Diversity Week Graphic Novels

The eight delightfully eerie stories in Apsara Engine are a subtle intervention into everyday reality. A woman drowns herself in a past affair, a tourist chases another guest into an unforeseen past, and a nonbinary academic researches postcolonial cartography. Imagining diverse futures and rewriting old mythologies, these comics delve into strange architectures, fetishism, and heartbreak.

Mads is pretty happy with her life. She goes to church with her family, and minor league baseball games with her dad. She goofs off with her best friend Cat, and has thus far managed to avoid getting kissed by Adam, the boy next door. It's everything she hoped high school would be...until suddenly, it's not. Her dad is hiding something so big it could tear her family apart. And that's just the beginning of her problems: Mads is starting to figure out that she doesn't want to kiss Adam...because the only person she wants to kiss is Cat.

10 year-old Karen Reyes tries to solve the murder of her enigmatic upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, a holocaust survivor, while the interconnected stories of those around her unfold. When Karen's investigation takes us back to Anka's life in Nazi Germany, the reader discovers how the personal, the political, the past, and the present converge.

Yaichi is a work-at-home suburban dad in contemporary Tokyo, married to wife Natsuki, father to young daughter Kana. Their lives are suddenly upended with the arrival at their doorstep of a hulking, affable Canadian named Mike Flanagan, who declares himself the widower of Yaichi's estranged gay twin, Ryoji. What follows is a look at and journey into the largely still-closeted Japanese gay culture and how the next generation has the chance to change the preconceptions of and prejudices against it.

Prince Sebastian is looking for a bride - or rather, his parents are looking for one for him. Sebastian is too busy hiding his secret life from everyone. At night he puts on daring dresses and takes Paris by storm as the fabulous Lady Crystallia - the hottest fashion icon in the world capital of fashion! Sebatian's secret weapon is his brilliant dressmaker, Frances - his best friend and one of only two people who know the truth. But Frances dreams of greatness, and being someone's secret weapon means being a secret. Forever.

Until recently, queer cartooning existed in a parallel universe to the rest of comics, appearing only in gay newspapers and gay bookstores and not in comic book stores, mainstream bookstores or newspapers. The insular nature of the world of queer cartooning, however, created a fascinating artistic scene. LGBT comics have been an uncensored, internal conversation within the queer community, and thus provide a unique window into the hopes, fears, and fantasies of queer people for the last four decades.

Snap's town has a witch. And when Snap's dog goes missing, she finds her dog there, recovering from being hit by a car, in the care of a woman named Jacks. They make a deal: If Jacks teaches Snap how to take care of a crate of orphaned baby opossums that Snap rescued, Snap will assist Jacks with her work. But as Snap starts to gain an appreciation for what Jacks does and their friendship deepens...she realizes that Jacks may in fact have real magic and that she also may have a connection with Snap's family's past.

Now that high school is over, Ari is dying to move to the big city with his ultra-hip band, if he can just convince his dad to let him quit their struggling family bakery. Though he loved working there as a kid, Ari cannot fathom a life wasting away his days over rising doughs and hot ovens. But in the midst of interviewing candidates for his replacement, Ari meets Hector, an easy-going guy who loves baking as much as Ari wants to escape it. As they become closer over batches of breads, love begins to bloom . . . that is, if Ari doesn't ruin everything.

Still smarting years after a horrible breakup, Rayanne diligently buries herself in her work. Then unexpectedly, one of her crushes threatens to upset the delicate balance of her carefully controlled life. Ali is still feeling lost and numb almost a year after the death of her wife. Then one ordinary day something extraordinary happens: she is ambushed by her attraction to another woman that is both invigorating and fantastically inappropriate.

Laura Dean, the most popular girl in high school, was Frederica Riley's dream girl: charming, confident, and SO cute. There's just one problem: Laura Dean is maybe not the greatest girlfriend. Reeling from her latest break up, Freddy's best friend, Doodle, introduces her to the Seek-Her, a mysterious medium who leaves Freddy some cryptic parting words: Break up with her. But Laura Dean keeps coming back, and as their relationship spirals further out of her control, Freddy has to wonder if it's really Laura Dean that's the problem.

Charlie Lamonte is thirteen years old, queer, black, and questioning what was once a firm belief in God. So naturally, she's spending a week of her summer vacation stuck at an all-white Christian youth backpacking camp. As the journey wears on and the rhetoric wears thin, she can't help but poke holes in the pious obliviousness of this storied sanctuary with little regard for people like herself . . . or her fellow camper, Sydney.

Eric Bittle is a former Georgia junior figure skating champion, vlogger extraordinaire, and amateur pâtissier. But as accomplished as he is, nothing could prepare him for his freshman year of playing hockey at the prestigious Samwell University in Samwell, Massachusetts. It's nothing like co-ed club hockey back in the South! For one? There's checking. Second, there is Jack--his very attractive but moody captain.

After a terrible political coup usurps their noble house, Hawke and Grayson flee to stay alive and assume new identities, Hanna and Grayce. Desperation and chance lead them to the Communion of Blue, an order of magical women who spin the threads of reality to their will. While Hawke wants to return to his old life, Grayce struggles to keep the threads of her new life from unraveling, and realizes she wants to stay in the one place that will allow her to finally live as a girl.

Nimona is an impulsive young shapeshifter with a knack for villainy. Lord Ballister Blackheart is a villain with a vendetta. Their mission: prove to the kingdom that Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin and his buddies at the Institution of Law Enforcement and Heroics aren't the heroes everyone thinks they are. But as small acts of mischief escalate into a vicious battle, Lord Blackheart realizes that Nimona's powers are as murky and mysterious as her past. And her unpredictable wild side might be more dangerous than he is willing to admit.

Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy are having a really tough year: with their father serving in the military overseas, they must work overtime to make ends meet...and each girl is struggling in her own way. Whether it's school woes, health issues, boy troubles, or simply feeling lost, the March sisters all need the same thing: support from each other. Only by coming together--and sharing lots of laughs and tears--will these four young women find the courage to discover who they truly are as individuals...and as a family.

Nova Huang works at her grandmothers' bookshop, where she helps them loan out spell books and investigate any supernatural occurrences in their New England town. One fateful night, she follows reports of a white wolf into the woods, and she comes across the unexpected: her childhood crush, Tam Lang, battling a horse demon in the woods. Pursued by dark forces eager to claim the magic of wolves and out of options, Tam turns to Nova for help.

Two timelines. Second chances. One love. A ragtag crew travels to the deepest reaches of space, rebuilding beautiful, broken structures to piece the past together. Two girls meet in boarding school and fall deeply in love--only to learn the pain of loss. With interwoven timelines and stunning art, award-winning graphic novelist Tillie Walden creates an inventive world, breathtaking romance, and an epic quest for love.

Yarrow is a young chef determined to make her mark with her insect-based creations, but it rubs some of her fellow cooks the wrong way, especially Chanda Flores, Yarrow's personal hero. Her people have been eating bugs for centuries, and she's deeply suspicious of this newbie's attempt to turn her traditions into the next foodie trend. While Chanda and her scrappy team of talented devotees struggle to open on time, Yarrow must win over Chanda -- and Milani, the neighbor she's been crushing on for weeks.

A disillusioned 33-year-old Parisian food photographer has a chance encounter with her lost teenage self who has time-travelled 17 years into the future. Together, both women ultimately discover who they really are, finding the courage to live life by being true to themselves.

Settle in to this wittily illustrated soap opera (Bechdel calls it "half op-ed column and half endless serialized Victorian novel") of the lives, loves, and politics of a cast of characters, most of them lesbian, living in a midsize American city. Her brilliantly imagined countercultural band of friends--academics, social workers, bookstore clerks--fall in and out of love, negotiate friendships, raise children, switch careers, and cope with aging parents.

Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his students and a family babysitter. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter's complex yearning for her father.

Archie, a snarky genderqueer artist, is tired of people not understanding gender neutral pronouns. Tristan, a cisgender dude, is looking for an easy way to introduce gender neutral pronouns to his increasingly diverse workplace. The longtime best friends team up in this short and fun comic guide that explains what pronouns are, why they matter, and how to use them. They also include what to do if you make a mistake, and some tips-and-tricks for those who identify outside of the binary to keep themselves safe in this binary-centric world.

Instead of a traditional written diary, Julia Kaye has always turned to art as a means of self-reflection. So when she began her gender transition in 2016, she decided to use her popular webcomic, Up and Out, to process her journey and help others with similar struggles realize they weren't alone.

Maggie has spent basically every summer of her fifteen-year-old life at Camp Bellflower for Girls, set deep in the heart of Appalachia. When Maggie falls into a gut-twisting love for a female counselor named Erin, this summer becomes unlike any other. But Camp Bellflower is an impossible place for a girl to fall in love with another girl, and the camp's rifle range is the only thing keeping Maggie's heart from exploding.

Maia's intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears.

From identity politics and gender roles to privilege and exclusion, Queer explores how we came to view sex, gender and sexuality in the ways that we do; how these ideas get tangled up with our culture and our understanding of biology, psychology and sexology; and how these views have been disputed and challenged. Along the way we look at key landmarks which shift our perspective of what's 'normal.'

For ten years, figure skating was Tillie Walden's life. She woke before dawn for morning lessons, went straight to group practice after school, and spent weekends competing at ice rinks across the state. But as she switched schools, got into art, and fell in love with her first girlfriend, she began to question how the close-minded world of figure skating fit in with the rest of her life, and whether all the work was worth it given the reality: that she, and her friends on the team, were nowhere close to Olympic hopefuls.

Gumballs dispenses an array of bright, candy-colored short comics about Erin's gender transition, anecdotal tales of growing up as a triplet, and fictional stories of a socially inept lovestruck teenager named Tobias. The wide-ranging series is filled with single-page gag cartoons, visual diaries of everyday life, funny faux personal ads, and real-life horror stories from customers at his day job.