100 Books Like Forbidden City

The Earth’s Children series fully immersed me in Stone Age Europe, thanks to Jean M. Auel’s nerd-level research. But what hooked me was her protagonist: Ayla, a courageous, spiritually gifted, neurodivergent genius. Though Ayla’s a white Cro-magnon, and I’m a Latina Homo sapiens, I relate to this fish out of water.

In this book, she’s wildly different from the Neanderthals who adopt her, echoing my own family experience. Ayla’s unique problem-solving skills also set her apart, sending her careening between loneliness and leadership. What excites me most about her journey is that the demands of the Ice Age give her more opportunities to explore her potential than many modern women. I recommend starting with Clan of the Cave Bear, Ayla’s origin story, which stands on its own. 

This book is unhinged in the best way. I love Gideon’s unique voice. Around her is a deadly-serious necromancer murder mystery with interplanetary stakes, and she cares more about cracking dirty jokes and finally eating some warm food. Her relationship with her arch-nemesis/only friend Harrow leaps off the page.

I love the scene where they get into a pool so Harrow can finally confess to Gideon her darkest secret—so hot and so disturbing all at the same time. While this book isn’t technically a romance and the genre feels more like a horror fantasy set in space, I couldn’t resist putting it on the list. As Gideon says to Harrow, “One flesh, one end, bitch.”

Several Luis Alberto Urrea novels feature powerful women, but this one resonates with me the most. One reason is that, like my novel, his also reimagines the history of a real-life great-aunt from Mexico. Urrea’s protagonist, Teresita, Saint of Cabora, is so full of heart that she gives me hope more readers will embrace Latinas in American literature.

Teresita Urrea exemplifies the strength teenage girls can wield when people encourage them to speak up instead of pipe down and when people value all their gifts regardless of whether those gifts were once labeled “masculine,” like boldness, or “feminine,” like empathy. For me, Teresita offered timeless wisdom: because she led with love, she saw through the lies of the powerful to the hearts of people who needed healing and justice. 

Who doesn’t love a book with dragons? Bonus—a magic Hogwarts-ish school where you go to learn about how to control your dragon.

The extra twist in To Shape a Dragon’s Breath is that the story is told from the perspective of an indigenous woman, Anequs. People like her aren’t supposed to have dragons, let alone be capable of learning how to manage them. No one at the Anglish dragon school she’s forced to attend believes Anequs can succeed, but Anequs doesn’t care what the Anglish think. 

What I loved about this book was how firmly grounded Anequs is in her family and her people, as well as the confidence that gives her. Anequs never wavers in her belief in herself and the value of indigenous wisdom and culture.

As a professor, I know that sometimes just getting through four years of college can be its own epic struggle, especially when you’re queer and half-Nigerian, like Sahara.

“The unfortunates” is the name Sahara and her friends use to describe the deaths of too many of their fellow Black students. As if that isn’t enough, Sahara sometimes feels like her only companion is her “Life Partner,” the name she gives to the ugly voice of her depression.

I loved the way The Unfortunates is told as an in-your-face “thesis” to Sahara’s university committee that mixes humor with high-stakes struggles. Follow along as Sahara figures out how to survive in the face of a campus and culture that is not just indifferent, but outright hostile.

From the moment I met Carlotta Mercedes, the main character in this book, I was rooting for her. She’s a convicted felon, up for parole for the fifth time, but she’s pretty sure she’ll be denied: “Them sonofabitches said I had bad behavior, but they definition a bad behavior’s if you scream when a CO whupping yo ass like a Betty Crocker fudge cake.” I’m a sucker for books with lively, laugh-out-loud language. 

Carlotta is all dynamic energy and jambalaya metaphor, even though she has spent twenty years in prison for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and has endured rape and physical abuse because she’s a trans woman in a men’s cell block. 

I am cheering for Carlotta when she’s released and begins making her way through our modern world, “like a brain-damaged African elephant trying to jump into a game of double Dutch.” She laughs… show more.

This is one of the strongest survivors I've met in historical fiction. I related to Gussie feeling like an outsider in her family, though for different reasons. I’m a mixed-race woman of Latina, Asian, and Anglo roots, and grew up bouncing between family members in an ethnic patchwork of neighborhoods. Like Gussie, I don’t look or act like anyone in my family—or anywhere.

Like Gussie, I’ve never conformed to society’s expectations of “ladies.” Some see my opinionated, independent, wandering nature as masculine—again, like Gussie. Her confidence, adventurousness, and determination are qualities I’ve cultivated with gusto. Her loneliness feels familiar, but it clarifies the bonds she creates and her loyalty to those she loves. Though most folks in Gussie’s world consider her plain, I find her beautiful.

Although Sula is my favorite Toni Morrison protagonist, I’ve found the most profound revelation of power in the four women I consider the collective protagonist of A Mercy. Florens is the primary protagonist, but the communal self she forms with the others leaps off the page.

In a society where men value independence, I rooted for these women as they leaned into interdependence: Rebekka, white Mistress of the house; Lina, the Native American servant; Sorrow, the servant suspected of being mixed-race and feeble-minded; and Florens, the enslaved black girl taken as payment for a debt.

This multiracial cast pools their skills to survive in a society suspicious of any woman sans man. A Mercy seems timely to me as America still struggles to accept women and minorities as partners.

Numerous studies have confirmed that China’s Great Famine was man-made, its architect Mao Zedong. Yet, many of those affected do not blame Mao for what happened to them.

Still, in today’s China, many, including those affected by the catastrophe, worship Mao. The presence of such a ludicrous act is attributed to the communist regime’s mythicizing Mao and meantime censoring any media exposing Mao’s immense cruelties.

This book by Chen helps uncover and make explicit the testimonies of those involved in the human catastrophe. The book also exposes testimonies concerning political violence before and after the famine, which is very beneficial for one to ponder over why political violence and man-made tragedies recur in contemporary China and whether China by itself is capable of ensuring similar tragedies never again occur.

Oral history as a literary form is relatively new in China. When asked why he wrote the book, Mr. Feng replied that it was because of his guilt as a survivor and as a witness. The Cultural Revolution has devastated and scarred generation after generation in China, yet most people are silent about their personal experiences. Feng conducted numerous interviews with ordinary people who had lived through that period and wrote these intimate stories in the collection. Every voice is different and deeply personal; together, they portray one of the most disturbing and tumultuous times in Chinese history.