The Lobster Dance

Cover art for The Second Mango by Shira Glassman. The cover shows two mangos, one with a image of a green dragon on the skin.

After one heck of a hiatus, we’re back!

First: after some thought, I decided to change the name of our book club to “Beyond Binaries Book Club” instead of “NonBinary Book Club.” Since our focus is reading books that feature characters whose gender expression or identity is not strongly fixed to the gender binary but also on characters who are bi/pansexual/queer-identified, I feel this fits the mission better and is more inclusive. I’ll be updating the old posts to reflect the name change.

For our June/July book, we’re reading The Second Mango by Shira Glassman. Glassman is a queer/bi Jewish author whose “Mangoverse” fantasy world inspired by Jewish mythology and features a young lesbian queen who employs a trope-subverting crossdressing knight on her quest to find a girlfriend.

It’s a YA novel, very adorable, and solidly a PG-13 for not a lot else than some violence and sexual content. If you’re curious about the content, Glassman has a lot of short posts on her blog (contains spoilers).

We’re going to attempt to reconvene here in mid-to-late July for comments. Happy reading!

Queen Shulamit never expected to inherit the throne of the tropical land of Perach so young. At twenty, grief-stricken and fatherless, she’s also coping with being the only lesbian she knows after her sweetheart ran off for an unknown reason. Not to mention, she’s the victim of severe digestive problems that everybody think she’s faking. When she meets Rivka, an athletic and assertive warrior from the north who wears a mask and pretends to be a man, she finds the source of strength she needs so desperately.