Happy #PrideMonth! Celebrate with LGBTQIA+ books!
We’ve put together a list of unforgettable and inspiring reads that celebrate and give voice to the LGBTQIA+ community.
Click for Even More LGBTQIA+ Books that Celebrate #PrideMonth.
The Stonewall Reader Edited by New York Public Library; Foreword by Edmund White
The Stonewall uprising is considered the most significant event in the gay liberation movement, and the catalyst for the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States. Drawing from the New York Public Library’s archives, The Stonewall Reader is a collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented both the years leading up to and the years following the riots. Most importantly the anthology spotlights both iconic activists who were pivotal in the movement, such as Sylvia Rivera, co-founder of Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR), as well as forgotten figures like Ernestine Eckstein, one of the few out, African American, lesbian activists in the 1960s. The anthology focuses on the events of 1969, the five years before, and the five years after. Jason Baumann, the NYPL coordinator of humanities and LGBTQ collections, has edited and introduced the volume to coincide with the NYPL exhibition he has curated on the Stonewall uprising and gay liberation movement of 1969.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
Fairest: A Memoir by Meredith Talusan
A singular, beautifully written coming-of-age memoir of a Filipino boy with albinism whose story travels from an immigrant childhood to Harvard to a gender transition and illuminates the illusions of race, disability, and gender.
Fairest is a memoir about a precocious boy with albinism, a “sun child” from a rural Philippine village, who would grow up to become a woman in America. Coping with the strain of parental neglect and the elusive promise of U.S. citizenship, Talusan found childhood comfort from her devoted grandmother, a grounding force as she was treated by others with special preference or public curiosity. As an immigrant to the United States, Talusan came to be perceived as white. An academic scholarship to Harvard provided access to elite circles of privilege but required Talusan to navigate through the complex spheres of race, class, sexuality, and her place within the gay community. She emerged as an artist and an activist questioning the boundaries of gender. Talusan realized she did not want to be confined to a prescribed role as a man, and transitioned to become a woman, despite the risk of losing a man she deeply loved. Throughout her journey, Talusan shares poignant and powerful episodes of desirability and love that will remind readers of works such as Call Me By Your Name and Giovanni’s Room. Her evocative reflections will shift our own perceptions of love, identity, gender, and the fairness of life.
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Click for a Discussion Guide.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story by Jacob Tobia
A heart-wrenching, eye-opening, and giggle-inducing memoir about what it’s like to grow up not sure if you’re (a) a boy, (b) a girl, (c) something in between, or (d) all of the above.
As a young child in North Carolina, Jacob Tobia wasn’t the wrong gender, they just had too much of the stuff. Barbies? Yes. Playing with bugs? Absolutely. Getting muddy? Please. Princess dresses? You betcha. Jacob wanted it all, but because they were “a boy,” they were told they could only have the masculine half. Acting feminine labelled them “a sissy” and brought social isolation.
It took Jacob years to discover that being “a sissy” isn’t something to be ashamed of. It’s a source of pride. Following Jacob through bullying and beauty contests, from Duke University to the United Nations to the podiums of the Methodist church—not to mention the parlors of the White House—this unforgettable memoir contains multitudes. A deeply personal story of trauma and healing, a powerful reflection on gender and self-acceptance, and a hilarious guidebook for wearing tacky clip-on earrings in today’s world, Sissy guarantees you’ll never think about gender—both other people’s and your own—the same way again.
Available in Hardcover, Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Click for a Book Club Kit.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
Cantoras: A Novel by Carolina De Robertis
Winner of the ALA 2020 Stonewall Adult Book Award
In defiance of the brutal military government that took power in Uruguay in the 1970s, and under which homosexuality is a dangerous transgression, five women miraculously find one another—and, together, an isolated cape that they claim as their own. Over the next thirty-five years, they travel back and forth from this secret sanctuary, sometimes together, sometimes in pairs, with lovers in tow or alone.
Throughout it all, they will be tested repeatedly—by their families, lovers, society, and one another—as they fight to live authentic lives. A groundbreaking, genre-defining work, Cantoras is a breathtaking portrait of queer love, community, forgotten history, and the strength of the human spirit.
Available in Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt and Download a Reading Guide.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
Tasty Pride: 75 Recipes and Stories from the Queer Food Community by Tasty and Jesse Szewczyk
Be proud, be loud, be flavorful. From the beloved, fiercely inclusive BuzzFeed cooking brand comes 75 innovative recipes and inspiring stories from prominent LGBTQ+ cooks and foodies.
Tasty has always been the place to turn for good eats. Now, it’s also the place to turn for a community. Here, stories of love, pride, and acceptance—and the important role that food can play in that journey—accompany the innovative yet totally doable recipes you know to expect from Tasty.
Compiled by food writer Jesse Szewczyk and contributed by 75 cooks and celebrities from across the queer community such as Ted Allen, Anita Lo, and Rick Martinez, these recipes are not only delicious, but also meaningful. These folks bring you the dishes they love most, from Taco Potatoes with Spicy Ground Turkey to Everything Bagel Beignets, and from Beer-Steamed Crabs with Spicy Vinegar Dipping Sauce and Corn Salad to Fudgy Miso Brownies.
Pull up a chair and take your seat at the table with Tasty Pride.
Available in Hardcover and eBook Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Trixie and Katya’s Guide to Modern Womanhood by Trixie Mattel and Katya
The RuPaul’s Drag Race legends, stars of UNHhhh, and expert biological women share the secrets of their feminine mystique in this satirical guide to beauty and homemaking.
Drag superstars Trixie Mattel and Katya have long captivated fans with their stunning looks, onscreen chemistry, and signature wit. In Trixie and Katya’s Guide to Modern Womanhood, the pair channel that energy into an old-school etiquette guide for ladies.
In essays, conversations, and how-to sections peppered with hilarious, gorgeous photos, Trixie and Katya will advise readers on beauty and fashion and tackle other vital components of a happy home, such as money, self-love, and friendship; sharing advice and personal stories in high-concept fashion.
Informative, humorous, and heartwarming, Trixie and Katya’s Guide to Modern Womanhood is the book that their fans have been waiting for.
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America by R. Eric Thomas
From the creator of Elle’s “Eric Reads the News,” a heartfelt and hilarious memoir-in-essays about growing up seeing the world differently, finding unexpected hope, and experiencing every awkward, extraordinary stumble along the way.
R. Eric Thomas didn’t know he was different until the world told him so. Everywhere he went—whether it was his rich, mostly white, suburban high school, his conservative black church, or his Ivy League college in a big city—he found himself on the outside looking in.
In essays by turns hysterical and heartfelt, Thomas reexamines what it means to be an “other” through the lens of his own life experience. He explores the two worlds of his childhood: the barren urban landscape where his parents’ house was an anomalous bright spot, and the Eden-like school they sent him to in white suburbia. He writes about struggling to reconcile his Christian identity with his sexuality, the exhaustion of code-switching in college, accidentally getting famous on the internet (for the wrong reason), and the surreal experience of covering the 2016 election for Elle online, and the seismic changes that came thereafter. Ultimately, Thomas seeks the answer to these ever more relevant questions: Is the future worth it? Why do we bother when everything seems to be getting worse? As the world continues to shift in unpredictable ways, Thomas finds the answers to these questions by reenvisioning what “normal” means and in the powerful alchemy that occurs when you at last place yourself at the center of your own story.
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud
An electrifying novel of an unconventional family in Trinidad mended by their individual, and collective, quests for love.
After Betty Ramdin’s husband dies, she invites a colleague, Mr. Chetan, to move in with her and her son, Solo. Over time, the three become a family, loving each other deeply and depending upon one another. Then, one fateful night, Solo overhears Betty confiding in Mr. Chetan and learns a secret that plunges him into torment.
Solo flees Trinidad for New York to carve out a lonely existence as an undocumented immigrant, and Mr. Chetan remains the singular thread holding mother and son together. But soon, Mr. Chetan’s own burdensome secret is revealed, with heartbreaking consequences. Love After Love interrogates love and family in all its myriad meanings and forms, asking how we might exchange an illusory love for one that is truly fulfilling.
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
Lot: Stories by Bryan Washington
A brilliant, viscerally drawn world vibrates with energy, wit, raw power, and the infinite longing of people searching for home. With soulful insight into what makes a community, a family, and a life, Lot explores trust and love in all its unsparing and unsteady forms.
In the city of Houston – a sprawling, diverse microcosm of America – the son of a black mother and a Latino father is coming of age. He’s working at his family’s restaurant, weathering his brother’s blows, resenting his older sister’s absence. And discovering he likes boys.
Around him, others live and thrive and die in Houston’s myriad neighborhoods: a young woman whose affair detonates across an apartment complex, a ragtag baseball team, a group of young hustlers, hurricane survivors, a local drug dealer who takes a Guatemalan teen under his wing, a reluctant chupacabra. In the city of Houston—a sprawling, diverse microcosm of America—the son of a black mother and a Latino father is coming of age. He’s working at his family’s restaurant, weathering his brother’s blows, resenting his older sister’s absence. And discovering he likes boys.
Available in Hardcover, Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
All My Mother’s Lovers by Ilana Masad
A unique meditation on the universality and particularity of family ties and grief, and a tender and biting portrait of sex, gender, and identity, All My Mother’s Lovers challenges us to question the nature of fulfilling relationships.
Intimacy has always eluded twenty-seven-year-old Maggie Krause—despite being brought up by married parents, models of domestic bliss—until, that is, Lucia came into her life. But when Maggie’s mom, Iris, dies in a car crash, Maggie returns home only to discover a withdrawn dad, an angry brother, and, along with Iris’s will, five sealed envelopes, each addressed to a mysterious man she’s never heard of.
In an effort to run from her own grief and discover the truth about Iris—who made no secret of her discomfort with her daughter’s sexuality—Maggie embarks on a road trip, determined to hand-deliver the letters and find out what these men meant to her mother. Maggie quickly discovers Iris’s second, hidden life, which shatters everything Maggie thought she knew about her parents’ perfect relationship. What is she supposed to tell her father and brother? And how can she deal with her own relationship when her whole world is in freefall?
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
They Say Sarah by Pauline Delabroy-Allard; Translated by Adriana Hunter
A literary sensation in France, this poetic, thrilling debut charts the all-consuming passion between two women and the ruin it leaves in its wake.
A thirty-something teacher drifts through her life in Paris, raising a daughter on her own, lonely in spite of a new boyfriend. And then one night at a friend’s tepid New Year’s Eve party, Sarah enters the scene like a tornado—a talented young violinist, she is loud, vivacious, appealingly unkempt in a world where everyone seems preoccupied with being “just so.” Thus begins an intense relationship, tender and violent, that will upend both women’s lives.
In gorgeous, evocative prose, Pauline Delabroy-Allard perfectly captures the pull of a desire so strong that it blinds us to everything else.
Available in Trade Paperback and eBook Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
#PrideMonth Listens:
Legendary Children: The First Decade of RuPaul’s Drag Race and the Last Century of Queer Life by Tom Fitzgerald and Lorenzo Marquez; Read by the Authors
A definitive deep-dive into queer history and culture with hit reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race as a touchstone, by the creators of the pop culture blog Tom and Lorenzo
From the singular voices behind Tom and Lorenzo comes the ultimate guide to all-things RuPaul’s Drag Race and its influence on modern LGBTQ culture. Legendary Children centers itself around the idea that not only is RuPaul’s Drag Race the queerest show in the history of television, but that RuPaul and company devised a show that serves as an actual museum of queer cultural and social history, drawing on queer traditions and the work of legendary figures going back nearly a century. In doing so, Drag Race became not only a repository of queer history and culture, but also an examination and illustration of queer life in the modern age. It is a snapshot of how LGBTQ folks live, struggle, work, and reach out to one another–and how they always have–and every bit of it is tied directly to Drag Race. Each chapter is an examination of a specific aspect of the show–the Werk Room, the Library, the Pit Crew, the runway, the Untucked lounge, the Snatch Game–that ties to a specific aspect of queer cultural history and/or the work of certain legendary figures in queer cultural history.
Available in Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
Boy Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith, and Family by Gerrard Conley
The New York Times bestselling memoir about identity, love and understanding. By confronting his buried past and the burden of a life lived in shadow, Garrard traces the complex relationships among family, faith, and community. At times heart-breaking, at times triumphant, Boy Erased is a testament to love that survives despite all odds.
The son of a Baptist pastor and deeply embedded in church life in small town Arkansas, as a young man Garrard Conley was terrified and conflicted about his sexuality. When Garrard was a nineteen-year-old college student, he was outed to his parents, and was forced to make a life-changing decision: either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy program that promised to “cure” him of homosexuality; or risk losing family, friends, and the God he had prayed to every day of his life. Through an institutionalized Twelve-Step Program heavy on Bible study, he was supposed to emerge heterosexual, ex-gay, cleansed of impure urges and stronger in his faith in God for his brush with sin. Instead, even when faced with a harrowing and brutal journey, Garrard found the strength and understanding to break out in search of his true self and forgiveness.
Available in Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
For Kids and Teens:
The New Queer Conscience by Adam Eli; Read by the Author
In The New Queer Conscience, LGBTQIA+ activist Adam Eli argues the urgent need for queer responsibility—that queers anywhere are responsible for queers everywhere.
Pocket Change Collective is a series of small books with big ideas from today’s leading activists and artists. In this installment, The New Queer Conscience, Voices4 Founder and LGBTQIA+ activist Adam Eli offers a candid and compassionate introduction to queer responsibility. Eli calls on his Jewish faith to underline how kindness and support within the queer community can lead to a stronger global consciousness. More importantly, he reassures us that we’re not alone. In fact, we never were. Because if you mess with one queer, you mess with us all.
Available in Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen by Jazz Jennings; Read by the Author
Teen advocate and trailblazer Jazz Jennings—named one of “The 25 Most Influential Teens” of the year by Time–shares her very public transgender journey, as she inspires people to accept the differences in others while they embrace their own truths.
Jazz Jennings is one of the youngest and most prominent voices in the national discussion about gender identity. At the age of five, Jazz transitioned to life as a girl, with the support of her parents. A year later, her parents allowed her to share her incredible journey in her first Barbara Walters interview, aired at a time when the public was much less knowledgeable or accepting of the transgender community. This groundbreaking interview was followed over the years by other high-profile interviews, a documentary, the launch of her YouTube channel, a picture book, and her own reality TV series–I Am Jazz–making her one of the most recognizable activists for transgender teens, children, and adults.
In her remarkable memoir, Jazz reflects on these very public experiences and how they have helped shape the mainstream attitude toward the transgender community. But it hasn’t all been easy. Jazz has faced many challenges, bullying, discrimination, and rejection, yet she perseveres as she educates others about her life as a transgender teen. Through it all, her family has been beside her on this journey, standing together against those who don’t understand the true meaning of tolerance and unconditional love. Now Jazz must learn to navigate the physical, social, and emotional upheavals of adolescence–particularly high school–complicated by the unique challenges of being a transgender teen.
Available in Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
Middle School’s a Drag, You Better Werk! by Greg Howard; Read by Michael Crouch
In this heartfelt and hilarious new novel from Greg Howard, an enterprising boy starts his own junior talent agency and signs a thirteen-year-old aspiring drag queen as his first client.
Twelve-year-old Mikey Pruitt—president, founder, and CEO of Anything, Inc.—has always been an entrepreneur at heart. Inspired by his grandfather Pap Pruitt, who successfully ran all sorts of businesses from a car wash to a roadside peanut stand, Mikey is still looking for his million-dollar idea. Unfortunately, most of his ideas so far have failed. A baby tornado ran off with his general store, and the kids in his neighborhood never did come back for their second croquet lesson. But Mikey is determined to keep at it.
It isn’t until kid drag queen Coco Caliente, Mistress of Madness and Mayhem (aka eighth grader Julian Vasquez) walks into his office (aka his family’s storage/laundry room) looking for an agent that Mikey thinks he’s finally found his million-dollar idea, and the Anything Talent and Pizzazz Agency is born!
Soon, Mikey has a whole roster of kid clients looking to hit it big or at least win the middle school talent show’s hundred-dollar prize. As newly out Mikey prepares Julian for the gig of a lifetime, he realizes there’s no rulebook for being gay—and if Julian can be openly gay at school, maybe Mikey can, too, and tell his crush, dreamy Colton Sanford, how he feels.
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
Looking for more LGBTQIA+ books? Check out even more books to celebrate Pride Month.
