LGBT Authors Told Us About Their Favorite LGBT Books

Time to seriously queer up your reading list.

By
Sarah Karlan
by Sarah Karlan

BuzzFeed News Reporter

June reading list feeling a little light? Don't worry, we did the hard work for you.

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We asked some of our favorite LGBT authors to suggest the one book they consider required reading this Pride month. Needless to say, you've got quite the list to get started on.

1. Michael Arceneaux

Recommendation: Darnell Moore’s No Ashes In The Fire

2. Samantha Irby

Recommendation: Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera

Riverdale Avenue Books / Via Amazon

"Juliet is a Latinx baby lesbian from the Bronx on a quest to understand queerness and intersectional feminism and identity. She's such a breath of fresh air: funny, curious, likable, and her story of trying to find herself and reconcile all of her parts as she heads to Portland in search of a progressive community is super relatable. This is a magical book."

Get it from Amazon for $18.98, Barnes & Noble for $19.99, or a local bookseller through IndieBound here.

3. Roxane Gay

Jay Grabiec

Gay, a true force of nature, is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Hunger and the essay collection Bad Feminist, as well as the novel An Untamed State and two short story collections, Difficult Women and Ayiti. (Ayiti was just re-released as a paperback this month, and you can read an excerpt right here).

Recommendation: Stone Butch Blues By Leslie Feinberg

ReadHowYouWant / Via amazon

"It was a novel I read when I was a young queerling and it's something that has stayed with me for the past twenty years. I particularly admire the way the prose articulates working class butch lesbian identity and how Jess grows into themselves over the course of the narrative. There are many haunting, poignant moments throughout and though the book is imperfect, it is essential."

4. Janet Mock

Recommendation: Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility Edited by Reina Gossett, Eric A. Stanley and Johanna Burton

MIT press

"As someone who has spent her life seeking reflections of myself in visual and print media, this anthology by my dear friend Reina Gossett was a salve, helping me unpack the images I've taken in of myself as a trans woman — and the ones I am creating through my own writings and Pose."

(Editor's note: Mock is currently writing for the FX series Pose, about the drag bag scene of '80s Harlem, which is the queer fairy tale we need on TV right now.)

Get it from Amazon for $34.72, Barnes & Noble for $39.96, or a local bookseller through IndieBound here.

5. Thomas Page McBee

Recommendation: David Wojnaroqicz's Close To The Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration

Vintage Publishing

"AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz's Close To The Knives was brought to my attention a decade after its release by the queer writer Lisa King, who I met the sweaty, queer summer I spent in New York between my freshman and sophomore years in college. This was back before 9/11, before W., before Trump, before Lisa died in 2006, the first of many queer friends lost too young in a world inhospitable to queerness.

I think of Lisa every time I re-read Close To The Knives, the stunning, lyrical third book by the then-established political artist. Wojnarowicz's memoir is gorgeous and experimental and fierce, a painting with words, and mostly a snapshot of the wild beauty of queer outsiderness, despite the brutal power structures that punish us for being ourselves. It is the book that allows me my grief and my joy in this trans body, and I re-read it whenever I need to be reminded that in order to remember that the world belongs to me as much as it does anyone, I can honor a queer history of fight and feeling, of loss and the transcendent power of what can never be lost: Our truth."

Get it from Amazon for $12.76, Barnes & Noble for $14.15, or a local bookseller through IndieBound here.

6. Sarah Schulman

facebook.com

Sarah Schulman is a prolific novelist, playwright, screenwriter and AIDS historian. Her published work includes Rat Bohemia, After Delores, and Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America.

Recommendation: Rosalind Rosenberg's Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray

Oxford University Press

"The riveting story of the brilliant lack lesbian lawyer with a male/trans identity, who was always the first and always the only, but who developed race theory that became the basis for Thurgood Marshall's case for Brown V Board. She was, in a sense, the first intersectional thinker, always bringing race, sex, and gender, to her life and her visionary work."

7. Brontez Purnell

Recommendation: The Faggots And Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell

Calamus Books / Via amazon.com

"I would say that one book that totally gets me every time is The Faggots And Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell (drawings by Ned Asta). I first got a copy of this sacred out of print text when I was 23. It’s written in prose, fables, and short stories and is about the secret life of fags and women hiding in the world of a ruthless overlord (i.e. Patriarchy). It’s heartbreaking and so in vogue with the times despite being written in 1977."

8. Gabby Rivera

facebook.com

Rivera, a queer Latinx writer, released her debut novel Juliet Takes a Breath (mentioned earlier on this list) to wide critical acclaim. She is also a writer for Marvel on America, America Chavez’s solo series.

Recommendation: Tee Franklin's Bingo Love

Amazon/ Image Comics

"Bingo Love is one the greatest love stories ever. Yup. Let's cast Janelle Monae and Tessa Thomspon as Hazel and Mari, the two teenage best friends that fall in love at church in New Jersey during the 1960s, and call it a day. Bingo Love spills forth so much genuine affection, joy, and self-care that you can't help but wrap yourself up in it. Thank you Tee for this glorious ode to queer Black love."

(Editor's note: You can read a few pages from Bingo Love here.)

Get it from Amazon for $8.68, Barnes & Noble for $8.49, or a local bookseller through IndieBound here.

9. Eileen Myles

Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images

Myles, a poet and writer, has published more than a dozen books of fiction and poetry, including the iconic Chelsea Girls. One of their most recent works, Afterglow, is a memoir recounting the life of their beloved dog, Rosie. Their next poetry collection, Evolution, will be published in the fall of 2018.

Recommendation: Jordy Rosenberg's Confessions Of The Fox

One World / Via Amazon

"It's a rich immensely dirty detailed account of a trans person living in 18th C. London. Such a good read, so palpable and fantastic, dizzying and compulsively readable novel. Love!"

Get it from Amazon for $24.30.

10. Carmen Maria Machado

Recommendation: Ruby Fruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown

amazon.com

"A friend gave it to me in college right after I came out—a kind of "Welcome to Queerness" present—and it's never lost its charm. Molly Bolt is one of the best gay characters in literature; there's something so hilarious and sexy and fearless about her. She feels immortal to me, and the book is so delightfully playful and strange; an erotic bildungsroman for the ages."

Get it from Amazon for $12.80, Barnes & Noble for $13.82, or a local bookseller through IndieBound here.

11. Jennifer Finney Boylan

Recommendation: Joy Ladin's Through The Door Of Life

amazon.com

"One of my favorite queer books is Joy Ladin’s Through The Door Of Life, which is a trans memoir with a difference — Joy is, of course, the first transgender professor at an Orthodox Jewish institution (Stern College of Yeshiva University in New York.) She writes with passion and wisdom about being an LGBTQ person of faith, and how being trans informed and deepened her connection to God. It’s a beautifully written book."

Get it from Amazon for $16.12, Barnes & Noble for $19.58, or a local bookseller through IndieBound here.

12. Kristen Arnett

Recommendation: Alexander Chee's Edinburgh

Mariner Books

"I first encountered Alex Chee's Edinburgh on a plane ride home from a writing event. I wound up finishing it during that flight and openly wept for most of the reading. It's a book that assesses young queerness without forcing the lens on a coming out trope. It also acknowledges how growing up queer means something different for everybody — and how being queer as a young person affects your queerness as an adult.

Because it's so deeply entrenched in music and what it means to look at art that way, I felt like I was accessing all the myriad ways it means to be gay. The language is delicate and deliberate. Every sentence is a revelation. This is a book I would recommend to anyone, anytime, because it is so deeply, wonderfully beautiful."

Get it from Amazon for $11.29, Banres & Noble for $12.31, or a local bookseller through IndieBound here.

13. Alexander Chee

M. Sharkey / Via thequeenofthenight.com

Author of novels The Queen Of The Night and the previously mentioned Edinburgh, Chee recently published an essay collection How To Write An Autobiographical Novel in April of 2018. He is also an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College.

Recommendation: Avram Finkelstein's After Silence

University of California Press

"Avram Finkelstein’s After Silence, the story of the people behind the iconic "Silence = Death" slogan, tells a story of inspiring one of the greatest of recent queer political movements — and has advice and lessons for us as we face, once again, an existential threat from the conservative right wing."

Get it from Amazon for $20.21, Barnes & Noble for $24.25, or a local bookseller through IndieBound here.

What else is on your Pride reading list? Sound off in the comments below.

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