20 Must-Read Books from University Presses

Queer and trans people have always been here, as Emily Skidmore asserts in this fascinating book of LGBTQ+ history. Using a variety of sources, she paints a vivid picture of the lives of 18 trans men in the late 19th and early 20th century. Many of these men lived in small towns, choosing to work, love, and build families in communities outside of urban centers. Her careful, thoughtful research is a welcome addition to the complicated and multi-layered history of trans people in the U.S.

If you’ve ever wondered what kind of impact the material world has on our lives, you’ll want to pick up this fascinating book by scientist and science writer Ainissa Ramirez. In it, she examines several key inventions, including clocks, light bulbs, and silicon chips. She tells the stories of how each of these things came to be, and explores how materials have shaped history and culture.

In this far-ranging collection of essays, Indigenous writers explore family, home, landscape, identity, trauma, history, and memory. Some of the essays are about writing itself. Others tell stories about particular experiences or moments. Still others are more outwardly focused, exploring art, culture, and politics. Part of what makes this book so unique is the various innovative forms the essays take.

Yes, this is actually three books, but they go together! Each of these three volumes is a unique, one-of-a-kind atlas of a city. Each book contains a collection of beautifully drawn maps that illuminate the messy, shifting, contradictory lived realities of the city they describe. These maps explore everything from waste disposal and radio stations to the history of the slave trade and jazz. Accompanying the maps are essays from a range of contributors, explaining the significance of what the maps describe. New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco come alive in these extraordinary atlases.

In these essays, Shah writes about dancing and food, growing up in western New York, moving through predominantly white spaces as an Indian American woman, friendship, language, and the places that have shaped her. Her prose is deft and graceful. Some of the essays are lyrical and meditative; others delve directly into a particular idea or experience. Her writing is so assured, her voice warm and open.

This book doesn’t fit neatly into any one category; it’s actually a collection of essays, short stories, and poetry. It’s a wonderful introduction to many fantastic queer and Two-Spirit Indigenous writers. The pieces are eclectic and varied. You’ll find poems about childhood, grief, and history; fantastical stories set in the future; essays on queer identity and belonging. It’s a book truly celebrates the breadth of queer Indigenous literature.

I don’t think I’ve ever come across a poet who uses food in their work the way Jihyun Jun does. Some of the poems themselves are recipes. The food she describes is chaotic and painful, comforting and freeing. She writes about food as a way to understand the past and to create new stories. Her poems are about immigration and survival, the trauma of displacement, family lineage, grief, communal celebration, and diaspora.

This delightful book of lyrical poems celebrates all the small joys in life: eating, being in the garden, feeling the grass under your feet. Gay writes about plums and fruit trees and city streets and sharing a meal and compost and sweet potato biscuits. It’s an exuberant book full of many small moments of gratitude, wisdom, and humor.

In these beautiful poems, Andrews writes about the loneliness of moving between countries and cultures, of loving more than one place and containing many truths and stories inside a body. It’s a visceral collection that returns again and again to questions of home, belonging, and place.

While university presses put out lots of fantastic contemporary work, they’re also a great place to find classics and new translations of older work — like this beautiful collection of haikus. Bashō is one of the most revered Japanese poets of haikus; his work is a must-read for fans of the form, and poetry loves in general. This collection contains a selection of some of his best and most beloved poems.

In this masterfully crafted collection of stories, Philyaw explores the inner lives of Black women, all of whom have some connection to different Southern churches. The stories range across time, featuring four generations of women as they wrestle with their own desires and the expectations of their communities. The stories are about love, sex, family, parenting, and community.

University presses seem to have an affinity for short story collections, because I had a lot of trouble picking only a few for this list. These beautifully strange and sometimes fantastical stories, rooted in Chicano culture, are all set in and around El Paso and the U.S.-Mexico border. In them, Chacón explores walls — not just the physical barriers that denote borders, but internal and emotional and even imaginary walls.

One of the great things about books from university presses is that they often highlight the culture of a specific region. This collection brings together the work of dozens of LGBTQ+ Appalachian writers. Through poetry and stories, they explore what it means to be queer and Appalachian. Many of the pieces confront the challenges of queer life in Appalachia, while others celebrate the richness of queer lives and culture in the region.

This novel is set in Beirut in May 2008, during the violence that erupted in the city when Hezbollah militants and Sunni fighters clashed over the course of several days. The narrative follows five very different characters: a pregnant woman, a gay artist, an engineering student in Germany, a doctor, a former militant, and a disillusioned novelist. Chouman uses their distinct POVs to tell a story about identity, home, violence, belonging, and trauma.

In this richly textured novel by Guadeloupean author Maryse Condé, a Black gardener, Dieudonné, is accused of murdering his employer and lover, a wealthy white woman. The novel moves between past and present, as Dieudonné wanders the city and his memory, attempting to make sense of what’s happened to his life. Through Dieudonné, Condė explores the racial tensions and turmoil, and of 21st century Guadeloupe.

University presses publish books in a truly astonishing array of genres. This is a historical mystery set in Harlem in the 1920s. The story follows Harlem’s first Black policeman as he attempts to solve a murder that rocks that Harlem elite. Partially inspired by Nella Larson’s Passing, the novel explores colorism, racial passing, and the interplay of class, race, and power during the Harlem Renaissance.