Flamboyants, The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I’d Known by George M. Johnson, illustrated by Charly Palmer Published by Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers, 2024.

March 2026

Flamboyants, The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I’d Known by George M. Johnson, illustrated by Charly Palmer

Published by Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers, 2024.

Written for a young adult audience, this is a powerful introduction to fourteen celebrated queer Black writers, performers, and activists involved in the Harlem Renaissance, a powerful cultural movement in the 1920’s and early 1930’s centered in Harlem, New York City when Black American writers, musicians, artists, and thinkers gained national recognition in reshaping American culture.  Flamboyants, serves as a jumping off point for learning about these iconic personalities who all have one thing in common, that their queerness has been obscured throughout history.  Johnson reveals how American culture has been shaped by these icons who are both Black and queer – and whose stories deserve to be celebrated in their entirety, including a celebration of their queerness.

People included in this collection include familiar names like Langston Hughes, Josephine Baker, and Zora Neale Hurston as well as many others that were unfamiliar to me including Countee Cullen, Richard Bruce Nugent, Ma Rainey, Alain Locke, Bessie Smith, Gladys Bentley, Claude McKay, Jimmy Daniels and Ethel Waters.  All of the stories are told in quick essays, interspersed with powerful poetry, and illustrations by award-winning illustrator Charly Palmer.  Johnson also adds their own personal thoughts on their lives, sometimes disagreeing with what some of them said, but always showing honor, respect, and appreciation for what these folks added to Black queer American culture. 

Here is the poem titled “Flamboyants” from the book:

Flamboyants

For too long, our true stories have been untold
Lies about us bought and sold
Ancestors to many we should have been
Muted were our lives, our queering deemed sin
But we dreamed, we danced, we sexed, we lived
On the tips of mountaintops, we lived
The stage of the Great White Way we lived
Street of Harlem we paved, we lived
Yet too long our stories have been untold
Ripped from history, stolen like gold
We live again, and now we thrive
Through stories told by the new negro, we thrive
From tongues of the youth our truth, we thrive
Flamboyantly our spirits remain,
A new generation’s rage lit by our flame

In short, Flamboyants looks to the past for understanding as to how Black Queer culture has defined the present and will continue to impact the future in America.  George M. Johnson brings young adult readers an inspiring collection of biographies that will encourage teens today to be unabashed in their layered identities.

At the back of the book there is a list of recommended reading where Johnson shares some of the sources they used to learn about the people profiled in this collection.

George M. Johnson (they/them) is a queer Black American author, journalist and activist.  They dedicate this book: “To the people who choose to live in their unapologetic truths, despite a world that continues to try to dim their light.” 

They are best known as the author of their award-winning memoir-manifesto All Boys Aren’t Blue.  Follow them on Instagram at iamgmjohnson.

This book review was submitted by Stand with Trans advocate Barb Shumer,
past board member and retired public librarian.