LGBTQIA+ History Month

A Queer History of the United States for Young People
by Michael Bronski & Richie Chevat

Queer history didn’t start with Stonewall. This book explores how LGBTQ people have always been a part of our national identity, contributing to the country and culture for over 400 years. It is crucial for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth to know their history. But this history is not easy to find since it’s rarely taught in schools or commemorated in other ways. A Queer History of the United States for Young People corrects this and demonstrates that LGBTQ people have long been vital to shaping our understanding of what America is today. Through engrossing narratives, letters, drawings, poems, and more, the book encourages young readers, of all identities, to feel pride at the accomplishments of the LGBTQ people who came before them and to use history as a guide to the future. 

Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity
by C. Riley Snorton

The story of Christine Jorgensen, America’s first prominent transsexual, famously narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives–ones lived by African Americans such as Lucy Hicks Anderson and James McHarris. Their erasure from trans history masks the profound ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. In Black on Both Sides , C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence. Drawing on a deep and varied archive of materials–early sexological texts, fugitive slave narratives, Afro-modernist literature, sensationalist journalism, Hollywood films–Snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable.

Boy Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith, and Family
by Garrard Conley

 A beautiful, raw and compassionate memoir about identity, love and understanding. The son of a Baptist pastor and deeply embedded in church life in small town Arkansas, as a young man Garrard Conley was terrified and conflicted about his sexuality. When Garrard was a nineteen-year-old college student, he was outed to his parents, and was forced to make a life-changing decision: either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy program that promised to “”cure”” him of homosexuality; or risk losing family, friends, and the God he had prayed to every day of his life. Through an institutionalized Twelve-Step Program heavy on Bible study, he was supposed to emerge heterosexual, ex-gay, cleansed of impure urges and stronger in his faith in God for his brush with sin. Instead, even when faced with a harrowing and brutal journey, Garrard found the strength and understanding to break out in search of his true self and forgiveness. By confronting his buried past and the burden of a life lived in shadow, Garrard traces the complex relationships among family, faith, and community. At times heart-breaking, at times triumphant, this memoir is a testament to love that survives despite all odds.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
by Alison Bechdel

Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and funny, readers are drawn into a daughters complex yearning for her father. Apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned “fun home,” the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books.

Hola Papi: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons
by John Paul Brammer

The first time someone called John Paul (JP) Brammer “Papi” was on the popular gay hookup app Grindr. At first, it was flattering; JP took this as white-guy speak for “hey, handsome.” Who doesn’t want to be called handsome? But then it happened again and again…and again, leaving JP wondering: Who the hell is Papi? What started as a racialized moniker given to him on a hookup app soon became the inspiration for his now wildly popular advice column ” Hola Papi “, launching his career as the Cheryl Strayed for young queer people everywhere–and some straight people too. JP had his doubts at first–what advice could he really offer while he himself stumbled through his early 20s? Sometimes the best advice to dole outcomes from looking within, which is what JP has done in his column and book–and readers have flocked to him for honest, heartfelt wisdom, and of course a few laughs. In Hola Papi , JP shares his story of growing up biracial and in the closet against the backdrop of America’s heartland, while attempting to answer some of life’s toughest questions: How do I let go of the past? How do I become the person I want to be? Is there such a thing as being too gay ? Should I hook up with my grade school bully now that he’s out of the closet? Questions we’ve all asked ourselves, surely. With wit and wisdom in equal measure, Hola Papi is for anyone–gay, straight, and everything in between–who has ever taken stock of their unique place in the world, offering considered advice, intelligent discourse, and fits of laughter along the way.

Queer, There, and Everywhere: 25 People Who Changed the World (2nd Edition)
by Sarah Prager

World history has been made by countless lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and otherwise queer people-and you’ve never heard of many of them. In Queer, There, and Everywhere, activist Sarah Prager gives voice to twenty-three people who invented, radicalized, and trailblazed. These inspiring true stories demonstrate how rich and varied gender and sexuality have been in every culture, to every millennium. From long-ago heroes like the gender-ambiguous Queen of Sweden and a transgender soldier who risked death lighting in the Civil War to modern figures like the transgender tennis player who won a court case to play as a woman and a drag queen who organized against police brutality in San Francisco: not only have queer people always existed, they have thrived. 

The Book of Pride: LGBTQ Heroes Who Changed the World
by Mason Funk

THE BOOK OF PRIDE captures the true story of the gay rights movement from the 1960s to the present, through richly detailed, stunning interviews with the leaders, activists, and ordinary people who witnessed the movement and made it happen. These individuals fought battles both personal and political, often without the support of family or friends, frequently under the threat of violence and persecution. By shining a light on these remarkable stories of bravery and determination, THE BOOK OF PRIDE not only honors an important chapter in American history, but also empowers young people today (both LGBTQ and straight) to discover their own courage in order to create positive change. Furthermore, it serves a critically important role in ensuring the history of the LGBTQ movement can never be erased, inspiring us to resist all forms of oppression with ferocity, community, and, most importantly, pride.

The Queer Bible: Essays
by Jack Guinness

In this book, contemporary queer heroes pay homage to those who helped pave their paths. Contributors include Vogue columnist Paris Lees (writing on Edward Enninful), singer and songwriter Elton John (writing on Divine), comedian Mae Martin (writing on Tim Curry), author Joseph Cassara (writing on Pedro Almod var), and many others, honoring timeless queer icons such as Susan Sontag, David Bowie, Sylvester, RuPaul, and George Michael through illuminating essays paired with stunning illustrations. The Queer Bible is a powerful and intimate essay collection of gratitude, and an essential, enduring love letter to the queer community. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Now we praise their names.

The Stonewall Reader
by the New York Public Library & Edmund White

For the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, an anthology chronicling the tumultuous fight for LGBTQ rights in the 1960s and the activists who spearheaded it, with a foreword by Edmund White. June 28, 2019 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, which is considered the most significant event in the gay liberation movement, and the catalyst for the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States. Drawing from the New York Public Library’s archives, The Stonewall Reader is a collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented both the years leading up to and the years following the riots. Most importantly the anthology spotlights both iconic activists who were pivotal in the movement, such as Sylvia Rivera, co-founder of Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR), as well as forgotten figures like Ernestine Eckstein, one of the few out, African American, lesbian activists in the 1960s. The anthology focuses on the events of 1969, the five years before, and the five years after. Jason Baumann, the NYPL coordinator of humanities and LGBTQ collections, has edited and introduced the volume to coincide with the NYPL exhibition he has curated on the Stonewall uprising and gay liberation movement of 1969.

Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution (2nd Edition)
by Susan Stryker

A timely second edition of the classic text on transgender history, with a new introduction and updated material throughout Covering American transgender history from the mid-twentieth century to today, Transgender History takes a chronological approach to the subject of transgender history, with each chapter covering major movements, writings, and events. Chapters cover the transsexual and transvestite communities in the years following World War II; trans radicalism and social change, which spanned from 1966 with the publication of The Transsexual Phenomenon, and lasted through the early 1970s; the mid-’70s to 1990-the era of identity politics and the changes witnessed in trans circles through these years; and the gender issues witnessed through the ’90s and ’00s. Transgender History includes informative sidebars highlighting quotes from major texts and speeches in transgender history and brief biographies of key players, plus excerpts from transgender memoirs and discussion of treatments of transgenderism in popular culture.

We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation
by Leighton Brown & Matthew Riemer

Through the lens of pride, protest, and progress, We Are Everywhere is a visual record and celebration of LGBTQ+ identity, life, modern history, and the queer liberation movement. Tracing queer history from the early 20th century before the 1969 Stonewall riots to today, this beautifully packaged book contains thousands of photos and pieces of ephemera with detailed captions that tell the story of the fight for LGBTQ+ civil rights. The vintage and contemporary images cover every aspect of queer life and liberation, including pride marches and protests, the AIDS crisis, queer family life, personal snapshots from notable and regular people, drag queens, celebrations, reactions to important legal decisions, marriage equality, and more.