# Bee's Books **Bailee Russo** • Jun 26 Wronggggggg. Now, we can have a conversation about how publishing house conglomerates and the trend-led mass-market led by an overwhelming white, straight, etc, majority creates a homogeneity of stories...sure. We can talk about that all day long. But if we do, we _also_ need to talk about how consumers drive that market, and how our choices -- on social media feeds, on review platforms, at the bookstore -- make an impact on those publishing trends. That, I think, is a more interesting conversation. Because if we put in the effort to follow book reviewers from a diversity of perspectives, to support indie and underrepresented authors, to review the books we read with critical self-reflection, to support our local book vendors, libraries, etc...then we will find a huge, wide world of weird and wonderful literature just waiting for its audience. And in doing so, we can make an impact on publishing as a whole, too. So, here are a few unique books that I think you might love, featuring cannibalistic nuns, Faustian bargains, shape-shifting mermaids, talking animals, alternate futures, parasitic aliens, swampcore haunted cabins, cryptids, and more. ### Recommended Books 1. **Herculine** by Grace Byron: an all Trans girls commune haunted by demons. 2. **The Reformatory** by Tanarive Due: a segregated reform school and the evil inside. 3. **Wife Shaped Bodies** by Laura Cranehill: the trad wives are sprouting mushrooms. 4. **A Dark and Drowning Tide** by Allison Saft: a dark academia quest for a magic spring. 5. **Sky Full of Elephants** by Cebo Campbell: a new world where all the white people have disappeared. 6. **The Buffalo Hunter Hunter** by Stephen Graham Jones: A Blackfeet vampire seeking vengeance. 7. **The Starving Saints** by Caitlin Starling: a medieval castle under siege and the cannibalistic fever dream that unfolds inside. 8. **What We Feed to the Manticore** by Talia Lakshmi Kolluri: a collection of compelling short stories all told from the perspectives of animals. 9. **After Love** by Tanya Byrne: a fantastical lesbian love story that literally transcends death itself. 10. **Green Fuse Burning** by Tiffany Morris: a grief-stricken Indigenous artist who arrives at a cabin in a remote, swampy forest, before strange things start to happen. 11. **Fate's Bane** by CL Clark: sword-wielding, star-crossed lovers from rival clans, inspired by Celtic folklore. 12. **As Many Souls as Stars** by Natasha Siegel: a Faustian Bargain between a witch and a demon, and their game of cat-and-mouse that spans multiple lifetimes. 13. **A Feast for the Eyes** by Alex Crespo: four teenagers hunting the local cryptic that feeds on secrets. 14. **They Bloom at Night** by Trang Thanh Tran: a red algae bloom causes strange mutations in a small Louisiana town. 15. **The Seep** by Chana Porter: a parasitic alien invasion that creates a strange utopia, and one woman's quest to stop its spread. 16. **The Gloaming** by Kirsty Logan: a hungry sea, a family beset by grief, and a strange woman who climbs up from the water. Happy reading! -B --- ### They're All the Same Now # In Defense of Smut: Erotica as a Sociopolitical Window Smut, erotica, and "spicy romance" are frequently discarded, criticized, and even banned on the grounds that such materials are obscene, pornographic, and vapid. Much of this criticism is rooted, of course, in puritanical misogyny. In her essay, “_Uses of the Erotic_,” Audre Lorde linked the erotic with power and resistance, and contended that to know oneself, to live fully embodied, and to nurture the empowering force of pleasure and intimacy is itself an act of self-respect. The erotic is therefore a threat to the dominant social power structure, which seeks to suppress feminine expressions of the erotic in particular. Lorde’s definition of the erotic was held as distinct from the pornographic, a descriptor often used to criticize the erotic romance genre. The pornographic is “a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. [It] emphasizes sensation without feeling.” The pornographic is most often centered around the patriarchal gaze. It is performative, and intended for consumption, not for intimacy. The erotic, in contrast, is “a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.” It is “that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming.” The erotic is a holistic, internally satisfying source to which we may be spiritually connected. It is celebration, joy, pleasure, satisfaction, intimacy, and a guiding force toward fulfillment and liberation. ## Some Definitions - **Erotica**: literature centered around sexual desire, driving the development of the story. - **Smut**: often used interchangeably with "erotica" or to describe romance novels with sexual content. - **Romance**: a story that centers around a romantic relationship and resolves with a "happily-ever-after" or "happily-for-now." ### Read Audre Lorde’s Essay here [link](C:\Users\Darkwater\Desktop\Audre_Lorde_cool-beans.wpd) --- ### Get to know me through some of my favorite very specific sub-genres! #### Do we share any favorites? 1. **Queer body horror**: - Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon - Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White - Wife Shaped Bodies by Laura Cranehill - What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher - Providence Girls by Morgan Dante 2. **Vengeful vampire romantics**: - Hungerstone by Kat Dunn - Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk - Immortal Dark by Tigest Girma - A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson 3. **Radical hopefulness**: - The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers - The Parable of the Sower & The Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler - The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin 4. **Very niche non-fiction**: - Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer - Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique by Sa’ed Atshan 5. **Weird genre-benders**: - The Seep by Chana Porter - Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield - Severance by Ling Ma - Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi.