More information about the books in this novel bundle:
Little Blue Encyclopedia (For Vivian) by Hazel Jane Plante
The playful and poignant novel Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) sifts through a queer trans woman’s unrequited love for her straight trans friend who died. A queer love letter steeped in desire, grief, and delight, the story is interspersed with encyclopedia entries about a fictional TV show set on an isolated island. The experimental form functions at once as a manual for how pop culture can help soothe and mend us and as an exploration of oft-overlooked sources of pleasure, including karaoke, birding, and butt toys. Ultimately, Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) reveals with glorious detail and emotional nuance the woman the narrator loved, why she loved her, and the depths of what she has lost.
Small Beauty by jia qing wilson yang
Small Beauty tells the story of Mei, a mixed race trans woman managing the death of her cousin, the ways she contorts to navigate racism and transphobia, and her desire for community as she takes an opportunity to leave the city and revisit a town from her family’s past, where she discovers queer family history while parsing through her own anger and trauma.
“What was beyond doubt by the time I got back was that a new Transfixion had arrived in the form of Hermia Druitt, the woman in this photograph. This was confirmed by the sensations: flashes from Arcadia. Moonlight, of a kind, sighed up and down the tube of my spine, but above all, that indescribable note which accompanied all my Transfixions was present: humming beneath the high fine rush—probably not dissimilar to holy rapture—was an almost violent familiarity. The feeling of not only recognising, but of having been recognised.
A new Transfixion.”
Le premier roman luxuriant de Shola von Reinhold fait ressortir, à travers une prose élaborée et nuancée, les lacunes et les failles de l’archive. Les recherches obsessionnelles de la narratrice sur une poétesse noire moderniste oubliée la confrontent à la vacuité du milieu artistique, mais aussi à une scène historique queer qui la conforte et la nourrit. Ce roman a initialement été publié au Royaume-Uni par Jacaranda Books Art Music Ltd. dans le cadre de la série Twenty in 2020, une célébration de la littérature noire britannique.
