10 Books Featuring Marginalized Characters

By Lakshmi Sunder

Books featuring diverse characters—POC and queer main characters—have increasingly been accepted in the mainstream and popularized through platforms like BookTok (think: The Song of Achilles or The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo).

While this is an admirable step in the right direction, many of these books are ultimately tragedies. As characters reckon with their identities, they spend much of their “hero’s journey” being saved by someone else or not saved at all. Happy endings are a rarity.

It is crucial that we do not sugarcoat what it means to be marginalized, but it is just as crucial to show marginalized characters feeling joy and the typical kinds of sadness—AKA the classic pitfalls of life which are unpleasant, but distinctively not tragic. Let’s see more novels with queer teens falling in love—ones that don’t end in their deaths; let’s see more novels with POC characters that don’t only combat white aggression, or have it be combatted for them. Below is a list of ten such books:
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1. Pride by Ibi Zoboi. This novel takes the classic Pride and Prejudice and frames it in a new context—with an Afro-Latina main character who not only grapples with her budding attraction to her Darcy-equivalent neighbor, but with the gentrification of her community. 
2. To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han. This novel-turned-film is a Rom-Com with the classic “fake dating” trope. As Lara Jean—a half-Korean, half-white main character—pretends to be with someone else, she learns more about herself in the process.  
3. One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston. Many sapphic and gay romances follow the “bury your gays” trope. But in One Last Stop, the couple survives—and thrives. 
4. These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong. A Romeo and Juliet retelling set in 1920s Shanghai, this novel is overflowing with action, political machinations, and love that defies the odds. 
5. Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. While a novel set in a futuristic, necromantic version of the solar system sounds dark, the humorous commentary of the unabashedly lesbian main character will make you laugh out loud. 
6. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. A diverse set of characters—including a South Asian woman, black bisexual man, and gay man—go on a heist together. Set in a fantastical world where people can control fire, water, and even people’s heartbeats, this book will capture your heart. 
7. The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar. A novel with a Muslim and lesbian main character, The Henna Wars takes a complicated identity and frames it in a lighthearted, enemies-to-lovers romance. 
8. When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore. This novel places a Hispanic main character and transgender love interest in a lyrical world with stunning magical realism and worldbuilding. 
9. Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas. A book that artfully handles the feeling of being torn between two cultures, Dumas’s Funny in Farsi is at once both lighthearted and sincere, unfurling a narrative that spans generations. 
10. The Book of Delights by Ross Gay. Journal entries about delight range from hummingbirds to airplane interactions to topics like the “commodification of black suffering,” as Gay puts it. The latter entry ends on a more joyful note, with Gay stating, “And the delight? You have been reading [...] [a] book of black delight.”​

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