What are we reading?  June 2023 Monthly Book Selection *** Make your donation here! 

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LGBT Books for Adult Readers

Once upon a time, discrimination amongst peers no matter color or sexual preference ran so deep. Choosing a profession that challenged people to listen with consideration proved to be difficult. With the help of authors like James Baldwin and Langston Hughes, there is a new generation of LGBT writers!

Let’s take a look…

In the 2015, Over the Rainbow Project book list, there are  over 78 of their top books from the LGBT community. Every year they create a bibliography of books that exhibit commendable literary quality and significant authentic GLBT content for us to dive into.

Here are their TOP TEN favorites:

Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive. By Julia Serano. Seal Press. 2013. 327p. $17.00. (978-1-58005-504-8). An in-depth look at problematic elements of feminist and queer movements, with suggestions on how to address those issues.

 

Gender Failure. By Ivan Coyote and Rae Spoon. Arsenal Pulp Press. 2014. 160p. $17.95. (978-1551525365). A collection of personal essays, song lyrics, and drawings recounting Coyote’s and Spoon’s lifelong experiences understanding and challenging gender.

Living Out Islam: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims. By Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle. NYU Press. 2013.275p. $27.00. (978-1479894673). A look at 15 ‘activist’ gay, lesbian, and transgender Muslims as they attempt to find ways to live out Islam with dignity and integrity, reconciling their sexuality and gender with their faith, and recreating and reclaiming Islam as their own.

 

Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness, and Becoming a Man. By Thomas Page McBee. City Lights Publishers. 2014. 172p. $15.95. (978-0872866249). In this thoughtful memoir, McBee recounts and confronts both childhood abuse and a more recent act of violence.

 

Mr. Loverman. By Bernadine Evaristo. Akashic. 2014. 307p. $24.95. (978-1617752896). 74-year-old Barrington Jedidiah Walker, a member of Britain’s Caribbean community, is still trying to decide how to leave his wife of 50 years and move in with the man he has loved since childhood.

 

The Paying Guests. By Sarah Waters. Riverhead Hardcover. 2014. 576p. $28.95. (978-1594633119). Waters’s characters (where even the house takes on a quality of character) are vividly portrayed in this novel of post-WWI England. The newly impoverished Francis Wray and her mother take in boarders whose presence leads to unforeseen moral dilemmas.

 

Prelude to Bruise.  By Saeed Jones.  Coffee House Press. 2014. 124p. $16.00. (978-1566893749).  These poems of Boy, growing up gay and African-American in the South, are complicated, horrific, and metaphoric.

 

The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood. By Richard Blanco. Ecco. 2014. 272p. $25.99. (978-0062313768). A vivid recollection of growing up as the child of Cuban immigrants in mid-century Miami.

The Queer South: LGBTQ Writers on the American South.  Douglas Ray, Editor. Sibling Rivalry Press. 2014. 304 pages.  $28.00 (978-1-937420-80-2).  A poetry anthology exploring lesbian and gay experiences in the American South.

 

The Two Hotel Francforts. By David Leavitt. Bloomsbury USA. 2013. 272p. $25.00. (978-1596910423). After the fall of Paris to the Nazis, the expatriate couple Julia and Pete Winters join others in flight to Lisbon to flee Europe.  There they meet the Frelings, writers of mystery novels who are also fleeing Europe for the States.  Amid the chaos of the impending war, this chance meeting changes their lives.

Art / Photography

 

100 Crushes. By Elisha Lim. Koyama Press. 2014. 100p. $18.00. (978-1927668061). Compilation of the works of queer comics artist Elisha Lim; part memoir and part biographies of friends.

 

dr.a.g. By Christopher Logan. Bookthefilm. 2014. 180p. $39.99. (978-0-9921529-0-1). A collection of color photographs of drag queens from all over the world. Photography.

 

The Invisibles: Vintage Portraits of Love and Pride. By Sebastien Lifshitz. Rizzoli. 2014. 144p. $27.50. (978-0847843060). This collection of photographs shows an unexpected glimpse of same-sex couples in the early 20th century.

 

TransCuba. By Mariette Pathy Allen. Daylight Books. 2014. 142p. $45. (978-0988983137). A collection of photographs and conversations with trans women in contemporary Cuba.

 

 

For more on books by the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender community (GLBTR), visit here.

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Ben Wills

"...I have one of those VERY LOUD, stupid laughs. If I ever sat behind myself in a movie I'd probably lean over and tell myself to please shut up." - Author, JD Salinger

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