Bi health month 2023
Bi, pan, and queer fiction featuring disabled and neurodivergent characters
Bi, pan, and queer fiction featuring disabled and neurodivergent characters
Bi health month 2023
The Bi Pan Library is proud to partner with the Bisexual Resource Center (BRC) for the 10th annual Bi+ Health Month this March. We’re curating content all month to help you connected with m-spec (bi, pan, fluid, etc.) authors who are disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent and other resources to learn about health topics important to our community such as HIV/AIDS, pregnancy, intimate partner violence, and mental illness.
Now, let’s get to the books — we’ve labelled each one with the health topic the book covers, so you can see at a glance if any of the books reflect your own health conditions or a topic you’d like to learn more about. As always, if there’s a book you think we should add to this list, we’re all ears! Write in using the contact form and tell us all about it.
Full Disclosure
by Camryn Garrett
HIV
The uplifting story of an HIV-positive teen, falling in love and learning to live her truth. Simone Garcia-Hampton is starting over at a new school, and this time things will be different. She’s making real friends, making a name for herself as student director of Rent, and making a play for Miles, the guy who makes her melt every time he walks into a room. The last thing she wants is for word to get out that she’s HIV-positive, because last time . . . well, last time things got ugly. As Simone and Miles start going out for real–shy kisses escalating into much more–she feels an uneasiness that goes beyond butterflies. Simone’s first instinct is to protect her secret at all costs, but as she gains a deeper understanding of the prejudice and fear in her community, she begins to wonder if the only way to rise above is to face the haters head-on… Read more…
The Stumptown series
by Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth
PTSd, addiction
A pulpy noir comic series following a down-on-her-luck queer private investigator. Dex Parios is the proprietor of Stumptown Investigations, and a fairly talented P.I. Unfortunately, she’s less adept at throwing dice than solving cases. Her recent streak has left her beyond broke and she’s into the Confederated Tribes of the Wind Coast for 18 large. But maybe Dex’s luck is about to change. Sue-Lynne, head of the Wind Coast’s casino operation, will clear Dex’s debt if she can locate Sue-Lynne’s missing granddaughter. But is this job Dex’s way out of the hole or a shove down one much much deeper? Read more…
Sister Mine
by Nalo Hopkinson
birth condition, mobility impairment
Two sisters, born of a demigod, conjoined at birth, one touched with magic and the other still in search of her gift. Makeda and Abby still share their childhood home. The surgery to separate the two girls gave Abby a permanent limp, but left Makeda with what feels like an even worse deformity: no mojo. The daughters of a celestial demigod and a human woman, Makeda and Abby were raised by their magical father, the god of growing things—a highly unusual childhood that made them extremely close. Ever since Abby’s magical talent began to develop, though, in the form of an unearthly singing voice, the sisters have become increasingly distant. Today, Makeda has decided it’s high time to move out and make her own life among the other nonmagical, claypicken humans–after all, she’s one of them. In Cheerful Rest, a run-down warehouse space, Makeda finds exactly what she’s been looking for: an opportunity to live apart from Abby and begin building her own independent life. There’s even a resident band, led by the charismatic (and attractive) building superintendent. But when her father goes missing, Makeda will have to discover her own talent–and reconcile with Abby—if she’s to have a hope of saving him…
You Exist Too Much
by Zaina Arafat
mental illness
The captivating journey of one young woman caught between cultural, religious, and sexual identities. When our narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mother’s response only intensifies a sense of shame: “You exist too much.” She moves into an apartment with her first serious girlfriend and tries to content herself with their comfortable relationship. But soon her longings, so closely hidden during her teenage years, explode out into reckless romantic encounters and obsessions with other people. Her desire to thwart her own destructive impulses will eventually lead her to The Ledge, an unconventional treatment center that identifies her affliction as “love addiction.” In this strange, enclosed society she will start to consider the unnerving similarities between her own internal traumas and divisions and those of the places that have formed her. Read more…
An Unkindness of Ghosts
by Rivers Solomon
neurodivergence
“A raw distillation of slavery, feudalism, prison, and religion that kicks like rotgut moonshine.“ (Publisher’s Weekly) Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She’s used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, she’d be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remains of her world. Aster lives in the lowdeck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship’s leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster. Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer, Aster learns there may be a way to improve her lot–if she’s willing to sow the seeds of civil war. Read more…
Sick Kids In Love
by Hannah Moskowitz
Gaucher disease
Two chronically ill teens navigate the joys and pitfalls of a relationship in this YA contemporary romance. (Kirkus) Isabel has one rule: no dating. It’s easier… It’s safer… It’s better… for the other person She’s got issues. She’s got secrets. She’s got rheumatoid arthritis. But then she meets another sick kid. He’s got a chronic illness Isabel’s never heard of, something she can’t even pronounce. He understands what it means to be sick. He understands her more than her healthy friends. He understands her more than her own father who’s a doctor. He’s gorgeous, fun, and foul-mouthed. And totally into her. It’s complicated… It’s dangerous… It’s never felt better to consider breaking her rules for him. Read more…
Disoriental
by Négar Djavadi
fertility, pTSd
A high-spirited, kaleidoscopic story of Iranian history and a modern woman divided between family traditions and her own “disorientalization”. Kimiâ Sadr fled Iran at the age of ten in the company of her mother and sisters to join her father in France. Now twenty-five and facing the future she has built for herself as well as the prospect of a new generation, Kimiâ is inundated by her own memories and the stories of her ancestors, which come to her in unstoppable, uncontainable waves. In the waiting room of a Parisian fertility clinic, generations of flamboyant Sadrs return to her, including her formidable great-grandfather Montazemolmolk, with his harem of fifty-two wives, and her parents, Darius and Sara, stalwart opponents of each regime that befalls them. Read more…
Light Brigade
by Kameron Hurley
military PTSD & injury
In a futuristic war, oldiers are broken down into light in order to get them to the front lines on Mars. The Light Brigade: it’s what soldiers fighting the war against Mars call the ones who come back…different. Grunts in the corporate corps get busted down into light to travel to and from interplanetary battlefronts. Everyone is changed by what the corps must do in order to break them down into light. Those who survive learn to stick to the mission brief—no matter what actually happens during combat. Dietz, a fresh recruit in the infantry, begins to experience combat drops that don’t sync up with the platoon’s. And Dietz’s bad drops tell a story of the war that’s not at all what the corporate brass want the soldiers to think is going on. Is Dietz really experiencing the war differently, or is it combat madness? Trying to untangle memory from mission brief and survive with sanity intact, Dietz is ready to become a hero—or maybe a villain; in war it’s hard to tell the difference. Read more…
Ben and Beatriz
by Katalina Gamarra
NEURODIVERGENCE, MENTAL ILLNESS
A vibrant and clever retelling of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Beatriz Herrera is a fierce woman who will take you down with her quick wit and keen intellect. Especially if you come for her sweet BFF cousin, Hero. Beatriz would do anything for her, a loyalty that lands Beatriz precisely where she doesn’t want to be: the ridiculous Cape Cod mansion of super-hot playboy Ben Montgomery. The same Ben Montgomery she definitely shouldn’t have hooked up with that one time… White and wealthy, Ben talks and walks a life of privilege, but wrestles with the politics and expectations of a conservative family he can’t relate to. As her and Ben’s assumptions begin to unravel and their hookups turn into something real, they start wondering if it’s still possible to hold space for one another and the inescapable love that unites them. Read more…
Far From You
by Tess Sharpe
PTSd, chronic pain, addiction
A beautifully realized YA mystery debut delving into the emotions of a girl recovering from drug addiction and grief. (Kirkus) Sophie Winters nearly died. Twice. The first time, she’s fourteen, and escapes a near-fatal car accident with scars, a bum leg, and an addiction to Oxy that’ll take years to kick. The second time, she’s seventeen, and it’s no accident. Sophie and her best friend Mina are confronted by a masked man in the woods. Sophie survives, but Mina is not so lucky. When the cops deem Mina’s murder a drug deal gone wrong, casting partial blame on Sophie, no one will believe the truth: Sophie has been clean for months, and it was Mina who led her into the woods. After a forced stint in rehab, Sophie returns home to a chilly new reality. Mina’s brother won’t speak to her, her parents fear she’ll relapse, old friends have become enemies, and Sophie has to learn how to live without her other half. To make matters worse, no one is looking in the right places and Sophie must search for Mina’s murderer on her own. But with every step, Sophie comes closer to revealing all: about herself, about Mina and about the secret they shared. Read more…
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing
by Hank Green
adhd, anxiety, depression, PTSd
A propulsive and entertaining adventure about fame, rhetoric, and radicalization. The Carls just appeared. Roaming through New York City at three a.m., twenty-three-year-old April May stumbles across a giant sculpture. Delighted by its appearance and craftsmanship–like a ten-foot-tall Transformer wearing a suit of samurai armor–April and her best friend, Andy, make a video with it, which Andy uploads to YouTube. The next day, April wakes up to a viral video and a new life. News quickly spreads that there are Carls in dozens of cities around the world–from Beijing to Buenos Aires–and April, as their first documentarian, finds herself at the center of an intense international media spotlight. Seizing the opportunity to make her mark on the world, April now has to deal with the consequences her new particular brand of fame has on her relationships, her safety, and her own identity. And all eyes are on April to figure out not just what the Carls are, but what they want from us. Read more…
Outlawed
by Anna North
acquired disability, mental illness
The riveting adventure of a fugitive girl, a mysterious gang of robbers, and their dangerous mission to transform an alternate history Wild West. The day of her wedding, 17 year old Ada’s life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows. She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by a preacher-turned-robber known to all as the Kid. Charismatic, grandiose, and mercurial, the Kid is determined to create a safe haven for outcast women. But to make this dream a reality, the Gang hatches a treacherous plan that may get them all killed. And Ada must decide whether she’s willing to risk her life for the possibility of a new kind of future for them all. Read more…
READ MORE…
Bi, pan, and queer authors on disability and healthcare
Participate in #BiHealthMonth with a pick from this powerful collection of memoir and nonfiction by bi, pan, and queer authors about healthcare, neurodivergence, disability, and mental health.
Everything to know about Bi+ Health Month
Connect with resources, books, and advice about healthcare topics important to the m-spec community such as disability, sexual wellbeing, abuse, pregnancy, and more.
Need more books? Schedule a visit to the Bi Pan Library
The Bi Pan Library offers free services for the queer community, writers, educators, and anyone else looking to learn. Schedule your virtual visit today!