LGBTQIA Two-Spirit Books
Celebrate Pride Month
Two-Spirit authors bring a unique perspective to literature, blending Indigenous culture, identity, and LGBTQIA2S+ experiences in their writing. Their works often challenge mainstream narratives and explore themes of identity, spirituality, colonization, and resilience.
47,000 beads
Adeyoha, Koja, author
2017
Peyton loves to dance, and especially at pow wow, but her Auntie notices that she's been dancing less and less. When Peyton shares that she just can't be comfortable wearing a dress anymore, Auntie Eyota asks some friends for help to get Peyton what she needs.
Asegi Stories : Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory
Driskill, Qwo-Li, author.
2016
The book focuses on the concept of asegi stories--stories that revise and revive Cherokee cultural memories of same-sex relationships and non-binary gender systems. It is the first full-length work of scholarship to develop a tribally specific Indigenous queer/two-spirit critique, providing a Cherokee 2GLBTQ lens from which to interpret the past, understand our present, and imagine decolonial futures.
Disintegrate/dissociate : poems ;
Twist, Arielle, 1994- author, poet
2019
In her powerful debut collection of poetry, Arielle Twist unravels the complexities of human relationships after death and metamorphosis. In these spare yet powerful poems, she explores, with both rage and tenderness, the parameters of grief, trauma, displacement, and identity.
Full-metal indigiqueer : poems
Whitehead, Joshua, (Writer), author
2017
"This poetry collection focuses on a hybridized Indigiqueer trickster character named Zoa who brings together the organic (the protozoan) and the technologic (the binaric) to re-beautify and re-member queer Indigeneity. A Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer invention, Zoa infects, invades, and infests as a virus inside canonical and popular works in order to re-centre the lives of Two-Spirit individuals. In their fierce defence, Zoa takes on the likes of Shakespeare, Spenser, Dickens, and Milton, romps through the fields of cyberpunks and biopunks, takes notes from popularized horror icons, and emulates contemporary pop-culture phenomenons like Lana del Rey, RuPaul's Drag Race, X-Men, Grindr, and Peter Pan -- all to build new territories in literature, pop culture, and oral storytelling. 'full-metal indigiqueer' works tirelessly to create coalition among Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer folk who have been ghosted in policy, page, tradition, and history -- the very lives of Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer youth are rarely mentioned; they find themselves made spectral in settler and neocolonial Indigenous nationalisms. For those who have, as Donna Haraway once noted, 'been injured, profoundly', 'full-metal indigiqueer' is a sex-positive project that sparks resurgence."--Page 4 of cover.
Ho'onani : hula warrior
Gale, Heather (Children's author), author
2019
Based on a true story, Ho'onani: Hula Warrior is a celebration of Hawaiian culture and an empowering story of a girl who learns to lead and learns to accept who she really is--and in doing so, gains the respect of all those around her.
Jonny Appleseed
Whitehead, Joshua (Writer), author
2018
You're gonna need a rock and a whole lotta medicine" is a mantra that Jonny Appleseed, a young Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer, repeats to himself in this vivid and utterly compelling novel. Off the reserve and trying to find ways to live and love in the big city, Jonny becomes a cybersex worker who fetishizes himself in order to make a living. Jonny's life is a series of breakages, appendages, and linkages—and as he goes through the motions of preparing to return home, he learns how to put together the pieces of his life.
Love after the end : an anthology of two-spirit & Indigiqueer speculative fiction
2020
"A bold and breathtaking anthology of queer Indigenous speculative fiction, edited by the author of Jonny Appleseed. This exciting and groundbreaking fiction anthology showcases a number of new and emerging 2SQ (Two-Spirit and queer) Indigenous writers from across Turtle Island. These visionary authors show how queer Indigenous communities can bloom and thrive through utopian narratives that detail the vivacity and strength of 2SQness throughout its plight in the maw of settler colonialism's histories. Here, readers will discover bioengineered AI rats, transplanted trees in space, the rise of a 2SQ resistance camp, a primer on how to survive Indigiqueerly, virtual reality applications, mother ships at sea, and the very bending of space-time continuums queered through NDN time. Love after the End demonstrates the imaginatively queer Two-Spirit futurisms we have all been dreaming of since 1492."-- Provided by publisher.
Making love with the land : essays
Whitehead, Joshua (Writer), author
2022
In the last few years, following the publication of his debut novel Jonny Appleseed, Joshua Whitehead has emerged as one of the most exciting and important new voices on Turtle Island. Now, in this first non-fiction work, Whitehead brilliantly explores Indigeneity, queerness, and the relationships between body, language and land through a variety of genres (essay, memoir, notes, confession). Making Love with the Land is a startling, heartwrenching look at what it means to live as a queer Indigenous person "in the rupture" between identities. In sharp, surprising, unique pieces--a number of which have already won awards--Whitehead illuminates this particular moment, in which both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples are navigating new (and old) ideas about "the land." He asks: What is our relationship and responsibility towards it? And how has the land shaped our ideas, our histories, our very bodies? Here is an intellectually thrilling, emotionally captivating love song--a powerful revelation about the library of stories land and body hold together, waiting to be unearthed and summoned into word.
Reclaiming Two-Spirits : sexuality, spiritual renewal & sovereignty in Native America
Smithers, Gregory D., 1974- author
2022
Surviving the city. Volume 1
Spillett-Sumner, Tasha, 1988- author
2018
Tasha Spillet's graphic-novel debut, Surviving the city, is a story about womanhood, friendship, resilience, and the anguish of a missing loved one. Miikwan and Dez are best friends. Miikwan's Anishinaabe; Dez is Inninew. Together, the teens navigate the challenges of growing up in an urban landscape - they're so close, they even completed their Berry Fast together. However, when Dez's grandmother becomes too sick, Dez is told she can't stay with her anymore. With the threat of a group home looming, Dez can't bring herself to go home and disappears. Miikwan is devastated, and the wound of her missing mother resurfaces. Will Dez's community find her before it's too late? Will Miikwan be able to cope if they don't? Colonialism and the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit People are explored in Natasha Donovan's beautiful illustrations.
Surviving the city. Volume 2, From the roots up
Spillett-Sumner,Tasha, 1988- author
2020
Dez and Miikwan's stories continue in this sequel to Surviving the City. Dez's grandmother has passed away. Grieving, and with nowhere else to go, she's living in a group home. On top of everything else, Dez is navigating a new relationship and coming into her identity as a Two-Spirit person. Miikwan is crushing on the school's new kid Riel, but doesn't really understand what Dez is going through. Will she learn how to be a supportive ally to her best friend? Elder Linda is doing her best to be supportive, but she doesn't know how to respond when the gendered protocols she's grown up with are thrown into question. Will Dez be comfortable expressing her full identity? And will her community relearn the teachings and overcome prejudice to celebrate her for who she is?
A two-spirit journey : the autobiography of a lesbian Ojibwa-Cree elder
Chacaby, Ma-Nee, 1950- author
2016
Ma-Nee Chacaby's extraordinary account of her life as an Ojibwa-Cree lesbian. From her early, often harrowing memories of life and abuse in a remote Ojibwa community riven by poverty and alcoholism, Chacaby's story is one of enduring and ultimately overcoming the social, economic, and health legacies of colonialism.