International Nonbinary People’s Day | 5 books that put queer, nonbinary experiences centre stage

Love That Story by Jonathan Van Ness is a collection of essays that deals with grief, and imposter syndrome, discusses being HIV-positive, and wrestles with the idea of body image and how consequential it can be, especially for a queer person’s mental health. (Book cover shot via Amazon.in)

Over the years, there’s been growing recognition of the diversity among queer people. A few days are specifically designated to celebrate this diversity and spotlight unique experiences that attempt at defining and locating them in a largely cis-het society. Each year, July 14 is celebrated as International Nonbinary People’s Day. As is clear from the word itself, “nonbinary” people fall outside the gender binary of male/female. When it comes to literature, or even otherwise, there’s an excruciating lack of representation of nonbinary people. For example, someone who comes across as man-presenting and doesn’t subscribe to the notions of being a ‘man’ per society, doesn’t get registered as someone who finds themselves uncomfortable being mentioned as a ‘man’. Because for society, clothes are gendered, too. Utilitarian aspects of life are gendered. To be sure, one can’t always fight this as much as one would like to, but what can definitely be done is that the experiences of being a nonbinary person can be centralized in storytelling. Five writers’ works enlisted below do precisely that:

When We Were Sisters by Fatimah Asghar

Winner of the inaugural Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, Forbes 30 Under 30 awardee, Emmy-nominated screenwriter born to a Pakistani father and Kashmiri mother, Asghar was orphaned at the age of five. Faced with an unbearable loss at such a young age, in When We Were Sisters, they intricately weave the process of grieving and being South Asian by telling the story of three orphaned “sister-mothers” in their debut novel. An experimentative work with a touch of poetic brilliance, it’s perhaps one of the finest articulations of “nowhere” people in a world that’s so consumed by the idea of building communities by eliminating others.

(Corsair, Hachette, 2022)

Unicorn: The Memoir of a Muslim Drag Queen by Amrou Al-Kadhi

There are some lines from a few books that don’t leave you. For me, the following from Unicorn stood out and spoke directly to me: “My parents had given me enough indications that the internal truth of who I was would not be tolerated. So I became intolerable.” London-based British-Iraqi drag performer, filmmaker, and artist, Al-Kadhi’s writing in this book is so soul-baring and moving that there isn’t any moment that you cannot not admire their defiance and courage, and a flicker of hope they kept alive to reconcile with their religion in a “new, queer way”.

(Fourth Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins, 2019)

Love That Story: Observations from Gorgeously Queer Life by Jonathan Van Ness

Written like one is having a conversation with a group of friends, Love That Story certainly wasn’t an easy one to write for Jonathan Van Ness. A collection of essays that deals with grief, and imposter syndrome, discusses being HIV-positive, and wrestles with the idea of body image and how consequential it can be especially for a queer person’s mental health, this book is a successor of their bestselling memoir Over the Top. In terms of the writing, the author lays themselves bare while telling the story that’s certainly going to move many people.

(Simon & Schuster, 2022)

Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir by Akwaeke Emezi

A book like Dear Senthuran is a once-in-a-lifetime. In this epistolary work of creative nonfiction, Emezi claims themself to be an Igbo ọgbanje spirit and manages to break away from the human-centric spectrum of queerness. Of Nigerian-Tamil heritage, Emezi writes extraordinary letters to people – dead and alive – in this book, and shares both controversial and humane details from her journey to becoming a writer. In particular, they call Toni Morrison an “elderspirit” and attempt at breaking away from the “trap of hierarchies” to become the unabashedly artist figure they are.

(Faber & Faber, 2021)

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing

When the coronavirus pandemic broke out, several writers turned to Laing’s Lonely City for an insightful conversation about being alone. What all such accounts missed was the inherent queerness of the book. What Laing, who identifies as trans/nonbinary, manages to achieve through this book is articulate a unique position queer people occupy in an infrastructure that’s built on their erasure. For it can’t be a coincidence that she shares the art of Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz, Peter Hujar, and Jean-Michel Basquiat – all of whom were unapologetically queer in a time when the lexicon of queer experiences was at a nascent stage. As Laing, “in the absence of love”, found herself “clinging hopelessly to the city itself”, a queer person latches on to the history of queer ancestors she documents in this remarkable book which is passed off – mostly by readers who can’t appreciate its obvious queerness – as a guide to abreast oneself with the idea and joys of loneliness.

(Canongate Books, 2017)