…a personal list.
When we thought about what we might post in Pride Month ourselves, we had very few ideas (they tend to become quite thin on the ground when you’ve been doing this schtick for…nearly 4 years). The one idea we did have was creating a list of 100 (LGBT) books to read before you die. So, here we are!
There is a great variety in how we decided which books would go on this list. Some are favourites. Some are classics or nonfiction. Some are ones we simply thought to be important in the grand scheme of LGBT writing. This, in part, is why this is a personal list. It’s not definitive, and there are a number of books that you might think of that aren’t here (chiefly, because we’ve not read them). Really, it’s only a start.
So strap yourselves in, and have a look to see how many you have read!
A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
A Curse of Roses by Diana Pinguicha
A Guide to Undressing Your Monsters by Sam Sax
A Little Hatred by Joe Abercrombie
All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
Alone in Space by Tillie Walden
A Map of Home by Randa Jarrar
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
Bad Gays by Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
Bent by Martin Sherman
Bestiary by K-Ming Chang
bone by Yrsa Daley-Ward
Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold by Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy & Madeline D. Davis
Call Him Mine by Tim MacGabhann
Cenzontle by Marcelo Hernández Castillo
City of Lies by Sam Hawke
Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence by Adrienne Rich*
Comrade Loves of the Samurai by Ihara Saikaku
Crush by Richard Siken
Devotion by Hannah Kent
Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith
Everyone in This Room Will Someday be Dead by Emily Austin
Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers by Jake Skeets
Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars by Kai Cheng Thom
Felicity by Mary Oliver
Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
How to Become a Planet by Nicole Melleby
How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones
If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho by Sappho, trans. Anne Carson
I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip by John Donovan
King and the Dragonflies by Kacen Callender
La Bastarda by Trifonia Melibea Obono, trans. Lawrence Schimel
Last Exit by Max Gladstone
Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me by Mariko Tamaki & Rosemary Valero-O’Connell
Lie With Me by Philippe Besson, trans. Molly Ringwald
Living as a Lesbian by Cheryl Clarke
Maurice by E.M. Forster
My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Kabi Nagata, trans. Jocelyne Allen
Nature Poem by Tommy Pico
Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin, trans. Bonnie Huie
Olivia by Dorothy Strachey
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
Point of Hopes by Melissa Scott
Queer ed. by Frank Wynne
Reckless Paper Birds by John McCullough
Release by Patrick Ness
Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe by John Boswell
She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker Chan
Silverchest by Carl Phillips
Sister Outside by Audre Lorde
Sistersong by Lucy Holland
Sonnets of a Dark Love by Federico GarcÃa Lorca, trans. Mar Escribano & Julio Viernes
Son of Sin by Omar Sakr
Southernmost by Silas House
Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
Stonewall by Martin Duberman
Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR): Survival, Revolt, and Queer Antagonist Struggle by Sylvia Rivera & Marsha P. Johnson
The Boy from the Mish by Gary Lonesborough
The Charioteer by Mary Renault
The Clothesline Swing by Danny Ramadan
The Dead and the Dark by Courtney Gould
The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell & Ned Asta
The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri
The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley
The Lie And How We Told It by Tommi Parrish
The Lost Arabs by Omar Sakr
The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen
The Midnight Lie by Marie Rutkoski
The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer
The Passing Playbook by Isaac Fitzsimons
The Poems of Catullus by Catullus, trans. Peter Green
The Pursuit Of… by Courtney Milan
There is a Light by Ban Gilmartin
The Satyricon by Petronius, trans. J.P. Sullivan
The Scapegracers by Clarke
The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson
The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
The Tea Dragon Festival by Kay O’Neill
The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar
The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
The Unbroken by C. L. Clark
The Unspoken Name by A. K. Larkwood
The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
The Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal el-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
This Town Sleeps by Dennis E. Staples
Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong
Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters
Tommy’s Tale by Alan Cumming
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
Valencia by Michelle Tea
War of the Foxes by Richard Siken
Wonders of the Invisible World by Christopher Barzak
Yellow Rose by Nobuko Yoshiya
*Please note that Adrienne Rich was a TERF. However, we believe that there is still value to be gained in reading this paper of hers, even with that in mind.
How many have you read? What books would you have on your list?
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