LGBTQ+ Authors at Parkland Community Library

Perfect for readers looking for a coming-of-age immigrant experience

Five years after a suspicious fire killed his mother, a closeted Syrian American trans boy sheds his birth name and searches for a new one. He has been unable to paint since his mother’s ghost has begun to visit him each evening. The only time he feels truly free is when he slips out at night to paint murals on buildings in the once-thriving Manhattan neighborhood known as Little Syria.

One night, he finds the tattered journal of a Syrian American artist named Laila Z. She famously and mysteriously disappeared more than sixty years before, but her journal contains proof that Laila Z’s past is intimately tied to his mother’s-and his grandmother’s–in ways he never could have expected. Even more surprising, Laila Z’s story reveals the histories of queer and transgender people within his community that he never knew.

Following his mother’s ghost, he uncovers the silences kept in the name of survival by his own community, his own family, and within himself, and discovers the family that was there all along.

Perfect for readers looking for flawed characters in a character-driven novel

If she’s being honest, Sammie Lucas is scared of her son.

Working from home in the close quarters of their Florida house, she lives with one wary eye peeled on Samson, a sullen, unknowable boy who resists her every attempt to bond with him. Uncertain in her own feelings about motherhood, she tries her best–driving, cleaning, cooking, prodding him to finish projects for school–while growing increasingly resentful of Monika, her confident but absent wife.

As Samson grows from a feral toddler to a surly teenager, Sammie’s life begins to deteriorate into a mess of unruly behavior. Her struggle to create a picture-perfect queer family unravels. When her son’s hostility finally spills over into physical aggression, Sammie must confront her role in the mess–and the possibility that it will never be clean again.

With Teeth is a thought-provoking portrait of the delicate fabric of family–and the many ways it can be torn apart.

Perfect for readers looking for haunting and heartwrenching storytelling

In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death. Their writing embodies the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it.

Shifting through memory, Vuong contends with personal loss and the meaning of family. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, Vuong’s poems circle fragmented lives to find both restorations as well as the epicenter of the break.