16 of My Favorite Pride Books
[image description: a bookshelf with colorful books in a vaguely rainbow arrangement.]
post contains an affiliate link
As silly as this is going to sound, I feel like I read and talk about so many LGBTQ+ books throughout the year that I always have trouble coming up with a good Pride month books post. Then again, isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be? Folks are queer all year, so it seems weird to confine sharing LGBTQ+ books to one month. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t share some!
So I decided to list some of my favorite LGBTQ+ books for each of the five letters in the acronym. There are more than 5 letters, hence the +, so this is not by any means an exhaustive list but if I don’t reign myself in somehow this list could go on forever. Like I said, I read a lot of queer books! lol
L: Lesbian
The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite
Synopsis:
As Lucy Muchelney watches her ex-lover’s sham of a wedding, she wishes herself anywhere else. It isn’t until she finds a letter from the Countess of Moth, looking for someone to translate a groundbreaking French astronomy text, that she knows where to go. Showing up at the Countess’ London home, she hoped to find a challenge, not a woman who takes her breath away.
Catherine St Day looks forward to a quiet widowhood once her late husband’s scientific legacy is fulfilled. She expected to hand off the translation and wash her hands of the project—instead, she is intrigued by the young woman who turns up at her door, begging to be allowed to do the work, and she agrees to let Lucy stay. But as Catherine finds herself longing for Lucy, everything she believes about herself and her life is tested.
While Lucy spends her days interpreting the complicated French text, she spends her nights falling in love with the alluring Catherine. But sabotage and old wounds threaten to sever the threads that bind them. Can Lucy and Catherine find the strength to stay together or are they doomed to be star-crossed lovers?
I love Regency romances, so when I found lesbian Regencies my face became a literal heart-eye emoji!
Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
Synopsis:
Bawdy and moving, the ultimate word-of-mouth bestseller, Rubyfruit Jungle is about growing up a lesbian in America--and living happily ever after.
Rubyfruit Jungle is one of the early lesbian classics, originally published in 1973. It was revolutionary at the time because most LGBT lit up to that point had focused on men and the gay characters were usually punished in some way, like being killed in a car crash. The fact that the protagonist of Rubyfruit Jungle, who was based on Rita Mae’s life, was lesbian and lived happily ever after was a huge stride forward in the genre.
Mostly Dead Things by Kristin Arnett
Synopsis:
One morning, Jessa-Lynn Morton walks into the family taxidermy shop to find that her father has committed suicide, right there on one of the metal tables. Shocked and grieving, Jessa steps up to manage the failing business, while the rest of the Morton family crumbles. Her mother starts sneaking into the shop to make aggressively lewd art with the taxidermied animals. Her brother Milo withdraws, struggling to function. And Brynn, Milo’s wife—and the only person Jessa’s ever been in love with—walks out without a word. As Jessa seeks out less-than-legal ways of generating income, her mother’s art escalates—picture a figure of her dead husband and a stuffed buffalo in an uncomfortably sexual pose—and the Mortons reach a tipping point. For the first time, Jessa has no choice but to learn who these people truly are, and ultimately how she fits alongside them.
Everything about this novel is weird and delightful, while also making you want to have a good cleansing emotional cry. Also, it’s set in Florida, and “weird Florida novel” is a thing. A very good thing.
G: Gay
How I Learned to Snap: A Small Town Coming Out and Coming-of-Age Story by Kirk Read
Synopsis:
With bold Southern humor, journalist and performer Kirk Read takes readers on a guided tour of his precocious and courageous adolescence. Recalling his years as an openly gay high school student, Read describes how he navigated the hallways with his sense of humor and dignity intact. He fondly recalls his initiations into sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, as well as his "shy as neon" acts of rabble rousing during high school. How I Learned to Snap is a refreshingly victim-free story in which queer teenagers are creative, resilient, and ultimately heroic.
This is actually the first gay book I ever read! In high school, I was friends with a dude who was the only out gay guy at our school, and one day when we were hanging out at his house, I saw How I Learned to Snap on his bookshelf. Much of our time hanging out was spent at bookstores, so I couldn’t believe he’d never told me about this book. We laid around in his basement reading and I finished the memoir sometime around 4am.
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Synopsis:
A lyrical novel about family and friendship from critically acclaimed author Benjamin Alire Sáenz.
Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship--the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be.
This is one of the sweetest YA romances I’ve ever read. It’s the kind of novel you never want to end! While they do start out as friends, it only makes the romantic payoff even more satisfying.
The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee
Synopsis:
Henry “Monty” Montague was born and bred to be a gentleman, but he was never one to be tamed. The finest boarding schools in England and the constant disapproval of his father haven’t been able to curb any of his roguish passions—not for gambling halls, late nights spent with a bottle of spirits, or waking up in the arms of women or men.
But as Monty embarks on his Grand Tour of Europe, his quest for a life filled with pleasure and vice is in danger of coming to an end. Not only does his father expect him to take over the family’s estate upon his return, but Monty is also nursing an impossible crush on his best friend and traveling companion, Percy.
Still it isn’t in Monty’s nature to give up. Even with his younger sister, Felicity, in tow, he vows to make this yearlong escapade one last hedonistic hurrah and flirt with Percy from Paris to Rome. But when one of Monty’s reckless decisions turns their trip abroad into a harrowing manhunt that spans across Europe, it calls into question everything he knows, including his relationship with the boy he adores.
YA novel meets historical fiction is this fun romp through history! You can’t help but adore the characters, even when they’re being mildly insufferable, as YA characters are wont to be at times. :)
B: Bisexual
The Fixed Stars by Molly Wizenberg
Synopsis:
From a bestselling memoirist, a thoughtful and provocative story of changing identity, complex sexuality, and enduring family relationships
At age 36, while serving on a jury, author Molly Wizenberg found herself drawn to a female attorney she hardly knew. Married to a man for nearly a decade and mother to a toddler, Wizenberg tried to return to her life as she knew it, but something inside her had changed irredeemably. Instead, she would discover that the trajectory of our lives is rarely as smooth or as logical as we’d like to believe.
Like many of us, Wizenberg had long understood sexual orientation as a stable part of ourselves: we’re “born this way.” Suddenly she realized that her story was more complicated. Who was she, she wondered, if something at her very core could change so radically? The Fixed Stars is a taut, electrifying memoir exploring timely and timeless questions about desire, identity, and the limits and possibilities of family. In honest and searing prose, Wizenberg forges a new path: through the murk of separation and divorce, coming out to family and friends, learning to co-parent a young child, and realizing a new vision of love. The result is a frank and moving story about letting go of rigid definitions and ideals that no longer fit, and learning instead who we really are.
I have several friends who married men in their twenties, thinking they were straight, then realized in their thirties that they were in love with women, so this memoir spoke to me. Sexuality is fluid and changing, and that needs to be normalized, even for (especially for!) people who have been married for years and have kids.
Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier
Synopsis:
In the tradition of audacious and wryly funny novels like The Idiot and Convenience Store Woman comes the wildly original coming-of-age story of a pregnant pizza delivery girl who becomes obsessed with one of her customers.
Eighteen years old, pregnant, and working as a pizza delivery girl in suburban Los Angeles, our charmingly dysfunctional heroine is deeply lost and in complete denial about it all. She's grieving the death of her father (who she has more in common with than she'd like to admit), avoiding her supportive mom and loving boyfriend, and flagrantly ignoring her future.
Her world is further upended when she becomes obsessed with Jenny, a stay-at-home mother new to the neighborhood, who comes to depend on weekly deliveries of pickled covered pizzas for her son's happiness. As one woman looks toward motherhood and the other towards middle age, the relationship between the two begins to blur in strange, complicated, and ultimately heartbreaking ways.
Bold, tender, propulsive, and unexpected in countless ways, Jean Kyoung Frazier's Pizza Girl is a moving and funny portrait of a flawed, unforgettable young woman as she tries to find her place in the world.
I love this novel because it captures realizing you’re attracted to men and women (and maybe more!) so well. Sometimes it sneaks up on you when you’re stressed out about other life stuff (like being 18 and pregnant and living at home). Eighteen is such a confusing age anyway, being on that cusp of adulthood and not knowing what you’re doing, so when you factor in having a baby and exploring your sexuality, shit gets wild.
Ramona Blue by Julie Murphy
Synopsis:
Ramona was only five years old when Hurricane Katrina changed her life forever.
Since then, it’s been Ramona and her family against the world. Standing over six feet tall with unmistakable blue hair, Ramona is sure of three things: she likes girls, she’s fiercely devoted to her family, and she knows she’s destined for something bigger than the trailer she calls home in Eulogy, Mississippi. But juggling multiple jobs, her flaky mom, and her well-meaning but ineffectual dad forces her to be the adult of the family. Now, with her sister, Hattie, pregnant, responsibility weighs more heavily than ever.
The return of her childhood friend Freddie brings a welcome distraction. Ramona’s friendship with the former competitive swimmer picks up exactly where it left off, and soon he’s talked her into joining him for laps at the pool. But as Ramona falls in love with swimming, her feelings for Freddie begin to shift too, which is the last thing she expected. With her growing affection for Freddie making her question her sexual identity, Ramona begins to wonder if perhaps she likes girls and guys or if this new attraction is just a fluke. Either way, Ramona will discover that, for her, life and love are more fluid than they seem.
I loved this novel so much. I so rarely see novels about queer people in the deep south, especially bisexual folks and especially where the plot doesn’t hinge on the protagonist coming out and being worried that everyone will hate them. Ramona is out from the beginning and she has a strong, supportive community around her. That’s more akin to my experience being bi in Alabama and it was nice to see that reflected in literature for once!
T: Trans
Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock
Synopsis:
In 2011, Marie Claire magazine published a profile of Janet Mock in which she stepped forward for the first time as a trans woman. Those twenty-three hundred words were life-altering for the People.com editor, turning her into an influential and outspoken public figure and a desperately needed voice for an often voiceless community. In these pages, she offers a bold and inspiring perspective on being young, multicultural, economically challenged, and transgender in America.
Welcomed into the world as her parents’ firstborn son, Mock decided early on that she would be her own person—no matter what. She struggled as the smart, determined child in a deeply loving yet ill-equipped family that lacked the money, education, and resources necessary to help her thrive. Mock navigated her way through her teen years without parental guidance, but luckily, with the support of a few close friends and mentors, she emerged much stronger, ready to take on—and maybe even change—the world.
This powerful memoir follows Mock’s quest for identity, from an early, unwavering conviction about her gender to a turbulent adolescence in Honolulu that saw her transitioning during the tender years of high school, self-medicating with hormones at fifteen, and flying across the world alone for sex reassignment surgery at just eighteen. With unflinching honesty, Mock uses her own experience to impart vital insight about the unique challenges and vulnerabilities of trans youth and brave girls like herself.
Despite the hurdles, Mock received a scholarship to college and moved to New York City, where she earned a master’s degree, enjoyed the success of an enviable career, and told no one about her past. She remained deeply guarded until she fell for a man who called her the woman of his dreams. Love fortified her with the strength to finally tell her story, enabling her to embody the undeniable power of testimony and become a fierce advocate for a marginalized and misunderstood community. A profound statement of affirmation from a courageous woman, Redefining Realness provides a whole new outlook on what it means to be a woman today, and shows as never before how to be authentic, unapologetic, and wholly yourself.
When the memoir is good, I can’t get enough of it. I would’ve read Janet Mock’s memoirs in ten volumes they were so good!
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
Synopsis:
A whipsmart debut about three women—transgender and cisgender—whose lives collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces them to confront their deepest desires around gender, motherhood, and sex.
Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.
Ames isn't happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese—and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames's boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she's pregnant with his baby—and that she's not sure whether she wants to keep it—Ames wonders if this is the chance he's been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family—and raise the baby together?
This provocative debut is about what happens at the emotional, messy, vulnerable corners of womanhood that platitudes and good intentions can't reach. Torrey Peters brilliantly and fearlessly navigates the most dangerous taboos around gender, sex, and relationships, gifting us a thrillingly original, witty, and deeply moving novel.
This novel is truly one of a kind. I’m convinced there’s nothing else out there like it and this is coming from someone who reads 150+ books a year. It’s one of the few truly original things I’ve read in a long time. I can’t recommended it highly enough.
Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality by Sarah McBride
Synopsis:
A timely and captivating memoir about gender identity set against the backdrop of the transgender equality movement, by a leading activist and the National Press Secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBTQ civil rights organization.
Sarah McBride is on a mission to fight for transgender rights around the world. But before she was a prominent activist, and before she became the first transgender person to speak at the Democratic National Convention in 2016, she was a teenager struggling with her identity.
With emotional depth and unparalleled honesty, Sarah shares her personal struggle with gender identity, coming out to her supportive but distraught parents, and finding her way as a woman. She inspires readers with her barrier-breaking political journey that took her, in just four years, from a frightened, closeted college student to one of the nation's most prominent transgender activists walking the halls of the White House, passing laws, and addressing the country in the midst of a heated presidential election. She also details the heartbreaking romance with her first love and future husband Andy, a trans man and activist, who passed away from cancer in 2014 just days after they were married.
Sarah's story of identity, love, and tragic loss serves as a powerful entry point for readers who want to gain a deeper understanding of gender identity and what it means to be openly transgender. From issues like bathroom access to healthcare, identification and schools, Sarah weaves the important political milestones, cultural and political debates, and historical context into a personal journey that will open hearts and change minds.
Tomorrow Will Be Different highlights Sarah’s work as an activist and the key issues at the forefront of the fight for trans equality, providing a call-to-arms and empowering look at the road ahead. The fight for equality and freedom has only just begun.
“We must never be a country that says there’s only one way to love, only one way to look, and only one way to live.” –Sarah McBride
Omg, have your tissues ready because this memoir will make you cry! Huge alligator tears sobbing for an hour kind of cry! It really is that great.
Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation by Eli Clare
Synopsis:
First published in 1999, Exile & Pride established Eli Clare as one of the leading writers on the intersections of queerness and disability. With this critical tenth-anniversary edition, the groundbreaking publication secures its position as essential to the history of queer and disability politics, and, through significant new material that boldly interrogates and advances the original text, to its future as well. Clare’s writing on his experiences as a genderqueer activist/writer with cerebral palsy permanently changed the landscape of disability politics and queer liberation, and yet Exile & Pride is much too great in scope to be defined by even these two issues. Instead it offers an intersectional framework for understanding how our bodies actually experience the politics of oppression, power, and resistance. At the heart of Clare’s exploration of environmental destruction, white working-class identity, queer community, disabled sexuality, childhood sexual abuse, coalition politics, and his own gender transition is a call for social justice movements that are truly accessible for everyone.
Blending prose and theory, personal experience and political debate, anger and compassion, Exile & Pride provides a window into a world where our whole selves in all their complexity can be loved and accepted.
I read Exile and Pride in college and I didn’t quite realize how revolutionary it was at the time. Since it was published in 1999, I’m worried it didn’t get the kind of reception it would have if it’d been published twenty years later. Eli Clare was so ahead of his time and his words are as relevant and necessary today as they were in the late ‘90s.
Q: Queer
We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir by Samra Habib
Synopsis:
How do you find yourself when the world tells you that you don't exist?
Samra Habib has spent most of her life searching for the safety to be herself. As an Ahmadi Muslim growing up in Pakistan, she faced regular threats from Islamic extremists who believed the small, dynamic sect to be blasphemous. From her parents, she internalized the lesson that revealing her identity could put her in grave danger.
When her family came to Canada as refugees, Samra encountered a whole new host of challenges: bullies, racism, the threat of poverty, and an arranged marriage. Backed into a corner, her need for a safe space--in which to grow and nurture her creative, feminist spirit--became dire. The men in her life wanted to police her, the women in her life had only shown her the example of pious obedience, and her body was a problem to be solved.
So begins an exploration of faith, art, love, and queer sexuality, a journey that takes her to the far reaches of the globe to uncover a truth that was within her all along. A triumphant memoir of forgiveness and family, both chosen and not, We Have Always Been Here is a rallying cry for anyone who has ever felt out of place and a testament to the power of fearlessly inhabiting one's truest self.
This memoir is a Canadian bestseller and I’m so glad I just so happened to be in Canada when I visited a bookstore and found it! It’s emotionally gripping, the storytelling is riveting, and it’s an inside look at life as a queer Muslim woman––something those of us outside that community so rarely get to see.
Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States by Samantha Allen
Synopsis:
A transgender reporter's narrative tour through the surprisingly vibrant queer communities sprouting up in red states, offering a vision of a stronger, more humane America.
Ten years ago, Samantha Allen was a suit-and-tie-wearing Mormon missionary. Now she's a senior Daily Beast reporter happily married to another woman. A lot in her life has changed, but what hasn't changed is her deep love of Red State America, and of queer people who stay in so-called "flyover country" rather than moving to the liberal coasts.
In Real Queer America, Allen takes us on a cross-country road-trip stretching all the way from Provo, Utah to the Rio Grande Valley to the Bible Belt to the Deep South. Her motto for the trip: "Something gay every day." Making pit stops at drag shows, political rallies, and hubs of queer life across the heartland, she introduces us to scores of extraordinary LGBT people working for change, from the first openly transgender mayor in Texas history to the manager of the only queer night club in Bloomington, Indiana, and many more.
Capturing profound cultural shifts underway in unexpected places and revealing a national network of chosen family fighting for a better world, Real Queer America is a treasure trove of uplifting stories and a much-needed source of hope and inspiration in these divided times.
The author is trans, but I put this book in the queer section because she interviews a lot of people who are all across the LGBTQ+ spectrum, so queer seemed like an appropriate catch-all. I enjoyed this book so much because you get a look at queer communities where mainstream media would have you believe no such communities existed: in middle America, specifically red states. In addition to being an insightful, poignant read, the concept also really inspired me with Midwest Shreds. I started thinking, who else is in middle America that's not represented fully?
You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat
Synopsis:
A "provocative and seductive debut" of desire and doubleness that follows the life of a young Palestinian American woman caught between cultural, religious, and sexual identities as she endeavors to lead an authentic life (O, The Oprah Magazine)
On a hot day in Bethlehem, a 12-year-old Palestinian-American girl is yelled at by a group of men outside the Church of the Nativity. She has exposed her legs in a biblical city, an act they deem forbidden, and their judgement will echo on through her adolescence. When our narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mother's response only intensifies a sense of shame: "You exist too much," she tells her daughter.
Told in vignettes that flash between the U.S. and the Middle East--from New York to Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine--Zaina Arafat's debut novel traces her protagonist's progress from blushing teen to sought-after DJ and aspiring writer. In Brooklyn, she moves into an apartment with her first serious girlfriend and tries to content herself with their comfortable relationship. But soon her longings, so closely hidden during her teenage years, explode out into reckless romantic encounters and obsessions with other people. Her desire to thwart her own destructive impulses will eventually lead her to The Ledge, an unconventional treatment center that identifies her affliction as "love addiction." In this strange, enclosed society she will start to consider the unnerving similarities between her own internal traumas and divisions and those of the places that have formed her.
Opening up the fantasies and desires of one young woman caught between cultural, religious, and sexual identities, You Exist Too Much is a captivating story charting two of our most intense longings--for love, and a place to call home.
This novel is close to my heart for so many reasons, not the least of which is that the protagonist is a queer Palestinian-American woman. (Sound familiar?) I inhaled this novel in just over an afternoon.
If you’d like read any of these books (and I hope you will!), if you’re planning on buying copies you can do so through my Bookshop link. That supports my work on this blog and indie bookstores.
I’d love to hear what you think!
