. However, he also argues that nothing can be taken for granted. Bigotry and hatred still exist, nurtured by a President who draws votes and support bystirring up fear of The Other, and excluding minorities and anyone who can be labelled 'an outsider'. A newly constituted Supreme Court could revoke laws and turn the clock back. The gay identity can be worn with pride, but gay citizens needs always to be aware that their gains are fragile. Like Between the World and Me, this is a response to our times, and will strike a powerful chord with anyone who cares about human rights and the importance of tolerance and social progress. Angry, proud, moved, tender, this is also a powerful letter of love from a father to a son, relevant to everyone"
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Kept animals : a novel
by Kate Milliken
Bound by a tragic accident, three very different teens at a California ranch pursue respective interests before sexual tension indelibly transforms their lives. A first novel by the award-winning author of If I’d Known You Were Coming. 100,000 first printing.
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The low, low woods
by Carmen Maria Machado
"When your memories are stolen, what would you give to remember? Follow El and Vee as they search for answers to the questions everyone else forgot. Shudder-to-Think, Pennsylvania, is plagued by a mysterious illness that eats away at the memories of those affected by it. El and Octavia are two best friends who find themselves the newest victims of this disease after waking up in a movie theater with no memory of the past few hours. As El and Vee dive deeper into the mystery behind their lost memories, they realize the stories of their town hold more dark truth than they could've imagined. It's up to El and Vee to keep their town from falling apart...to keep the world safe from Shudder-to-Think's monsters."
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Memorial
by Bryan Washington
A Japanese-American chef and a Black daycare teacher begin reevaluating their stale relationship in the wake of a father’s death and the arrival of an acerbic mother-in-law who becomes an unconventional roommate. By the award-winning author of Lot.
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Plain bad heroines : a novel
by Emily M. Danforth
A highly anticipated adult debut from the award-winning author of The Miseducation of Cameron Post follows the release of a best-selling book about an early 20th-century New England boarding school where gender-diverse students died under suspicious circumstances. 50,000 first printing. Illustrations.
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Postcolonial love poem
by Natalie Diaz
Postcolonial Love Poem is an anthem of desire against erasure. Natalie Diaz’s brilliant second collection demands that every body carried in its pages—bodies of language, land, rivers, suffering brothers, enemies, and lovers—be touched and held as beloveds. Through these poems, the wounds inflicted by America onto an indigenous people are allowed to bloom pleasure and tenderness: “Let me call my anxiety, desire, then. / Let me call it, a garden.” In this new lyrical landscape, the bodies of indigenous, Latinx, black, and brown women are simultaneously the body politic and the body ecstatic. In claiming this autonomy of desire, language is pushed to its dark edges, the astonishing dunefields and forests where pleasure and love are both grief and joy, violence and sensuality.
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Real life
by Brandon Taylor
Keeping his head down at a lakeside Midwestern university where the culture is in sharp contrast to his Alabama upbringing, an introverted African-American biochem student endures unexpected encounters that bring his orientation and defenses into question.
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The selected works of Audre Lorde
by Audre Lorde
"A definitive selection of prose and poetry from the self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," for a new generation of readers. Audre Lorde is an unforgettable voice in twentieth-century literature, one of the first to center the experiences of black, queer women. Her incisive essays and passionate poetry-alive with sensuality, vulnerability, and rage-remain indelible contributions to intersectional feminism, queer theory, and critical race studies. This essential reader showcases twelve landmark essays and more than sixty poems, selected and introduced by one of our most powerful contemporary voices on race and gender, Roxane Gay. The essays include "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," "I Am Your Sister," and excerpts from the National Book Award-winning A Burst of Light. The poems are drawn from Lorde's nine volumes, including National Book Award nominee The Land Where Other People Live. As Gay writes in her astute introduction, The Selected Works of Audre Lorde celebrates "an exemplar of public intellectualism who is as relevant in this century as she was in the last.""
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Guillotine : Poems
by Eduardo C. Corral
Guillotine traverses desert landscapes cut through by migrants, the grief of loss, betrayal’s lingering scars, the border itself—great distances in which violence and yearning find roots. Through the voices of undocumented immigrants, border patrol agents, and scorned lovers, award-winning poet Eduardo C. Corral writes dramatic portraits of contradiction, survival, and a deeply human, relentless interiority. With extraordinary lyric imagination, these poems wonder about being unwanted or renounced. What do we do with unrequited love? Is it with or without it that we would waste away?
In the sequence “Testaments Scratched into Water Station Barrels,” with Corral’s seamless integration of Spanish and English, poems curve around the surfaces upon which they are written, overlapping like graffiti left by those who may or may not have survived crossing the border. A harrowing second collection, Guillotine solidifies Corral’s place in the expanding ecosystem of American poetry.
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Something to talk about
by Meryl Wilsner
When her career is threatened by a red-carpet photo that appears to have romantic undertones, a Hollywood showrunner and her female assistant are targeted by paparazzi before realizing their actual feelings for each other. Original. A first novel.
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Homie : poems
by Danez Smith
"Homie is Danez Smith's magnificent anthem about the saving grace of friendship. Rooted in the loss of one of Smith's close friends, this book comes out of the search for joy and intimacy within a nation where both can seem scarce and getting scarcer. Inpoems of rare power and generosity, Smith acknowledges that in a country overrun by violence, xenophobia, and disparity, and in a body defined by race, queerness, and diagnosis, it can be hard to survive, even harder to remember reasons for living. But then the phone lights up, or a shout comes up to the window, and family--blood and chosen--arrives with just the right food and some redemption. Part friendship diary, part bright elegy, part war cry, Homie is the exuberant new book written for Danez and for Danez's friends and for you and for yours"
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You Exist Too Much
by Zaina Arafat
Told in vignettes that occur in American and Middle East settings, a debut novel follows the experiences of a young Palestinian-American who is marginalized for her sexual orientation before the traumas of her past drive her toward self-destructive impulses. A first novel.
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The prettiest star
by Carter Sickels
A young, gay man who left small-town Appalachia for New York City in 1980 returns home to die six years later after contracting AIDS, in a novel about love, family and redemption from the award-winning author of The Evening Hour.
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Fiebre Tropical
by Juliana Delgado Lopera
Uprooted from her comfortable life in Bogotá, Colombia, into an ant-infested Miami townhouse, fifteen-year-old Francisca is miserable and friendless in her strange new city. Her alienation grows when her mother is swept up into an evangelical church, replete with Christian salsa, abstinent young dancers, and baptisms for the dead. But there, Francisca also meets the magnetic Carmen: opinionated and charismatic, head of the youth group, and the pastor&;s daughter. As her mother&;s mental health deteriorates and her grandmother descends into alcoholism, Francisca falls more and more intensely in love with Carmen. To get closer to her, Francisca turns to Jesus to be saved, even as their relationship hurtles toward a shattering conclusion.
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Indianapolis Public Library P.O. Box 211 Indianapolis, Indiana 46206-0211 317-275-4100www.indypl.org/ |
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