The Best BIPOC Books Out in August

The ancient city of Nineveh produced one of the most enduring pieces of literature: The Epic of Gilgamesh. It’s this poem that affects the lives of Arthur in 1840s London, Narin in 2014 Turkey, and Zaleekah in 2018 London. Each of them fight to make it out of their predicaments—even as struggles with mental health threaten to pull them back down—and each is tied to the other through a single drop of water.

Fantasy girlies, gather ’round, because Djèlí Clark really is That Guy when it comes to writing interesting female characters set in living, breathing fantasy worlds. Here, the titular kitties aren’t literally cats, but they do scratch. Eveen the Eviscerator is a discreet and skilled assassin who belongs to a guild sworn to the Matron of Assassins, follows the rules, and does her job. But then the Festival of the Clockwork King comes around and turns the entire city upside down, and suddenly that memory that was supposed to have been wiped comes back, and Eveen realizes she has other promises to keep.

In the summer of 2020, Sophia is a young playwright whose latest play has been a hit. All that’s left is for her father—an author of yesteryear whose novels haven’t aged well—to see it and give his opinion. Little does he know it brings to life an argument the two of them had while vacationing in Sicily a couple years ago…and it cuts him up.

In El Salvador in 1923, Graciela is a young girl growing up on a volcano with indentured Indigenous women who work on coffee plantations. One day, she’s whisked away and sent to the capital, where she’ll meet the sister she never knew she had and serve as an oracle for rising dictator El Gran Pendejo. While they are shielded from some things their fellow countrymen suffer, the dictator is still immensely cruel, and after years of living under him, they come to realize how much they’ve unwillingly helped shape the genocide that strikes Graciela’s community. When she and her sister finally escape, they both think the other dead, and in their quest to reinvent themselves, they’ll journey from Hollywood to Paris, with the ghosts of their past lives at their heels.

Growing up, La Tray knew himself to be Indian, even though his father always denied it. When he goes to his grandfather’s funeral and sees so many obviously Indigenous relatives, his heritage becomes undeniable. He sets out to learn more about his people, thereby learning more about himself. He does research, speaks to elders, and joins the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians’ struggle to become federally recognized.

YA Asian lore-inspired fantasy is entirely my bag, which The Girl with No Reflection very much is, but with a dash of horror for some spice. In it, Princess Ying Yue has found out how cold the world can be through her betrothal to the crown prince, who’s locked her in her room and doesn’t seem to care about her at all. In her solitude, all she has is her reflection, until she unknowingly opens a gateway to a mirror world. There, the crown prince is warmer, someone to fall in love with, even, but there’s bad blood between this mirror world and her reality that involves the seven other royal brides who were engaged to the crown prince before she was.

I just said that Asian lore-inspired YA fantasy is very much my thing, and so is West African-lore-inspired fantasy. If you haven’t already read Ifueko’s Raybearer duology and you love fantasy, please do. It’s got demons, and queer characters, and a magic system that I connected with on a spiritual level. The Maid and the Crocodile takes place in the same world as the duology, but you don’t necessarily have to have read the first books. It would be better, though, because they’re so good.

Here, Small Sade is looking for a job in the magical city of Oluwan. She hopes to work as a maid for people who won’t give her trouble for her disability or her appearance. Before she can find them, though, she accidentally becomes bound to the powerful god Crocodile, who she has to impress lest she become the latest pretty girl he devours. Crocodile, pretty himself, realizes the two of them are bound by fate once she reveals she’s a curse eater. Once she gets away from him, she starts a career as a curse eater to the wealthy, but Crocodile still has plans for her, and they may even involve a revolution.