In honor of Pride Month, we’re excited to share a list of recommended reads from Susan Post and Audrey Kohler, our friends at BookWoman. The selected titles highlight LGBTQ+ to celebrate the stories that enrich the community with their activism, knowledge, pride, and respect. Check out the list below.
L: Black lesbian thought leaders have played a pivotal role as activists and in shaping feminist history and theory. This powerful and celebratory anthology shines a light on the words of many trailblazers, including Barbara Smith, Audre Lorde, Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, amongst others. Whether this is your introduction or you’re a seasoned reader on the subject, you’ll find something wonderful and inspiring. Mouths of Rain is also a great companion piece with Words of Fire: An Anthology of African American Feminist Thought.
G: The Guncle is a love letter to gay uncles everywhere! This wonderfully sweet “Beach Read” has some real depth hidden amongst the laughs. If you’re looking for a fun, gay romp: look no further. I promise you will laugh out loud!
B: You’ll fall in LOVE with August and Jane as they tumble through time, queer love, and the q train. There’s never been a book that makes the NYC subway seem quite so magical. Featuring an all-star cast of queer characters, One Last Stop will make you want to join the friend group and live your wonderfully queer NYC life.
T: The first time I saw the title, Detransition, Baby, I gasped and then laughed. Torrey Peters makes transness, specifically trans womanhood the forefront of her provocative debut novel and I had so much fun reading it. It feels so liberating to read a story about trans people that don’t hold hands or stop to explain terminology for cisgender readers. Reading a mainstream book that focuses on transness and queer family units and all the messiness that comes along with that is one of the highlights of my 2021.
Q: I come back to this book every pride month since its release in 2019. We Are Everywhere has photos of openly queer people dating all the way back to 1912 and feels like flipping through a family photo album. You get to see how our queer ancestors created found families and organized them to begin the fight for queer liberation. This is an essential queer history book. “…gay history is not all about you. It’s about all of us, and none of us is free until all of us are free. It’s time all of us-everywhere-see that.”
+: Let the Record Show is written with so much love and detail for the movement of ACT UP, which makes sense when you learn in the lengthy introduction that Sarah Schulman was an active member and organizer. With each section and interview, you learn more about what made this movement unique and how civil rights movements of the past influenced how ACT UP advocated for HIV/AIDS patients. This is an essential read for anyone looking to learn more about political organizing, the AIDS epidemic, and queer American history.