8 Don’t-Miss 2022 Queer Graphic Novels & Memoirs

This near-future queer romance is set in a world where AI and bodily augmentation are commonplace. Fawn is a human-presenting AI, and Indira is an augmented human. They’re both interns at the same gallery, and not too fond of each other. But when they’re assigned to work together on a project, their rivalry slowly turns into something else.

In this coming-of-age memoir, Laura Gao shares her experiences growing up in Wuhan, China, the strangeness of adjusting to life after immigrating to Texas, and how everything changed in 2020, when COIVD-19 suddenly puts Wuhan in the public eye. Smart, moving, and often funny, Gao’s story is about the winding path to self-discovery, and what it means to call a place home.

The Price of Salt, Patrica Highsmith’s cult lesbian classic, came back into the public consciousness when it was made into the movie Carol. This book is a fictionalized version of Highsmith’s life, exploring the events that led her to write The Price of Salt in the first place. It’s a blend of biography, history, and reimagining that adds up to a moving portrait of a queer artist, and a love letter to a classic work of lesbian fiction.

This heartwarming middle grade story is about Aimée, a nonbinary Anishinaabe middle school kid on a school field trip with their class. Trying to escape the isolation they’ve felt since coming out as nonbinary, Aimée wanders away from their class, and stumbles into an alternate world populated with characters from Anishinaabe legends. In order to get home, they have to help Trickster on a dangerous quest to protect their home from those who would exploit it.

This nonfiction comic collects interviews that Rhea Ewing did with trans and gender-nonconforming people across the midwest, over many years. In order to understand their own feelings about and experience of gender, Ewing decided to ask other people about what gender meant to them. The result is this wonderful collection, which includes a diverse range of people talking about gender in all its complexities. They touch on relationships, family, sex, language, housing, health care, transition, sexuality, and so much more. Through it all, Ewing shares their own journey of discovery.

You’re going to want to set aside some time for this nearly 900-page graphic memoir. Grove’s story begins in her therapist’s office in the summer of 2004, where she is seeking approval for hormone replacement therapy. It’s not the first time Grove has been in therapy; she’s visited the same therapist before as two different, distinct people. This is a powerful, vulnerable memoir about gender, trauma, and healing.

Fans of My Brother’s Husband will be excited to learn that Tagame has a new book coming out! Sora is a gay teenager living in suburban Japan who longs to live openly as himself but knows how challenging it can be. His whole life changes when he meets Mr. Amamiya, a middle-aged, openly gay man who runs a local coffeeshop. Mr. Amamiya becomes a mentor to Sora through all the challenges the teenager faces.

Fans of retellings, take note: this is a queer monster story inspired by Frankenstein! After her sister Maura dies in an accident, Dr. Frances Ai is determined to bring her back to life. But the person who does return isn’t Maura at all, but a girl named M who remembers nothing about Maura and doesn’t want any of the things Maura wanted. Frances, still grieving for her sister, attempts to turn M into the girl her sister was — but M is determined to be herself, and no one else.