The Best BIPOC Books Out Today
Greetings, readers! Erica is taking a well-deserved break this week, so today you get me, Vanessa Diaz, Managing Editor of the good ship Book Riot. I’ll start us off with a sampling of some of the best BIPOC-authored books out this week. Because there are so! many! great! reads out today, I have bonus picks for our subscribers as well as some playlist content that’s both predictable and fueled by rage.
But first, the new releases! I have a story about two strong-willed women on the Texas/Mexico border and a curse that spans generations; a queer pirate adventure on the Caribbean sea inspired by real events; and a coming-of-age story set in Nigeria just before the passing of the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act. In young adult lit, I have a contemporary romance about ex-best friends working to save their town’s Islamic Center and a high-stakes tale of a teen training to be an Imperial pilot who returns to her rebel roots to save the world.
This is also the first In Reading Color send of June, so I want to wish everyone a very Happy Pride! There are several queer books in the mix today because ’round here, we’re intersectional.
Adult BIPOC Books
Malas by Marcela Fuentes
It’s hard to translate “malas” exactly—technically, it’s “bad girls or “bad women,” but “wicked women” comes closer to describing how the two strong-willed women in this novel are perceived by the people in their small border town. In the 1950s, young wife and mother Pilar has just moved to La Cienega, Texas, when she’s cursed by an old woman claiming that Pilar stole her husband. In 1994, 14-year-old Lulu is preparing for her quinceañera when her beloved grandmother dies. Pilar is the glamorous stranger who crashes the funeral and soon forms an unlikely kinship with Lulu, a bond that will force Pilar to confront her past and Lulu to embrace her future. This is a love letter to Tejano culture that takes readers from dusty rodeos to family gatherings to a Selena concert.
The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye by Briony Cameron
A motley pirate crew, adventure times, and a forbidden love story inspired by real events—do I need to keep going? Told in three parts, this swashbuckling tale of a woman of color’s rise to power as one of the few female pirate captains to sail the Caribbean is high up on my TBR. More queer pirates!
Blessings by Chukwuebuka Ibeh
Erica actually put me onto this one in last week’s In the Club newsletter, so I’ll just go ahead and use her words here: “This glittering queer coming-of-age novel is set in Nigeria, just before the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act of 2014 would make queerness officially illegal. The sensitive and creative Obiefuna develops a sweet connection with a boy from a neighboring village, but when his father catches the two of them together, he sends him away to boarding school. There, his fight for survival entails hiding who he really is and trying to navigate random violence. Meanwhile, his mother, Uzoamaka, wonders why her son was sent away since his father won’t say and is left to reckon with long-avoided truths.”
YA BIPOC Books
Four Eids and a Funeral by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, Adiba Jaigirdar
This YA novel has a fantastic title and setup. It’s about two ex-best friends: Said, who has been off at boarding school and is back in town to attend the funeral of his favorite librarian, and Tiwa, who has no idea why Said decided to start ignoring her but plans on ignoring him right back all summer. That’ll show him! When their town’s Islamic Center catches fire, and the mayor wants to go ahead and level it, Said and Tiwa agree to work together to save the center from demolition. I do love a rekindling!
Moonstorm by Yoon Ha Lee
Teen Hwa Young is a citizen of the very empire that destroyed her rebel moon home and made her an orphan six years ago. She wants nothing more than to shake her rebel past and dreams of becoming a pilot. She gets her chance after an attack on her boarding school leaves Hwa Young and her classmates stranded on an imperial space fleet that’s s desperate for pilot candidates. Hwa Young and her classmates gladly volunteer, but training doesn’t go as expected: secrets surface that lead Hwa Young to uncover a conspiracy that will change the course of all of their lives.
*subscribers read on for bonus content*
Bonus Picks and Playlists
Here are even more new releases for you, from entries in recent and long-running series to debuts from new voices.
We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance by Kellie Carter Jackson
An examination and reframing of the past and present of Black resistance to white supremacy, both violent and non-violent.
Mirrored Heavens by Rebecca Roanhorse
The conclusion to the Between Earth and Sky trilogy is finally here, where the destinies of the people of Meridian will finally be determined.
Farewell, Amethystine by Walter Mosley
This is Mosley’s 16th(!!) Easy Rawlins novel, wherein Easy takes on what he thinks will be an easy missing husband case that ends up being anything but. It’s not always easy being Easy! I’ll see myself out.
Match Me If You Can by Swati Hegde
A young magazine writer in Mumbai needs to successfully set up her coworker if she wants to get her new matchmaking column greenlit. But also, she has feelings for her close family friend.
Swift River by Essie Chambers
This family saga examines the bond between mothers and daughters as the long-hidden history of a declining New England mill town comes to light.
On a Musical Note
There’s a high probability of me making or referencing a bookish playlist at any given time (see exhibits A and B). Today I’m doing it because I stumbled across a Reddit thread where a whole bunch of people got together to talk about how cringe it is when an author drops or even mentions a playlist in their book. This thread has 300+ upvotes and 200+ comments worth of people very passionately proclaiming how fast they will DNF a book for the transgression of including or even referring to the existence of a playlist.
Did those people get their hands on special editions of books that immediately play music against your will like a terrible birthday card? Were you cozied up in your favorite chair, prepared to tuck into The House of Leaves when you were suddenly accosted by “Mambo #5?” Shoutout to the folks who spoke up on the side of reason to be all, “You could just…. skip right past that?” If you’re that bothered, I don’t know what to say except you’re all boring and I’m fun.
Enough preamble: here are a few book + playlist pairings with titles by authors of color that I’ve particularly enjoyed because when you search bookish playlists, they tend to lack diversity in a shocking turn of events. If you’re mad, stay that way.
Canto Contigo by Jonny Garza Villa
Canto Contigo is a rivals to lovers YA romance about two high school mariachi singers. You can listen to me go on (and on) about the book as well as mariachi music on this episode of All the Books, then go listen to this amazing playlist. It’s got classics of mariachi, but also stuff from reggaeton and pop artists like Bad Bunny and Rosalía and other contemporary Latin American greats like Natalia Lafourcade and Carla Morrison. Oh, and Selena. ‘Nough said.
Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert
I could have sworn there was an actual official playlist for this third book in the Brown Sisters universe wherein our titular Eve, who is trying to get her shit together in life, sort of stumbles into a job interview that goes horribly wrong, most especially because she accidentally hits the guy who interviewed her with her car. Eve definitely discusses her playlist in the book, so thank you kindly to Spotify user Tolu, who put those tracks together for us in one place.
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
This one is the most official, as it’s brought to us by Penguin Random House, and the tracks are inspired by the book as opposed to being explicitly mentioned in the book. We’ve got some Garbage, some Joy Division, then some Nine Inch Nails and She Wants Revenge. If you haven’t read the book yet but know what it’s about (a woman named Noemi in 1950s Mexico gets a letter from her cousin in the countryside begging for her help, and when she arrives at the mansion, the cousin shares with her husband, Noemi immediately senses that something is very, very wrong), you might be scratching your head right now. But trust, the vibes are right. *thinks of mushrooms, shudders immediately*
There you have it — new and exciting BIPOC reads and a light dose of internet rage. What BIPOC reads are you looking forward to this month? Let us know in the comments!
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