And these 20 Black authors of LGBTQ books are a great place to start, exploring experiences, both fictional and non, of what it means to be queer and Black. It widens your worldview, helps you reevaluate ingrained biases and beliefs, and, hopefully, exposes you to incredible new authors and books you might not have discovered if you only ever explored stodgy old lists of classics featuring solely straight cis white authors.
Diversifying your bookshelf is incredibly important. With Pride Month in the rearview mirror, it’s also a great time to reexamine your TBR and your bookshelves-make sure the books you’re reading don’t solely reflect one identity, whether one portion of the LGBTQ community or mostly white authors. What about nonbinary authors? Black queer authors? Disabled authors? Neurodivergent authors? Queer experiences, for example, don’t necessarily look the same for any two people-especially if one of them is white and another Black. But is it really? Because it’s easy to miss the intersection of identities-or miss certain identities entirely-if you accept that as enough. Beyond that, though, I think it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you’re doing enough, or reading widely enough, if you’re reading books that are non-white or non-straight or non-male. What it means is simple: evaluate the kinds of books you’re reading and make sure they aren’t all reflecting a white, western-AKA colonizer-point of view. The phrase “decolonize your bookshelf” has come into common reader vernacular in recent years.