Happy Holigays! ☃🎉
Welcome back to the Season of Giving with The Nonbinarian Book Bike! Thanks to the support of our ever-expanding community, we've had an incredibly successful first season distributing free LGBTQIA+ books for all ages throughout Brooklyn, with a particular focus on neighborhoods where there are book deserts. Seeing this effort grow from an individual thought to a community-driven resource has been incredible, and we are so grateful.
As you may have seen on our social media, The Nonbinarian Book Bike needs your help to survive into 2024 and beyond! The cost of our storage unit—a necessary expenditure for inventory and the bike itself—has increased significantly. If you can, please consider becoming a monthly subscriber on Ko-Fi, which will give you early access to announcements as well as behind-the-scenes content in exchange for a few dollars going to the Book Bike each month!
Additionally, please consider sharing The Nonbinarian Book Bike with your communities! Thank you for such an incredible kick-off to our book distribution system—we're thrilled to discover what's next. Speaking of which...
Happy Holigays! 🎁 As a little gift for you for subscribing to this newsletter, you're among the first to know that we're creating a new line of Nonbinarian merchandise in collaboration with community artists. To launch this ongoing project, we're partnering with artist Bria Benjamin (The Realest Oracle Deck)!
Bria Benjamin is a multi-disciplinary artist from Dallas, TX currently based in Brooklyn, NY. She lives by the words of Toni Cade Bambara: "The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible." After a few years spent in corporate advertising and organizing work through mutual aid, she now serves as Communications Coordinator at the People's Forum. Bria is the first artist for the Nonbinarian X project, a series of collaborations between The Nonbinarian Book Bike and our diverse community of artists. Follow Bria on Instagram @briabydesign.
Stay tuned for more details and follow us here or on social media to stay in the loop.
If you're based in Manhattan or one of the surrounding boroughs, stop by P&T Knitwear this holiday season to purchase books for The Nonbinarian Book Bike! P&T Knitwear has chosen us as a holiday partner, which means The Nonbinarian Book Bike is featured with an in-store book tree beside which you'll find items from our P&T wishlist. Everything bought from the wishlist will be directly added to the Book Bike's inventory!
Shopping at P&T Knitwear not only supports an independent bookstore, it also supports a queer- and trans-led mobile mutual aid initiative. P&T Knitwear is located at 180 Orchard St, New York, NY 10002, and it's open every day from 12 p.m.—8 p.m. ET. Questions? Call during business hours at (212) 546-7536 or email info@ptknitwear.com. If you're not able to stop by in person, you can also order online using this link.
While you're at it, consider picking up some young adult and middle-grade titles for the Trans formative Schools Holiday Book Drive! Throughout the holiday season, any YA or MG titles purchased via The Nonbinarian Book Bike wishlists will go directly to TfS, "a progressive education community centering trans joy and social justice" that aims to uplift trans children and educators, as well as their families.
If you'd like an idea of books the org would like, you can browse the official TfS Bookshop wishlist. The Nonbinarian Book Bike receives a portion of each sale, which means you can directly support indie bookstores across the country and help two trans-led organizations simultaneously!
If you aren't sure what to get for the bookish folks in your life, be sure to check out the community recommendations on The Nonbinarian Book Bike Instagram, as well as the holiday picks from our November newsletter. More picks are below!
🎁 Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H (🛒 BUY)
This might be my favorite book of the year. Spanning the author's childhood growing up in an unnamed Arab country to post-grad years finding community in the U.S., this is a brilliant, queer coming-of-age memoir. Interspersed throughout the author's realizations about themself are stories from the Quran. Queerness, religion, race, class, gender, and residential status intersect in this stunning memoir—and the audiobook is fantastic! — Alyssa
🎁 Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang (🛒 BUY)
This book is all appetite, dripping with pleasure. If you loved How Much of These Hills Is Gold, Zhang’s new novel will devour you whole. Our unnamed narrator, a chef in a world running out of food, takes a morally questionable job serving the global elite for the privilege of working in one of the few smog-free places left on Earth. Hot and queer and hungry, and the most decadent climate fiction you’ll ever read. — Chelsea C.
🎁 The Adult by Bronwyn Fischer (🛒 BUY)
This is my favorite debut of 2023. The Adult is a queer coming of age that brims over the lip with longing, desire, and the exhaustion of experiencing what it means to become yourself. The prose is captivating and playful, it tap dances around itself but never misses its chance to prick you with its bittersweet point. Fischer can and will be compared to many contemporary fiction writers, but with a debut like this she stands in a league of her own. — Kyle, bookseller
🎁 Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest to Track Down the Last Remaining Lesbian Bars in America by Krista Burton (🛒 BUY)
Part travel writing, part memoir, this book follows Krista Burton's trek to all of the lesbian bars left in the US in 2021 and 2022 as she tries to solve the age old question: where are all of our queer spaces going? Perfect for that friend that is always inviting you to cram inside Cubby Hole or your dream road trip buddy. — Megan
🎁 Reverse Cowgirl by McKenzie Wark (🛒 BUY)
After reading DeTransition, Baby, my idea of the narratives trans authors could tell was completely upended. McKenzie Wark’s novel draws from her own experiences in a similarly messy, glorious way; she paints a wholly embodied trans experience that avoids trying to conform to the benchmarks we’ve been given. It is at times epistemological, hysterical, erotic, and grim, but always relatable. — Casey
🎁 Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White (🛒 BUY)
I was initially deterred by the YA categorization, but do not let that stop you from picking up this book. Hell Followed With Us is filled with queer rage—rightfully so—and follows a found family of queer teenagers trying to survive the apocalypse after a fundamentalist cult unleashed a virus onto the world. It's perfect for the YA reader in your life; it's perfect for you. — Alyssa
For more holiday picks, be sure to follow the Book Bike on Instagram and shop for all of these titles via Bookshop.
To finish out the year, we're diving into one of our holiday picks! This month's book club pick is Lucky Red by Claudia Cravens.
The Nonbinarian Book Club is partnered with Bluestockings Cooperative, a worker-owner-run activist center, bookstore, and community space that offers mutual aid, harm reduction support, resource research, and a temperature-regulated safe place. People of all genders, cultures, sexualities, and identities are welcome at Bluestockings Cooperative, which is located at 116 Suffolk St, New York, New York, on the Lower East Side.
You can purchase this month's Nonbinarian Book Club book at Bluestockings to support their mission and ours! Click here to order online and make sure to mention the book club in your order comments!
The Nonbinarian Book Bike is partnered with the following independent bookstores! Books purchased from our wishlists will be donated directly to the bike for free distribution.
The Nonbinarian Book Bike is also proud to partner with the following organizations for our community reading events! Please check out their mission statements and support them however possible.
🌠 Reading 4 Black Lives Project
Finally, The Nonbinarian Book Bike is partnered with Trans formative Schools, "a progressive education community centering trans joy and social justice." The organization aims to uplift trans children and educators, as well as families "touched by transness," through the implementation of a free afterschool program for ages 9-15. Trans formative Schools' dream is to create a liberal middle school that employs rigorous academics, identity exploration, and more.
All books purchased from this Bookshop wishlist will go directly to Trans formative Schools. The Nonbinarian Book Bike receives a portion of each purchase, which helps us pay for storage, bike maintenance and upkeep, and more. By purchasing from this list, you directly support two trans-leg organizations and support indie bookstores through Bookshop.
If you'd like to partner with us for an event or for long-term association, please reach out via e-mail! In addition to subscribing to our newsletter, following us on social media, and participating in events, you can also support the Book Bike in the following ways:
📚 Donate a book (or books) to the Book Bike!
📚 Donate funds to help upkeep costs like storage and bike maintenance! You can make a one-time donation or set up a monthly one on Ko-Fi, or you can donate via Venmo.
📚 Buy a book from our wishlist!
📚 Buy a book through our Bookshop storefront!
📚 Support us with a Libro.fm subscription!
📚 Buy Nonbinarian merch!
Thank you to the Nonbinarian community for making our first summer so successful! It has been such a joy to meet you at pop-ups, interact with you on social media, and further get to know the Brooklyn community and its various neighborhoods.
We hope to continue book distribution during the bike's "off-season" by partnering for indoor school fairs and holiday markets. Stay tuned!📚🚲✨
Want to contribute to the Nonbinarian Newsletter?
If you have something you'd like to submit to the newsletter including events, mutual aid needs, book recs, or ideas you'd like to see us include, please email us at newsletter@thenonbinarian.gay.
Thank you for supporting the Nonbinarian Book Bike! Look for our next newsletter on the 1st of the month. In the meantime, follow us on social media for daily updates.