Top Reads For Pride Week
June is Pride Month, a time to commemorate the Stonewall uprising that helped launch the LGBTQ+ movement in June 1969 and also a chance to celebrate queer people across history and continue the fight for full and equal rights for LGBTQ+ people around the globe.
In honour of the month, we’ve rounded up a selection of our favourite books to help educate, support and offer an insight to the LGBTQ+ experience.
Read on for essential books to add to your list during Pride Month and beyond.
FICTION
Detransition, Baby, by Torrey Peters
What happens when a detransitioned man discovers that he’s expecting a baby with his girlfriend (who also happens to be his boss)? He recruits his trans ex-girlfriend to help them raise the baby as an unconventional family unit, of course—and that’s exactly what happens in this laugh-out-loud debut.
Young Mungo, Douglas Stuart
Mungo is a Protestant and James is a Catholic, both inhabiting the hyper-masculine world of two Glasgow housing estates, split violently along sectarian lines. The two should be enemies but, finding sanctuary in the doocot James has created for his racing pigeons, they grow closer and closer. Dreaming of escape and under constant threat of discovery, Mungo and James attempt to navigate a dangerous and uncertain future together.
HISTORICAL FICTION
Trumpet by Jackie Kay
After the death of legendary jazz trumpeter Joss Moody, his secret is revealed to the world: Joss was trans, a fact that even his adopted son Colman never knew. Trumpet is a starkly beautiful modern classic about the lengths to which people will go for love. It is a moving story of a shared life founded on an intricate lie, of loving deception and lasting devotion, and of the intimate workings of the human heart. Jackie Kay carefully registers the difficulties of transgendered life, and the challenges of private lives made suddenly public.
NON-FICTION
Queer Intentions by Amelia Abraham
Owen Jones called Queer Intentions a book that will ‘not just resonate with a new generation of queer people, but with all those who seek to be their allies.’ Combining journalism and personal experience, Amelia Abraham seeks answers to the challenges facing LGBTQ+ people today. Are the options available to LGBTQ+ people all they’re cracked up to be? And what happens to those left behind, in parts of the world where LGBTQ+ rights aren’t so advanced? This thought-provoking and often funny book takes the reader on a exploration of what it means to be queer.
CLASSIC
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
After David, a young American living in 1950s Paris meets the mysterious Giovanni in a bar the two begin an intense affair. When David's girlfriend returns three months later he is forced to choose between them, which has devastating consequences for them all. Highly controversial when it was first published in 1956 for it's portrayal of a gay relationship in mainsteam literature, James Baldwin’s tale of an ill fated love triangle is now considered a classic.
OUR FAVE
Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender
Young, black, queer and transgender – Felix Love is proud of his identity but feels like he might never get his own love story. Eager to know what falling in love really feels like, Felix suddenly finds himself in a mysterious catfish-love-triangle with an anonymous student who has been sending him transphobic messages. But as Felix navigates his ever more complicated feelings, he might finally come to terms with his most important discovery – his feelings about himself.
GRAPHIC
Queer: A Graphic History by Meg-John Barker
'Queer: A Graphic History Could Totally Change the Way You Think About Sex and Gender' Vice Activist-academic Meg-John Barker and cartoonist Jules Scheele illuminate the histories of queer thought and LGBTQ+ action in this groundbreaking non-fiction graphic novel. Queer explores the realms From identity politics and gender roles to privilege and exclusion,
EDUCATIONAL
United Queerdom by Dan Glass
United Queerdom evocatively captures over five decades of LGBT+ culture and protest from the GLF to 2020s. Showing how central protest is to queer history and identity this book uncovers the back-breaking hard work as well as the glamorous and raucous stories of those who rebelled against injustice and became founders in the story of queer liberation.
