Are you looking for a list of LGBTQ+ books to read? You have come to the right place. I’ve listed the ones that are on my TBR list below. Even though I have made this list of LGTBQ+ books for Pride month I think it is important that we all keep our bookshelves as diverse as possible all the time. Don’t just read LGTBQ+ books when it’s seen as the thing to do read them often and learn and educate yourself on the right of the LGTBQ+ community.
Queer Brown Voices
Queer Brown Voices is the first book to document the efforts of some LGBTQ+ Latina/o activists. This book contains essays and interviews of fourteen different activists across the US and in Puerto Rico.
Transgender History
I must admit that I don’t know much about the transgender community. This book is great for anyone who is looking to learn about the history of Transgender people. A great LGTBQ+ resource.
I’m Afraid of Men
“I’m Afraid of Men is a culmination of the years Vivek spent observing men and creating her own version of manhood. Through deeply personal reflection, she offers a rare and multifaceted perspective on gender and a hopeful reimagining of masculinity at a time when it’s needed more than ever.”
Giovanni’s Room
“When David meets the sensual Giovanni in a bohemian bar, he is swept into a passionate love affair. But his girlfriend’s return to Paris destroys everything. Unable to admit to the truth, David pretends the liaison never happened – while Giovanni’s life descends into tragedy.”
Naturally Tan
Who Doesn’t love the Fab 5? After listening to Jonathan Van Ness’ audiobook, I knew I wanted to read all of the Fab 5 books.
50 Queers Who Changed the World
This book is a celebration of LGBTQ+ Icons, their lives and their work which has helped shape the world into a more accepting place.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Adapted into a film starring Chloe Grace Moretz, The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a book about discovering who you are finding the courage to live authentically, being your true self despite what others think.
When Katie Met Cassidy
Who doesn’t love a feel good girl-meets-girl romantic comedy? I think we need more of those in our lives! This is the story of Katie who has just been dumped by her fiance, but then she meets New-Yorker Cassidy…
Not Otherwise Specified
An exploration of different identities of a girl in a small town, where she doesn’t feel like she really fits in anywhere.
Guapa
“A Middle-Eastern capital caught in the revolutionary wave of the Arab Spring. A day in the life of a young man disillusioned with both East and West and struggling to find a place for himself in a society ruled by hypocrisy and contradictions.
Rasa works as an interpreter for Western journalists by day and divides his nights between the Guapa, an underground nightclub where the city’s clandestine LGBT community congregates, and his secret lover Taymour?
Unapologeitc: a black, queer, and feminist mandate for radical movements
Unapologetic challenges all of us engaged in the social justice struggle to make the movement for Black liberation more radical, more queer, and more feminist. This is a must-read book for everyone. A LGTBQ+ must have.
No Ashes in the Fire
A memoir by Darnell Moore, No Ashes in the Fire is a brave story of Darnell’s life from being almost set on fire by a group of boys to becoming an award-winning writer and activist.
Women Don’t Owe You Pretty
Florence is here to remind you to stop raising him, he’s not your son and how powerful women are. The role model all teenagers need.
Real Life (Brandon Taylor)
“ver the course of one blustery end-of-summer weekend, the destruction of his work and a series of intense confrontations force Wallace to grapple with both the trauma of the past, and the question of the future.
Deftly zooming in and out of focus, Real Life is a deeply affecting story about the emotional cost of reckoning with desire, and overcoming pain.”
You Exist Too Much
Being released later this year, this is a book you should be preordering now! A novel of self-discovery following a Palestinian-American girl as she navigates queerness, love addiction and a series of tumultuous relationships’
All My Mother’s Lovers
“All My Mother’s Lovers is the exciting debut novel from fiction writer and book critic 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.”
We Had No Rules
Spanning the years 1992 to 2019, and moving from New York to North Carolina to Seattle, the eleven first-person stories in We Had No Rules feature characters who feel the promise of a radically reimagined world but face complicity instead.
A Beautiful Crime
A Beautiful Crime is a twisty grifter novel with a thriller running through its veins. But it is also a meditation on love, class, race, sexuality, and the legacy of bohemian culture.
The Gospel of Breaking
“In The Gospel of Breaking, Jillian Christmas confirms what followers of her performance and artistic curation have long known: there is magic in her words. Befitting someone who “speaks things into being,” Christmas extracts from family history, queer lineage, and the political landscape of a racialized life to create a rich, softly defiant collection of poems”
All Boys Aren’t Blue
In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQ+ activist George M. Johnson explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys.
Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs
Good Boy is a universal account of a remarkable story: showing how a young boy became a middle-aged woman–accompanied at seven crucial moments of growth and transformation by seven memorable dogs.
Sister Outsider
“The revolutionary writings of Audre Lorde gave voice to those ‘outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women’. Uncompromising, angry and yet full of hope, this collection of her essential prose explores race, sexuality, poetry, friendship, the erotic, and the need for female solidarity”
Lot Bryan Washington
Stories of a young man finding his place among family and community in Houston, from a powerful, emerging American voice.
RubyFruit Jungle
Molly Bolt is a young lady with a big character. Beautiful, funny and bright, Molly figures out at a young age that she will have to be tough to stay true to herself in 1950s America. In her dealings with boyfriends and girlfriends, in the rocky relationship with her mother and in her determination to pursue her career, she will fight for her right to happiness. Charming, proud and inspiring, Molly is the girl who refuses to be put in a box.
Tomorrow Will Be Different
Sarah McBride is the first openly transgender state senator in US History. This powerful memoir cuts between Sarah McBride’s personal story and the journey of trans acceptance.
What other LGTBQ+ books would you add to this list? Do you have your own LGTBQ+ book list? If so I’d love to see it.
