5 Queer Graphic Novels and Memoirs You Won’t Want to Miss in 2021

I honestly have no idea how to describe this memoir; it’s unlike any graphic storytelling I’ve ever experienced before. On the surface, it’s a beautiful and complicated story about loss, grieving, and healing. Spector recounts the years she spent trying to get pregnant while her father was also dying of cancer. It’s a book about queer parenthood, Jewish identity, partnership, being an artist, family, and so much more. It’s not linear or sequential. Every page feels like its own piece of art. There are so many styles, so many layers to both the art and the story. Open it up to any page and you’re met with an explosion of color, images, and words. It’s a truly unique book, one that will leave you with so much to think about, and desperate to read it all over again.

I’m always on the lookout for books about the messy realties of queer families, and this book is exactly that. Brown and Ray are a queer couple who love being aunties to Ray’s 6-year-old niece, Nessie. Spending time with Nessie allows them to be themselves, away from the sometimes hard realities of their life together. But as their relationship changes, so does their time with Nessie. They begin spending more time apart, and both of them reconnect with their sisters. It’s a quiet, messy, expansive story about how families grow and change, and the many forms that love can take. The art is sparse and expressive; the way Lai illustrates emotional truths that can be hard to say with words is stunning. The sheer humanness of this story took my breath away. It’s a book about ordinary moments, about the daily joys and struggles of partnership and parenting — but it’s anything but ordinary.

This beautiful collection of oral histories is so many things: a celebration, an inspiration, a witness, a call-to-action. Queer artist Syan Rose visited and interviewed queer and trans organizers, activists, artists, and healers from across the country, and she presents their words and stories in this book. Each piece feels like a gift. From a fat queer theatre collective and trans-led sex worker activism to powerful reflections on Black femme healing practices, every piece is full of wisdom and power. Rose’s art is transcendent; it doesn’t merely add to the words, but blends and merges with them. This is a book that centers queer and trans people of color; it’s a beautiful and messily real collection of work and words and prayers. It honors the radical work of our queer and trans elders, and offers a vision for a queer future defined by intersectional organizing, shared joy, and community care.

I love a sci-fi book that explores big questions about what it means to be human by telling stories about AI characters. Set in a future with both AI and human augmentation are commonplace, this YA graphic novel follows two girls, Indira and Fawn, who work in the same art gallery. Indira is a human who was cybernetically enhanced after an accident. Fawn is a human-presenting AI. At first they mostly ignore each other, but when they’re forced to collaborate on a project they form a tentative friendship that slowly blossoms into something else. It’s a sweet love story, but it also explores a lot of big themes, and it never feels clunky. It’s about trauma and art and the ways identity does and does not manifest in the body. The characters are wonderfully real, and the balance of humor and banter vs. serious moments is perfect.