This post is part of Femslash Revolution’s I Am Femslash series, sharing voices of F/F creators from all walks of life. The views represented within are those of the author only.
Before lesbian fiction, I couldn’t remember the last book I had read. I used to devour books when I was younger, but around high school I started getting tired of the kind of stuff my friends were reading. I needed characters that were more like me, and the ordinary girls chosen to save the world and fall in love with some brooding but (arguably) lovable asshole in the process quickly lost their appeal to my questioning 15-year-old self. Books like Nicholas Sparks’s and John Green’s annoyed me to death. I could’ve sworn I didn’t like romance stories — turns out I’d just had enough of heterosexual romance.
I did read fanfiction. However, if we’re being honest, great fanfiction can be pretty hard to find unless the pairing you want is a really popular one, and we all know most femslash pairings just aren’t. We take what we can get, and when times are tough, lower our standards and scroll through the whole tag on AO3 again.
The day I found out there were books about lesbian romance, I was shocked that I’d never thought about it before. Never, not a single time, had it crossed my mind that just as there are people out there writing endless books about heterosexuals, there are lots of people writing about women who love women too. How would I know if I didn’t see anyone talking about them?
(Disclaimer: by “lesbian romance”, I just mean romance between two women, regardless of how they each identify.)
I started reading the first ones I could find, but it soon became clear that I could pick and choose from a wide variety of genres and authors. I have Goodreads to thank for that — with all the shelves and lists and reviews, it is without a doubt the best place for finding books to read. I spend almost as much time there as I do reading. Especially through lists, I’ve found an overwhelming amount of cool books with lesbian romance (or just non-straight female characters if you’re not exactly a sucker for romance in everything like me).
And the best part: the great majority of them are written by actual women-loving women. Which is a relief, because ultimately, the main reason why I started looking for books was that I was exhausted of being disappointed by television shows. I don’t need to remind you that 2016 was not a good year for lesbian representation in TV (not that the ones before were all that much better). It was either straight up Bury Your Gays trope or just endless queerbaiting. At some point I realized it was better to stop hoping that heterosexual TV executives had our best interests in mind when it came to representaton, because the truth is, they usually don’t. But you know who does? Other non-straight women.
Lesbian fiction writers are, most of the time, women who know what they’re talking about, and who write for people like them. They’re women who dedicate their books to their wives — “You are the reason I know how to write a love story” were Jessica L. Webb’s words. Women whose “About The Author” sections say that they live with their wives and children and/or pets. And sometimes, young women who are just people like us — 20-somethings who watch shows like Supergirl and Wynonna Earp for the femslash. Maybe they even started out by posting fanfiction online — Lee Winter was a popular fanfic writer for Swan Queen before she won a Best Mystery award for her debut novel.
I’ve always been one to talk a lot about the things that I like, especially on Tumblr, but I don’t see a whole lot of people here talking about these books. It’s usually more like the few of us who do begging everyone else to read them. When searching the tags I come across plenty of users saying things like, “we need more f/f books!”, and while it is true that we could always use more femslash, what we really need is for more people to acknowledge the books that already exist, because as I keep saying, there are plenty of them.
The biggest sub-genre of lesbian books in general is, of course, romance. However, since we’re living the age of Young-Adult literature, the YA books about girls who like girls are the ones that are talked about the most. They’re automatically exposed to a much bigger audience; almost every time I come across someone on Tumblr recommending lesbian books, they’re all YA. And YA can be great, but even at its finest, it’s just not everyone’s cup of tea.
That’s where all the other genres come in. There’s plenty of “adult” romance, whether you’re into classics and would like to read some historical romance or you prefer more recent stuff. Pretty much everyone likes a good best-friends-to-lovers story, but there are also enough to satisfy your enemies-to-lovers needs. In books you can also find types of characters we don’t see a lot of in other media: lesbian moms, older lesbians, disabled lesbians…
Enough romance. You like fantasy and also want a little representation? They’ve got you! Paranormal and sci-fi too. I personally love mysteries with badass lesbians. If you’re into fairytales, there are some lesbian retellings that might just be the thing you didn’t know you needed. If you want the novel versions of pwp (porn without plot) fanfiction, the fancy name is erotica and you will find lots of it.
My point is, there’s something for every taste, and I’ve made it my personal mission to spread the word about as many of these books as I can. They make me happy, and in a world where we hear sad news about homophobia on a daily basis, we need these happy stories.
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About the author: Julia, 20-year-old lesbian from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Currently on vacation from university, devouring one of these books after the other, and talking a lot about them.