10 More 2017 Releases To Look Forward To

So there have been many glorious 2017 anticipated books lists, and I have put a ton of books on my tbr. So I thought my list would be pretty redundant with all that work out there already. But there are a few nonfiction books I’m excited for that I haven’t seen on most lists, so what the hell, here are 10 diverse new books by women of Color and indigenous women I’m looking forward to this year:

Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed 

Duke UP: February 3rd, 2017

In Living a Feminist Life Sara Ahmed shows how feminist theory is generated from everyday life and the ordinary experiences of being a feminist at home and at work. Building on legacies of feminist of color scholarship in particular, Ahmed offers a poetic and personal meditation on how feminists become estranged from worlds they critique—often by naming and calling attention to problems—and how feminists learn about worlds from their efforts to transform them. (GR)

Field Theories by Samiya Bashir 

Nightboat Books: April 4th, 2017

Field Theories wends its way through quantum mechanics, chicken wings, Newports, and love, melding blackbody theory (idealized perfect absorption vs. the whitebody s idealized reflection) with live Black bodies. Woven through experimental lyrics is a heroic crown of sonnets that wonders about love, intent, identity, hybridity, and how we embody these interstices. (GR)

Nameless Woman – An Anthology of Fiction by Trans Women of Color 

March 2017 if you support the kickstarter here! (13 days left)

At a time when the trans literature is overwhelmingly white and hostile to us, Nameless Woman:An Anthology of Fiction by Trans Women of Color is an unprecedented opportunity for us to tell our stories, create an innovative book of fiction that trans women can enjoy, and begin to create a place for trans women of color to thrive in publishing. (KS site)

The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir by Thi Bui 

Abrams ComicArts: March 7th, 2017

This beautifully illustrated and emotional story is an evocative memoir about the search for a better future and a longing for the past. Exploring the anguish of immigration and the lasting effects that displacement has on a child and her family, Bui documents the story of her family’s daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s, and the difficulties they faced building new lives for themselves. (GR)

Whereas by Layli Long Soldier 

Graywolf Press: March 7th, 2017

WHEREAS her birth signaled the responsibility as mother to teach what it is to be Lakota therein the question: What did I know about being Lakota? Signaled panic, blood rush my embarrassment. What did I know of our language but pieces? Would I teach her to be pieces? Until a friend comforted, Don’t worry, you and your daughter will learn together. Today she stood sunlight on her shoulders lean and straight to share a song in Diné, her father’s language. To sing she motions simultaneously with her hands; I watch her be in multiple musics. (“WHEREAS Statements”)

Critically Sovereign: Indigenous Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies by  Joanne Barker 

Duke UP: April 28th, 2017.

Critically Sovereign traces the ways in which gender is inextricably a part of Indigenous politics and U.S. and Canadian imperialism and colonialism. The contributors show how gender, sexuality, and feminism work as co-productive forces of Native American and Indigenous sovereignty, self-determination, and epistemology. (GR)

Tender: Stories by Sofia Samatar 

Small Beer Press: April 11th, 2017

The first collection of short fiction from a rising star whose stories have been anthologized in the first two volumes of the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy series and nominated for many awards. Some of Samatar’s weird and tender fabulations spring from her life and her literary studies; some spring from the world, some from the void. (GR)

There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé by Morgan Parker 

Tin House: February 14th, 2017

There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé uses political and pop-cultural references as a framework to explore 21st century black American womanhood and its complexities: performance, depression, isolation, exoticism, racism, femininity, and politics. The poems weave between personal narrative and pop-cultural criticism, examining and confronting modern media, consumption, feminism, and Blackness. This collection explores femininity and race in the contemporary American political climate, folding in references from jazz standards, visual art, personal family history, and Hip Hop. (GR)

The January Children by Safia Elhillo 

Univ. of Nebraska: March 1st, 2017

The January Children depicts displacement and longing while also questioning accepted truths about geography, history, nationhood, and home. The poems mythologize family histories until they break open, using them to explore aspects of Sudan’s history of colonial occupation, dictatorship, and diaspora. Several of the poems speak to the late Egyptian singer Abdelhalim Hafez, who addressed many of his songs to the asmarani—an Arabic term of endearment for a brown-skinned or dark-skinned person. Elhillo explores Arabness and Africanness and the tensions generated by a hyphenated identity in those two worlds. (GR)

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay 

HarperCollins: June 13th, 2017

In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger, she explores her own past—including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life—and brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself. (GR)

Which new releases are you most looking forward to this year?