George M. Johnson will write about the Harlem Renaissance in their next book for young adults, People magazine reports.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish Johnson’s Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I’d Known, illustrated by Charly Palmer,this fall. The press describes the book as “an empowering set of essays about Black and Queer icons from the Harlem Renaissance.”
Johnson worked as a journalist before publishing All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifestoin 2020. The book was a hit with critics, including one for Kirkus, who in a starred review, called it “a critical, captivating, merciful mirror for growing up Black and queer today.”
All Boys Aren’t Blue has become a favorite target of censors, drawing dozens of challenges in schools and libraries since its publication. The American Library Association reports that it was the third-most challenged book in the U.S. in 2021, and the second-most challenged in 2022 and 2023.
Flamboyants, the publisher says, “looks to the past for understanding as to how Black and Queer culture has defined the present and will continue to impact the future. With candid prose and an unflinching lens towards truth and hope, George M. Johnson brings young adult readers an inspiring collection of biographies that will encourage teens today to be unabashed in their layered identities.”
Johnson shared news of the book on Instagram, writing, “This book is not just about the Harlem Renaissance. It IS the Harlem Renaissance.”
Flamboyants is slated for publication on Sept. 24.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
