I work at an indie bookstore and had an interaction today with a woman who shared her experience as a black woman in the book community and how we (the bookstore i work at) need to prioritize carrying more poc books/authors at the same level as simply buying the most popular books. My coworker and I are both white and (ignorantly) didn't even think about that as a thing to consider when ordering books.
i did my own research but again im white and stupid and would prefer recommendations from real people and not a random list i find online.
we're a romance/romantasy heavy bookstore but we also carry other genres as well!!!
by Constant-Ad8654
8 Comments
If your store carries any middle grade books, I highly recommend Ghost by Jason Reynolds.
A couple off the top of my head
-The Jasad Heir Duology by Sara Hashem (middle eastern romantasy)
-Reign and Ruin series by J.D. Evans (middle eastern romantasy)
-We hunt the flame by Hafsa Faizal (YA middle eastern romantasy)
-Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisen (dystopian fantasy by a black author)
-An Ember in the Ashes Quartet (YA middle eastern fantasy with romance sub-plot)
-The Poppy War trilogy (Chinese fantasy series- this has very dark themes not romantasy at all)
-The Green bone saga by Fonda Lee (Chinese/Japanese inspired mafia fantasy)
-Legendborn Trilogy by Tracy Deonn (YA urban fantasy with strong Romance elements also by a black author)
I will come back to edit when I remember other ones I have.
Look into books by Tiffany D. Jackson, Akwaeke Emezi, Angie Kim, Liselle Sambury, Sabaa Tahir, Bora Chung, Sophie Gonzalez, Ana Huang, Ana Liang, Jordan Ifueko, and there are obviously more but looking at my own personal library those are the POC authors whose books I own and enjoy. Most of their work is more YA centric but some of them venture into New adult/Adult or Middle Grade as well.
Jasmine Guillory (romance), Attica Locke (crime fiction)
Sam Delany wrote some of the best science fiction of his era
I just read The Misfortune of Stella Sedgwick.
[Saara El-Arifi ](https://www.saaraelarifi.com/books)- I read The Ending Fire Trilogy – really cool fantasy pulling from African/middle eastern mythology. I’ve also heard good things about her Faebound trilogy and it’s on my TBR. Ensemble cast and romance. Also has great LGBTQIA representation, queer characters are relationships are just treated as matter of fact and normalized. And although there is violence in the trilogy that I read, none of the violence or prejudice present is due to gender, gender identity or sexuality.
[Yum Kitasei](https://www.yumekitasei.com/general-1) – While not romance (the two I read) she writes sci-fi with young FMC, great reflections on morality and ethics, family dynamics, identity etc
This is how you lose the time war by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone is a beautiful short story romance/timeline keeper
Although not POC author – Hannah Kaner and her Godkiller trilogy is worth a mention. The trilogy has diverse representation: differently abled, POC and LGBTQIA are found in the ensemble cast, and like I mentioned before with Saara El-Arifi the violence and prejudice are not related to gender, gender identity or sexuality. There is some romance.
These next recs are from my bookcase tbr, I have not read them yet, but they are sitting anxiously on my bookshelf waiting.
[Roseanne A. Brown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roseanne_A._Brown) wrote a duology that she described to me (met her a book con) as Aladdin and Jasmine but enemies to lovers set drawing from North African folklore.
Tomi Adeyemi – Children of Blood and Bone
Isabelle Olmo (Puerto Rican author) – Queen and Conquerer – as she described it (at a book con) the FMC takes no shit.
Akshaya Raman’s Ivory Key duology – Indian inspired YA fantasy
Vaishnavi Patel’s Goddess of the River and Kaikeyi- her books are based in Indian mythology
Chelsea Abdullah (Kuwaiti-American author) – The Stardust Thief
Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became the Sun
If you want some more LGBTQIA representation:
Samantha Shannon – The Priory of the Orange Tree series and the Bone Season
Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth series (lesbian necromancers in space)
Aww thank you so much for being intentional!
Would your store be interested in an Asian women’s literary fiction (with a dash of very tasteful romance) by a self-published author? My friend Amanda Sung recently debuted her novel, [How to Break a Girl](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/241018866-how-to-break-a-girl), which is currently rated at 4.89 on Goodreads. The book features 3 Asian immigrant women, who are best friends like Sex and the City, navigating not only love and career, but also identity, displacement, intergenerational baggage, and all the cultural curveballs that the world throws at them.
If you are into poetry, [Babbage’s Dream](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34065206-babbage-s-dream) by Neil Aitken, a half-white, half-Asian award-winning author, is another great choice. There are poems about cities in Taiwan, where he grew up with his mother’s family. It isn’t as new as *How to Break a Girl*, but currently rated 4.61 on Goodreads!
I own physical copies of both and would highly recommend!