6 Diverse Historical YA Must Reads Now In Paperback!
Historical novels, as a genre, can be a hard thing to leap into. They’ve got the lush worldbuilding of fantasy with none of the dragons. They’re trapped by the conventions of their time, unlike sci-fi. The characters can’t text or use the Internet. And let’s face it, oftentimes, they’re full of straight, cis white people doing straight, cis white people things. Why would you buy something that excludes people like you and your friends and seems, well, boring?
But historicals can be absolutely beautiful and fun pieces of literature and, in the current political climate, a comfort to read as an indication that we have gotten through worse and will continue to fight to make things better. Here are six diverse, historical YA books available in paperback now for the reluctant historical reader—or for the avid reader looking to flesh out their backlist.
And I Darken, by Kiersten White
Did you think this was a fantasy? The marketing really wants you to believe that—there’s a comparison to Sabaa Tahir’s An Ember in the Ashes on the book itself—but Kiersten White’s historical re-imagining is just that: a historical. No magic, no dragons, just genderbent history. In White’s world, Vlad Dragwlya—better known as Vlad the Impaler—becomes Lada Dragwlya. Lada and her brother Radu are wrenched from their home of Wallachia and abandoned by their father to be raised in the Ottoman courts, forcing a now-trapped Lada to seek out her own threads of power. I finally read this recently and it yanked me out of a six-month book slump. It’s that good. (And I’m obsessed with Lada. New favorite character alert!) Luckily, you can nab the sequel, Now I Rise, right now!
Cinders & Sapphires, by Leila Rasheed
Some people like their historicals like they like their television: glitzy and dramatic. Rose Cliffe knows she should be grateful to have a place at a house like Somerton, and her new mistress Ada Averly treats Rose as an equal, as a friend—but a scandal has follwoed Ada’s father all the way from India, and only she has the power to restore the Averly name. This 2013 novel—perfect for fans of Downton Abbey—features an Indian lead and plenty of drama.
Flygirl, by Sherri L. Smith
Ida Mae Jones dreams of flight despite being a) a woman and b) black. When America enters the war with Germany and Japan, the Army creates the WASP—the Women Airforce Service Pilots—and Ida can finally fly… if she can “pass” as white. Fans of Code Name Verity will want to pick up this one. Who doesn’t like kickass lady pilots?
Under a Painted Sky, by Stacey Lee
Samantha dreams of moving back to New York as a professional musician, but it’s 1849, and she’s in Missouri, and dreams like that are hard if you’re a Chinese girl. A tragic accident soon dashes those hopes, forcing her to flee to the unknown frontier with a runaway slave named Annamae. But the frontier isn’t safe for two girls alone, so they disguise themselves as Sammy and Andy, two boys headed for the California gold rush. The California Gold Rush isn’t something that gets looked at lot in historical fiction, especially from this beautifully-written perspective.
X, by Ilyasah Shabazz and Kekla Magoon
Malcolm Little’s parents told him he could achieve anything, but his father is dead, his mother is taken away, his dreams of being a lawyer are dashed, and he’s not quite sure he can believe what they told him. Leaving his past and hopes behind bring him into increasingly dangerous territory, and the freedom he’s holding onto is only an illusion. Malcolm X’s story is more timely than ever, and this fictitious imagining of Malcolm X’s teen years comes from quite the authority: X’s own daughter, Ilyasah Shabazz.
The Lightning Dreamer, by Margarita Engle
One way to make historical fiction even more beautiful is to combine it with poetry, and few do it better than Margarita Engle. Engle imagines the life of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, an abolitionist poet in Cuba in the 19th century, through poetry of her own, telling the story of Tula’s resistance to her arranged marriage and her fights against injustice.