In fact, I believe that most people have a limited understanding of asexuality. Prior to reading this book, I did not realize that asexuality was as complex as it is. Sign up for them.'s weekly newsletter here.This Pride month, I am highlighting a book I read last month titled Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen. I really recommend this book if you’re looking for a story that reads smoothly and is rich with setting (and food, it made me hungry). I was absorbed in these characters’ lives, which were fleshed out with lots of tertiary characters and sense of place, and found the ending so moving. When Mike takes off on a moment’s notice to reconcile with his dying father in Osaka, Japan, just as his mother Mitsuko arrives for a visit, Benson and Mitsuko build their own poignant relationship while Mike comes to terms with his relationship to his dad. Bryan Washington’s fiction is some of my favorite writing in the world, and this debut novel transported me into the lives of Mike and Benson, a gay couple living in Houston who have gotten a little too comfortable in their routines around each other while also not communicating effectively. When this book came out in October, I really needed a character-driven story that was going to take me away from my brain and into someone else’s brain. Riverhead Memorial by Bryan Washington (Riverhead) It would be impossible for me to rank the books I read, but here are five that stuck with me, that deeply moved me, or made me laugh in a year of crisis. That said, I read more queer lit than ever this year, across many genres, and I am grateful to the writers who created this work. The publishing industry has a lot of work to do yet. That said, gatekeeping in publishing continues to limit not only the number of queer books that are published and the demographics of those authors (read: white, cis), but the amount of money and marketing power that goes to their work.

And this year, it’s undeniable that a lot of great queer and LGBTQ+-authored books made their way into the world - both a joyous thing in and of itself and with much joy to be found between their covers. But in the face of the pain we’ve all experienced this year, there are opportunities to choose joy, however fleeting. Nor am I particularly interested in silver linings to horror and pain.

I don’t need to tell you how terrible this year has been, in ways none of us could have foreseen beforehand.

Angela chen book