Volunteer Writer: Anonymous 

For many queer people of color (POC), the first encounter with literature is not recognition, but fragmentation. Stories exist, but rarely all at once: queerness without race, race without queerness, identity split into pieces that never fully reflect a lived experience.

As a child, I’ve always read books pertaining to queer identities and love before figuring out my own identity. In a world full of heterosexual norms and upbringing, I would find myself leaning towards queer manga (Japanese comic books and graphic novels), but still only reading white queer authors’ books because I couldn’t find proper representation without stereotypes of how queer Black people exist.

Over time, this led me to wonder where these stories are and why they are less accessible than heteronormative books.

Dr. Toniqua Mikell, an assistant professor of Crime & Justice Studies at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, describes this gap as not incidental, but systemic, saying, “I think there is a gap in queer books in general. When you live in a supremacist society, as we have in the United States, part of that white supremacist, patriarchal, kind of socialization process, is this emphasis on heteronormativity.” 

She added that representation itself is often treated as a threat: “And by providing books of alternatives to that, then, oh no, you might be convincing people that there are other ways to be. And you know, we can’t have that right?” 

Dr. Mikell described the issue as extending beyond publishing trends into deliberate cultural control. 

“And then specifically to queer folks of color, same thing. We don’t want people to see alternative versions of love, community, and family, and we don’t want people to see Black and brown people loving each other. I do think it’s a very intentional strategy to not present visions of what could be and what does exist…,” Dr. Mikell said. 

That gap is reflected in how students describe their reading experiences. 

Uni Sky, a student at UMass Dartmouth, described the difficulty of finding representation that reflects multiple identities at once: “I struggle to think of one thing I’ve read or seen of every part of me that coexists. It’s always in part. If I want to identify with something as a queer person, I have to find something that represents me as a queer person, and the same for finding books or shows about queer Black women or a Haitian Black woman.” 

Karissa Davis, a business student at UMass Dartmouth, pointed to how limited portrayals reinforce narrow expectations, saying, “Women in business, they always try to portray Black characters as artsy only, and they definitely can be, but they are also scientists, doctors, nurses, etc.” 

Students say these perceptions are shaped as much by what is centered in literature as by what is left out. Over time, that imbalance affects how readers imagine both themselves and others, reinforcing a narrow sense of what identities are expected to look like in literature and beyond. 

Historical censorship and legal restrictions help explain why those patterns persist in literature. 

Dr. Shari Evans, a scholar at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, points to a longer history of suppression: “There was a long period of time during which the practice of homosexuality was illegal. So anything, and including representations and homosexuality… until something like 1970 made it illegal to depict gayness on the screen.” 

Because of this, queer voices still existed, but they were often hidden. 

“So we can think about that, right? If it’s illegal. Everything is there that’s submerged. So they’re queer authors always,” Dr. Evans continued. 

She explained that even when queer writers were present, their work was often indirect or coded: “They weren’t talking about it, but they were. Their writing wasn’t necessarily coded queer, but they worked here, and they were writing those pieces into the world. And that matters. Right?”

Publishing systems reinforced that invisibility. As Dr. Evans explained, “Certainly a publishing industry that wasn’t going to self-put things out that could get them in trouble…” 

Dr. Evans shared examples of both visibility and limitation, saying, “So we have writers like [James] Baldwin, who make that move to do this thing… But that book isn’t taught that much.”

Representation, she argues, shapes not just literature, but perception of possibility: “If we know that representation matters, if we look at that and we see… the people in charge… I can’t do that. That’s what it tells me.” 

Dr. Mikell shares a similar viewpoint. 

In literature, absence also carries emotional weight. 

“If I’m intimately experiencing this thing… and it’s always someone who doesn’t look like me… that’s telling me that I’m not really there,” Dr. Mikell said. 

But, representation can also shift understanding. 

Dr. Mikell continued, “I see it, and it’s me, and I know that I belong. I see it, and it’s not me, and I realize, oh, but this is also me.” 

These patterns continue today in schools and publishing, where censorship remains a barrier, across at least 16 states: including Florida, Texas, Iowa, Missouri, and North Carolina. Books centered on race, queerness, and marginalized identities are being challenged or removed, pointing to a broader pattern of cultural control. 

Dr. Evans questioned, “This is religious right? And it is this particular cultural conservatism that’s come back into power.” 

Yet, Dr. Evan noted that banning books often has the opposite effect: “The more… you say like, don’t read these things. The more kids are going to find those things, right?”

Storytelling is also expanding beyond traditional publishing. 

“There’s more and more queer people of color writing in like in other ways, right? So in video games, in graphic novels…” Dr. Evans continued.

Still, access remains uneven, leaving many readers to bridge gaps on their own. Dr. Evans explained that for many readers, the absence becomes cumulative: “If you can never find that representation of yourself… It’s overwhelming.” 

To add on, Dr. Mikell emphasized that “…queerness in books just has to be part of the larger character background, like the same way you would paint a picture of a character’s development of how they grew up, their home, their life, like, tell the story like they’re a regular person.” 

The solution to this problem of representation is not only visibility, but complexity: “An authentic representation is going to be a representation that is, um, fully human and complex and, in different and unique ways, right?,” Dr. Evans stated. 

This need for complexity becomes especially visible in discussions around queer POC in literature and media. As debates over banned books and curriculum continue, the issue remains unresolved. Queer POC stories are not absent, but often harder to access, less promoted, or deliberately excluded. 

The question is no longer whether these stories exist. 

It is who is allowed to find them, and who is still being left out. 

Even as access expands in some spaces, the gaps in schools and mainstream publishing remain noticeable for many readers.