One way to support the LGBTQ+ community is to make sure their stories are heard. Check out this list of books written by or about members of the LGBTQ+ community. You will find selections for all ages.
All of the books listed here are available through the library.
FICTION | NONFICTION & MEMOIR | GRAPHIC NOVELS | POETRY
TEEN & TWEEN | CHILDREN
FICTION
Call Me By Your Name
Andre Aciman
When an adolescent boy falls in love with a summer guest at his parents' cliffside home in the Italian Riviera, they're both caught off guard by the passion that ensues. This obsessive, reckless love story became a major motion picture. You'll see why it's an instant international sensation.
The Color Purple
Alice Walker
Walker's masterpiece about the love between women isn't just an LGBT classic, it's a must-read book in just about every way. Made into a major motion picture, this National Book and Pulitzer Prize-winner follows the story of two sisters living very different lives and the unbreakable bond between them, even through impossible circumstances.
Giovanni’s Room
James Baldwin
In a novel that has resonated with the queer community since it was first published decades ago, a young man finds himself caught between desire and morality in 1950s expat Paris. While much has changed since Baldwin wrote it, many aspects of life, love and heartbreak remain the same.
In at the Deep End
Kate Davies
This hysterical read is all about self-discovery, sexual awakening and how a bad relationship can push you to learn about yourself. It's honest, revelatory and definitely NSFW so maybe don't share it with the kids.
Maurice
E. M. Forster
This sexy novel was written in 1913, but not published until after Forster's death in 1971. The title character meets and falls for Clive while at school — though Clive eventually leaves his lover and gets married to a woman. But then, Maurice falls in love with another man. You'll have to read it to find out if everyone lives happily ever after.
Middlesex
Jeffrey Eugenides
The introduction to this amazing novel reads, "I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974." This coming-of-age story has received some criticism as society has evolved, but it's undoubtedly one of the landmarks of queer literature.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
Ocean Vuong
Poet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling. With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are.
One Last Stop
Casey McQuiston
A rom-com with lots of queer love, chosen family and a little bit of sci-fi, this one's a beach read you won't want to miss. August moves to NYC to escape her mother's all-consuming sleuthing but when she meets Jane, a punk rocker who's stuck on the train, she has to decide how much she's willing to risk for romance.
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit
Jeanette Winterson
For anyone who has ever grappled with the complexities of sexual orientation within a religious context, this coming-out novel will feel all too familiar. The evangelical Jeanette considers herself one of God's children, but when she discovers her sexuality, it throws a wrench into her family's plans for her.
Peaces
Helen Oyeyemi
A delightfully strange, atmospheric novel about a gay couple who takes a honeymoon trip of sorts on a sleeper train that turns out to be far more than it appears. As they embark on their journey, they discover a secretive fellow passenger and clues that connect the two of them, and their past, begin to emerge.
The Price of Salt
Patricia Highsmith
A chance meeting, an illicit romance, and the freedom of the open road — this classic has it all. That is, until one of the women is forced to choose between her lover and her child. Grab the tissues before picking up this suspenseful LGBTQ book. If you didn't think a thrilling story could also make your heart sing, let this one change your mind.
Rubyfruit Jungle
Rita May Brown
Molly Bolt is the adoptive daughter of a poor Southern couple who makes her own way across America, finding love of all stripes in between.. It's a true, slightly steamy celebration of being true to yourself, whoever that may be.
Tales of the City
Armistead Maupin
The first in a series that sparked a hugely popular TV show (and a remake!) this is the story of the goings-on in an apartment at San Francisco's 28 Barbary Lane. If you missed the series the first time around, check out the book to acquaint yourself or fall back in love by giving it a read.
Under the Udala Trees
Chinelo Okparanta
After getting displaced by civil war in Nigeria, a young girl begins a love affair with a fellow refugee. The cards are stacked against them in a variety of ways: They're from different cultures, different places, and they're the same gender. The way this book reckons with both culture and sexuality is beautiful, and worth a read.
GRAPHIC NOVELS
Bingo Love
Tee Franklin
When Hazel Johnson and Mari McCray met at church bingo in 1963, it was love at first sight. Forced apart by their families and society, Hazel and Mari both married young men and had families. Decades later, now in their mid-60s, Hazel and Mari reunite again at a church bingo hall. Realizing their love for each other is still alive, what these grandmothers do next takes absolute strength and courage.
Bloom
Kevin Panetta
Writer Kevin Panetta and artist Savanna Ganucheau concoct a delicious recipe of intricately illustrated baking scenes and blushing young love, in which the choices we make can have terrible consequences, but the people who love us can help us grow.
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
Alison Bechdel
Don't sleep on this fiercely funny, sharply poignant graphic novel of a dysfunctional family and a daughter who just wants her dad. Bechdel's clan is led by a father who's part funeral director, part English teacher, part historian and as it turns out, has some illicit partners. Once you read this powerful story, you'll understand how it became a popular Broadway show.
Gender Queer
Maia Kobabe
Started as a way to explain to their family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.
Heartstopper
Alice Oseman
Softhearted Charlie Spring sits next to rugby player Nick Nelson in class one morning. A warm and intimate friendship follows, and that soon develops into something more for Charlie, who doesn't think he has a chance. But Nick is struggling with feelings of his own, and as the two grow closer and take on the ups and downs of high school, they come to understand the surprising and delightful ways in which love works.
On a Sunbeam
Tillie Waldman
A ragtag crew travels to the deepest reaches of space, rebuilding beautiful, broken structures to piece the past together. Two girls meet in boarding school and fall deeply in love, only to learn the pain of loss.
Shadow Life
Hiromi Groto
When Kumiko’s well-meaning adult daughters place her in an assisted living home, the seventy-six-year-old bisexual woman gives it a try, but it’s not where she wants to be. She goes on the lam and finds a cozy bachelor apartment, keeping the location secret even while communicating online with her eldest daughter. Kumiko revels in the small, daily pleasures: decorating as she pleases, eating what she wants, and swimming in the community pool. But something has followed her from her former residence—Death’s shadow.
NONFICTION & MEMOIR
Girlhood
Melisa Febos
This collection of essays is both empowering and fierce, wrenching back women's autonomy over our bodies, sexual agency, and entire selves. It's deeply reported, richly personal, and powerfully universal, and a fitting anthem for women of every age.
In the Dream House
Carmen Maria Machado
This stunning memoir plays with structure and form as it takes us through an abusive relationship and what that does to a person. In a world where many people still believe abuse only occurs when a man is involved, Machado's work is essential.
Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls
T Kira Madden
Madden grew up the only child of parents who were too involved in their own struggles to give her the support she needed, so she created the family she needed with a group of girls in her hometown of Boca Raton, Florida. This story grapples with the dichotomies of privilege and isolation, coming to her own queerness and biracial identity, and how friendship can mean salvation.
The Rules Do Not Apply
Ariel Levy
Levy chronicles the adventure and heartbreak of being, in her own words, “a woman who is free to do whatever she chooses.” Her story of resilience becomes an unforgettable portrait of the shifting forces in our culture, of what has changed—and of what is eternal.
Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story
Jacob Tobia
As a kid, Jacob was called "sissy" for being creative, sassy, and obsessed with glitter. But as they got older, they began to identify with different, more neutral words like "gay," "transgender" and "nonbinary." This story of gender revolution calls out the stereotypes that were probably rampant in many of our childhoods in a book that will make you laugh and cry, maybe even at the same time.
Sister Outsider
Audre Lorde
The essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde. In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change.
Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBTQ Rights Uprising That Changed America
Michael Duberman
In Stonewall, renowned historian and activist Martin Duberman tells the full story of this pivotal moment in history. With riveting narrative skill, he re-creates those revolutionary, sweltering nights in vivid detail through the lives of six people who were drawn into the struggle for LGBTQ rights. Their stories combine to form an unforgettable portrait of the repression that led up to the riots, which culminates when they triumphantly participate in the first gay rights march of 1970, the roots of today’s pride marches.
The Stonewall Reader
The New York Public Library
June 28, 2019 marked 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.
Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality
Sarah McBride
The title of this one says it all. McBride became the first transgender person to ever speak in front of a national political convention at the age of 26, but that doesn't mean her transition has been easy. This book weaves her personal journey with the steps the country has taken toward trans acceptance in a memoir that's both deeply individual and a primer on national civil rights.
Unbound: Transgender Men and the Remaking of Identity
Arlene Stein
Transgender men comprise a large, growing proportion of the trans population, yet they remain largely invisible. In this powerful, timely, and eye-opening account, Stein draws from dozens of interviews with transgender people and their friends and families, as well as with activists and medical and psychological experts. Unbound documents the varied ways younger trans men see themselves and how they are changing our understanding of what it means to be male and female in America.
Untamed
Glennon Doyle
In her most revealing and powerful memoir yet, activist, speaker, and bestselling author, Glennon Doyle explores the joy and peace we discover when we stop striving to meet others’ expectations and start trusting the voice deep within us.
We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation Matthew Riemer
A rich and sweeping photographic history of the Queer Liberation Movement, from the creators and curators of the massively popular Instagram account @lgbt_history, released in time for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.
POETRY
Howl
Allen Ginsberg
Howl features Ginsberg’s characteristic use of gritty vernacular and long lines, explicit sexuality, along with descriptions of abject people and places, and the stupor and ecstasy of drugs. Ginsberg's willingness to experiment with his writing and break social taboos made him one of the key figures of the Beat generation, a movement aimed at breaking the conformist and often stifling atmosphere of the late 1940s and 1950s.
Felicity
Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver turns her eye from the grace of the natural world to the even more mysterious landscape of the human heart. She meditates on love and nature, describing with joy the strangeness and wonder of human connection. She asks what it means to truly love another person, while reminding us of the transformative power of attention.
I Must Be Living Twice
Eileen Myles
I Must Be Living Twice brings together selections from the poet's previous work with a set of bold new poems that reflect her sardonic, unapologetic, and fiercely intellectual literary voice.
The Tradition
Jericho Brown
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this poetic exploration of fatherhood, blackness, identity and what freedom really costs cuts right to the core of a national reckoning that's long past due. Even if you don't generally read poetry, Brown's is an excellent place to start.
Wild is the Wind
Carl Phillips
Carl Phillips reflects on love as depicted in the jazz standard for which the book is named—love at once restless, reckless, and yet desired for its potential to bring stability. In the process, he pitches estrangement against communion, examines the past as history versus the past as memory, and reflects on the past’s capacity both to teach and to mislead us—also to make us hesitate in the face of love, given the loss and damage that are, often enough, love’s fallout.
TEEN & TWEEN
All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens Throughout the Ages
Seventeen young adult authors across the queer spectrum have come together to create a collection of beautifully written diverse historical fiction for teens.
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
Benjamin Alere Saenz
This book has won several awards for good reason: It's a breathtaking account of two young boys of color who fall in love, despite the many cards stacked against them. This star-crossed lover story is great for middle school kids and teens, but adults will find lots to love here, too.
Boy Meets Boy
David Leviathan
This is a happy, meaningful romantic comedy about finding love, losing love, and doing what it takes to get love back in a crazy world.
The Gravity of Us
Phil Stamper
Cal's dad is an astronaut, and when the family relocates to Houston in advance of a trip to Mars, the 17-year-old meets another astronaut's son—and falls in love. When the two uncover secrets about the space mission, this teen romance turns into a teen adventure.
It's Not Like It's a Secret
Misa Sugiura
When her family moves to California, Sana falls for the beautiful and smart Jamie Ramirez but struggles with differences between their diverse friend groups, a boy's sweet but unrequited affection, and her father's increasingly obvious affair.
Middle School's a Drag, You Better Werk!
Greg Howard
This book follows entrepreneurial 12-year-old Mikey Pruitt as he starts his own talent agency and represents clients in the leadup to the big talent show. Among his roster is eighth-grader Julian Vasquez — drag queen name Coco Caliente — who helps Mikey see that he, too, can be openly gay at school.
None of the Above
I. W. Gregorio
A groundbreaking story about a teenage girl who discovers she's intersex...and what happens when her secret is revealed to the entire school. Incredibly compelling and sensitively told, None of the Above is a thought-provoking novel that explores what it means to be a boy, a girl, or something in between.
Simon Vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda
Becky Albertalli
Not-so-openly gay Simon prefers to save his drama for the school musical. But when an email falls into the wrong hands, his secret is at risk of being thrust into the spotlight.
The Whispers
Greg Howard
A fantastical coming-of-age story about loss, friendship, and identity, The Whispers centers around 11-year-old Riley, who believes in wish-granting fairies known as the whispers. Riley embarks on a journey with his friend Gary to find the whispers and ask for his mom to return, and maybe also for his crush Dylan to like him back.
CHILDREN
Daddy, Papa, and Me
Leslea Newman
Share the loving bond between same-sex parents and their children in this heartwarming story of family.
Drumroll, Please
Lisa Jenn Bigelow
Melly didn't care too much about being a drummer when she auditioned for the school band, but she made the cut and now finds herself at band camp where she falls for a girl. This is a story about self-confidence, self-acceptance and self-love.
I Am Jazz
Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings
This is the real-life story of Jazz Jennings, a transgender child who has become a spokesperson for trans kids everywhere.
Julian is a Mermaid
Jessica Love
One day, Julián sees some women headed to the Mermaid Parade in fabulous, sweeping costumes. The young boy decides to piece together his own amazing mermaid outfit, and gets his skeptical grandmother to support and affirm how he sees himself.
Love Makes a Family
Sophie Beer
What makes a family a family? Love, of course. This cheerful board book explores how a family isn’t only defined by a mommy and a daddy: A family with two daddies will read to their child at bedtime, while a family with two mommies will start the day with a happy breakfast, and both deeply love their little ones.
The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher
Dana Alison Levy
The Fletchers are no different from any modern American family — four brothers, various pets (some possibly imaginary), soccer, plays, and pesky neighbors. The fact that the fathers are gay and a few of the brothers are adopted? That’s just background, showing readers without telling them that there as many definitions of family as there are families.
Mommy, Mama, and Me
Leslea Newman
Rhythmic text and illustrations with universal appeal show a toddler spending the day with its mommies. From hide-and-seek to dress-up, then bath time and a kiss goodnight, there's no limit to what a loving family can do together.
Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag
Rob Sanders
This book tells the story of the iconic rainbow flag, and how a symbol used by activist and politician Harvey Milk in 1978 came to represent the celebration of LGBTQ+ throughout the world.
Stonewall: A Building, An Uprising, A Revolution
Rob Sanders
Pride author Rob Sanders adds another title to the LGBTQ+ historical canon with Stonewall, the moving story of the 1969 police raid and ensuing protests that played a crucial role in the gay civil rights movement. Narrated by the Stonewall Inn itself, this accessible and empowering book is an essential piece of pride history.
To Night Owl From Dogfish
Holly Goldberg Sloan and Meg Wolitzer
Unhappy about being sent to the same summer camp after their fathers start dating, Bett and Avery, eleven, eventually begin scheming to get the couple back together after a break-up. Told entirely through emails.
