6 Books Exploring Queer Boricua Experience

There is no singular Queer Boricua story.

Queer Boricua stories can contain the island and the diaspora, multiple languages, belief systems, and ways of living. There can be Catholicism, espiritismo, chosen family, Brooklyn rooftops, Orlando suburbs, the heat of San Juan, and the constant negotiation of what it means to belong to a place shaped by colonialism and migration.

The Queer Boricua literature I’m drawn to is tender, defiant, sexy, full of grief, humor, and politically sharp commentary. It spans memoir, poetry, literary fiction, YA, and romance. Some of the writers featured below, like me, were born on the island; others were born stateside or eventually moved stateside where they currently reside (also like me). All of them engage deeply and complexly with Puerto Ricanness.

Below is a cross-genre list of books that explore queer Boricua identity and beyond in ways that feel embodied, complicated, alive. As a proud Boriken, many of these books feel deeply personal to me and continue to inspire and empower me on my own journey to knowing my own heritage and community. I hope this list can further educate our allies as well.

This list is not definitive nor exhaustive. Queer Boricua literature continues to grow — across indie presses, zines, romance imprints, and self-published memoirs. It includes island-based writers and diasporic voices. It includes trans, nonbinary, femme, butch, and questioning narratives, and I hunger for more of it. Interacting with Queer Boricua art has always felt like coming home to a part of myself I didn’t always know how to name. Sitting at so many intersections — queer, Boricua, Afro-Latinx, survivor — I sometimes don’t feel Puerto Rican enough, but experiencing this art and culture reaffirms me, reminds me of the richness of my heritage, and makes me feel less alone. It inspires me to reflect on my own identity — all the ways my queerness, family history, and cultural roots intersect — and how I navigate spaces that don’t always see me fully. In my own writing, I hope to explore these layered identities. Engaging with this art encourages me to take risks in storytelling, honor my roots, and create work that resonates with others who see themselves reflected for the first time. Queer Puerto Rican writing honors the complexity of this identity.

Boricua Queerness is not new. It is ancestral. It is migratory. It is here to stay.

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High-Risk Homosexual by Edgar Gomez

Gomez’s essay collection is sharp, vulnerable, and very funny. He moves between Orlando, Brooklyn, and Puerto Rico while unpacking class mobility, Grindr, body image, and what it means to be visibly queer and Boricua in public. You can read an excerpted essay about Gomez going on PrEP in Lit Hub.

Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera

Rivera’s novel — a coming-of-age tale about a queer Puerto Rican college student who leaves the Bronx for Portland to intern with a white feminist writer — is messy, heartfelt, and deeply invested in queer-of-color self-definition.

Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Díaz

In this memoir about girlhood, violence, queerness, and survival between Puerto Rico and Miami, Díaz writes with urgency about poverty, incarceration, and desire, refusing respectability politics at every turn. Díaz’s debut novel This Is the Only Kingdom also came out this past year and explores Queer Boricua experience.

Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older

This YA urban fantasy novel follows Sierra Santiago, a Brooklyn teen who discovers her family’s connection to a magical tradition that infuses ancestral spirits into art. Centering an Afro-Latina protagonist, the story explores identity, gentrification, and cultural inheritance, with Older applying a distinctly Boricua and diasporic lens to speculative fiction.

Sirena Selena by Mayra Santos-Febres

Santos-Febres writes about performance, poverty, colonial economies, and the erotic charge of survival in this novel about a young drag performer discovered in San Juan and taken to the Dominican Republic.

We the Animals by Justin Torres

This award-winning novel presents a lyrical coming-of-age story about three mixed-race half-Puerto Rican/half-white brothers growing up in upstate New York, with a focus on the youngest boy as he navigates class, masculinity, and queerness. Torres lends an intimate, fragmented style that captures the simultaneous tenderness and volatility of family.

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