LGBTQ+ Books To Read During Pride Month

Updated: Jun 03, 2024

Author

Carrie Thornbrugh

"Love who you want to love, and do it unapologetically, including that face you see every day in the mirror.” —George M. Johnson, All Boys Aren’t Blue

June is Pride Month, a time to celebrate the LGBTQIA+ community and promote inclusivity and acceptance. It's a wonderful opportunity to educate ourselves and raise awareness about the unique experiences and challenges faced by individuals within this diverse community. Keep reading for a list of public LGBTQIA+ book clubs looking for members and recommended titles to explore with your book club during Pride Month.

Public LGBTQIA+ book clubs meeting in person and/or online:

Our picks for must-read books for Pride Month:

Antiquity: A Novel by Hanna Johansson

Elegant, slippery, and provocative, Antiquity is a queer Lolita story by prize-winning Swedish author Hanna Johansson--a story of desire, power, obsession, observation, and taboo

On a Greek island rich with ancient beauty, a lonely woman in her thirties upends the relationship between a mother and her teenage daughter. Lust and admiration for Helena, a chic older artist, brings Antiquity's unnamed narrator to Ermoupoli, where Helena's daughter, Olga, seems at first like an obstacle and a nuisance. But the unpredictable forces of ego and desire take over, leading our narrator down a more dangerous path, and causing the roles of lover and beloved, child and adult, stranger and intimate to become distorted. As the months go by, the fragile web connecting the three women nears rupture, and the ominous consequences of their entanglement loom just beyond a summer that must end. With echoes of Death in Venice, Call Me by Your Name, and The Lover, but wholly original and contemporary, Antiquity probes the depths of memory, beauty, morality, and the narratives that arrange our experience of the world.

Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H

AN AUDACIOUS BOOK CLUB PICK - WINNER: The Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize, the Stonewall Book Award, the Israel Fishman Nonfiction Award - Lambda Literary Award Finalist

When fourteen-year-old Lamya H realizes she has a crush on her teacher--her female teacher--she covers up her attraction, an attraction she can't yet name, by playing up her roles as overachiever and class clown. Born in South Asia, she moved to the Middle East at a young age and has spent years feeling out of place, like her own desires and dreams don't matter, and it's easier to hide in plain sight. To disappear. But one day in Quran class, she reads a passage about Maryam that changes everything: When Maryam learned that she was pregnant, she insisted no man had touched her. Could Maryam, uninterested in men, be . . . like Lamya? From that moment on, Lamya makes sense of her struggles and triumphs by comparing her experiences with some of the most famous stories in the Quran. She juxtaposes her coming out with Musa liberating his people from the pharoah; asks if Allah, who is neither male nor female, might instead be nonbinary; and, drawing on the faith and hope Nuh needed to construct his ark, begins to build a life of her own--ultimately finding that the answer to her lifelong quest for community and belonging lies in owning her identity as a queer, devout Muslim immigrant. This searingly intimate memoir in essays, spanning Lamya's childhood to her arrival in the United States for college through early-adult life in New York City, tells a universal story of courage, trust, and love, celebrating what it means to be a seeker and an architect of one's own life.

Fiebre Tropical by Julián Delgado Lopera

Lit by the hormonal neon glow of Miami, this debut novel follows a Colombian teenager's coming-of-age as she plunges headfirst into lust and evangelism.

Uprooted from her comfortable life in Bogotá, Colombia, into an ant-infested Miami townhouse, fifteen-year-old Francisca is miserable and friendless in her strange new city. Her alienation grows when her mother is swept up into an evangelical church, replete with Christian salsa, abstinent young dancers, and baptisms for the dead. But there, Francisca also meets the magnetic Carmen: opinionated and charismatic, head of the youth group, and the pastor's daughter. As her mother's mental health deteriorates and her grandmother descends into alcoholism, Francisca falls more and more intensely in love with Carmen. To get closer to her, Francisca turns to Jesus to be saved, even as their relationship hurtles toward a shattering conclusion.

Thundersong by Sasha LaPointe

I"Blending beautiful family history with her own personal memories, LaPointe's writing is a ballad against amnesia, and a call to action for healing, for decolonization, for hope." --Elle

The author of the award-winning memoir Red Paint returns with a razor-sharp, clear-eyed collection of essays on what it means to be a proudly queer indigenous woman in the United States today. Drawing on a rich family archive as well as the anthropological work of her late great-grandmother, Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe explores themes ranging from indigenous identity and stereotypes to cultural displacement and environmental degradation to understand what our experiences teach us about the power of community, commitment, and conscientious honesty. Unapologetically punk, the essays in Thunder Song segue from the miraculous to the mundane, from the spiritual to the physical, as they examine the role of art--in particular music--and community in helping a new generation of indigenous people claim the strength of their heritage while defining their own path in the contemporary world.

Bad Seed by Gabriel Carle

A vibrant debut short story collection depicting the disillusionment that comes with being young and queer in Puerto Rico.

The visceral, wildly imaginative stories in Bad Seed flick through working-class scenes of contemporary Puerto Rico, where friends and lovers melt into and defy their surroundings--night clubs, ruined streets, cramped rooms with cockroaches moving in the walls. A horny high schooler spends his summer break in front of the TV; a queer love triangle unravels on the emblematic theater steps of the University of Puerto Rico; a group of friends get high and watch San Juan burn from atop a clocktower; an HIV positive college student works the night shift at a local bathhouse. At turns playful and heartbreaking, Bad Seed is the long overdue English-language debut of one of Puerto Rico's most exciting up-and-coming writers.

You Only Call When You're In Trouble by Stephen McCauley

After a lifetime of taking care of his impossible but irresistible sister and his cherished niece, Tom is ready to put himself first. An architect specializing in tiny houses, he finally has an opportunity to build his masterpiece--"his last shot at leaving a footprint on the dying planet." Assuming, that is, he can stick to his resolution to keep the demands of his needy family at bay. Naturally, that's when his phone rings. His niece, Cecily--the real love of Tom's life, as his boyfriend reminded him when moving out--is embroiled in a Title IX investigation at the college where she teaches that threatens her career and relationship. And after decades of lying, his sister wants him to help her tell Cecily the real identity of her father. Tom does what he's always done--answers the call. Thus begins a journey that will change everyone's life and demonstrate the beauty or dysfunction (or both?) of the ties that bind families together and sometimes strangle them. Warm, funny, and deeply moving, You Only Call When You're in Trouble is an unforgettable showcase for Stephen McCauley's distinctive voice and unique ability to create complex characters that jump off the page and straight into your heart.

Dead in Long Beach, California by Venita Blackburn

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 | A gut-busting and heartbreaking descent into one woman's fraying connection to reality, from a soon-to-be superstar.

Coral is the first person to discover her brother Jay's dead body in the wake of his suicide. There's no note, only a drably furnished bachelor pad in Long Beach, California, and a cell phone with a handful of numbers in it. Coral pockets the phone. And then she starts responding to texts as her dead brother. Over the course of one week, Coral, the successful yet lonely author of a hit dystopian novel, Wildfire, becomes increasingly untethered from reality. Blindsided by grief and operating with reckless determination, she doubles --and triples--down on posing as her brother, risking not only her own sanity but her relationship with her precocious niece, Khadijah. As Coral's swirl of lies slowly closes in on her, the quirky and mysterious alien world of Wildfire becomes enmeshed in her own reality, in the process pushing long-buried memories, traumas, and secrets dangerously into the present. A form-shifting and soul-crunching chronicle of grief and crisis, Venita Blackburn's debut novel, Dead in Long Beach, California, is a fleet-footed marvel of self-discovery and storytelling that explores the depths of humankind's capacity for harm and healing. With the daring, often hilarious imagination that made her an acclaimed short-fiction innovator, Blackburn crafts a layered, page-turning reckoning with what it means to be alive, dead, and somewhere in between.

Greta & Valdin: A Novel by Rebecca K. Reilly

For fans of Schitt's Creek and Sally Rooney's Normal People, an irresistible and bighearted international bestseller that follows a brother and sister as they navigate queerness, multiracial identity, and the dramas big and small of their entangled, unconventional family, all while flailing their way to love.

It's been a year since his ex-boyfriend dumped him and moved from Auckland to Buenos Aires, and Valdin is doing fine. He has a good flat with his sister Greta, a good career where his colleagues only occasionally remind him that he is the sole Maaori person in the office, and a good friend who he only sleeps with when he's sad. But when work sends him to Argentina and he's thrown back in his former lover's orbit, Valdin is forced to confront the feelings he's been trying to ignore--and the future he wants. Greta is not letting her painfully unrequited crush (or her possibly pointless master's thesis, or her pathetic academic salary...) get her down. She would love to focus on the charming fellow grad student she meets at a party and her friendships with a circle of similarly floundering twenty-somethings, but her chaotic family life won't stop intruding: her mother is keeping secrets, her nephew is having a gay crisis, and her brother has suddenly flown to South America without a word. Sharp, hilarious, and with an undeniable emotional momentum that builds to an exuberant conclusion, Greta & Valdin careens us through the siblings' misadventures and the messy dramas of their sprawling, eccentric Maaori-Russian-Catalonian family. An acclaimed bestseller in New Zealand, Greta & Valdin is fresh, joyful, and alive with the possibility of love in its many mystifying forms.

The Ex-Girlfriend of My Girlfriend is My Girlfriend

The Ex-Girlfriend of My Ex-Girlfriend Is My Girlfriend: Advice on Queer Dating, Love, and Friendship by Maddy Court

This illustrated book of advice on love, dating, and friendship--written by and for queer women and people of marginalized genders-is the new go-to queer relationship handbook.

Fix yourself a cup of non-caffeinated herbal tea and prepare to laugh, cry, reminisce, and feel your feelings as you read through these quintessentially queer dating dilemmas. In The Ex-Girlfriend of My Ex-Girlfriend Is My Girlfriend, advice columnist Maddy Court (a.k.a. Xena Worrier Princess) answers anonymous queries from lesbian, bisexual, and queer women and people of marginalized genders. Illustrated by comics artist Kelsey Wroten and based on Court's viral zine of the same name, this book features never-before-published letters and responses about first loves, heartbreak, coming out, and queer friendship--all answered with the warmth and honesty of the gay big sister you wish you had. BY QUEERS, FOR QUEERS: This book was written by and for queer women and people of marginalized genders. The questions reflect real experiences that aren't often represented in the media, and the answers offer an important reminder that loving ourselves takes patience, effort, and the support of our friends and communities.

Interesting Facts About Space: A Novel by Emily Austin

A fast-paced, hilarious, and ultimately hopeful novel for anyone who has ever worried they might be a terrible person--from the bestselling author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead.

Enid is obsessed with space. She can tell you all about black holes and their ability to spaghettify you without batting an eye in fear. Her one major phobia? Bald men. But she tries to keep that one under wraps. When she's not listening to her favorite true crime podcasts on a loop, she's serially dating a rotation of women from dating apps. At the same time, she's trying to forge a new relationship with her estranged half-sisters after the death of her absent father. When she unwittingly plunges into her first serious romantic entanglement, Enid starts to believe that someone is following her. As her paranoia spirals out of control, Enid must contend with her mounting suspicion that something is seriously wrong with her. Because at the end of the day there's only one person she can't outrun--herself. Brimming with quirky humor, charm, and heart, Interesting Facts about Space effortlessly shows us the power of revealing our secret shames, the most beautifully human parts of us all.

How We Named The Stars by Andrés N. Ordorica

When Daniel de La Luna arrives as a scholarship student at an elite East Coast university, he bears the weight of his family's hopes and dreams, and the burden of sharing his late uncle's name. Daniel flounders at first--but then Sam, his roommate, changes everything. As their relationship evolves from brotherly banter to something more intimate, Daniel soon finds himself in love with a man who helps him see himself in a new light. But just as their relationship takes flight, Daniel is pulled away, first by Sam's hesitation and then by a brutal turn of events that changes Daniel's life forever. As he grapples with profound loss, Daniel finds himself in his family's ancestral homeland in México for the summer, finding joy in this setting even as he struggles to come to terms with what's happened and faces a host of new questions: How does the person he is connect with this place his family comes from? How is his own story connected to his late uncle's? And how might he reconcile the many parts of himself as he learns to move forward? Equal parts tender and triumphant, Andrés N. Ordorica's How We Named the Stars is a debut novel of love, heartache, redemption, and learning to honor the dead; a story of finding the strength to figure out who you are--and who you could be--if only the world would let you.

Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest To Track Down The Last Remaining Lesbian Bars In America by Krista Burton

A former Rookie contributor and creator of the popular blog Effing Dykes investigates the disappearance of America's lesbian bars by visiting the last few in existence.

Lesbian bars have always been treasured safe spaces for their customers, providing not only a good time but a shelter from societal alienation and outright persecution. In 1987, there were 206 of them in America. Today, only a couple dozen remain. How and why did this happen? What has been lost--or possibly gained--by such a decline? What transpires when marginalized communities become more accepted and mainstream? In Moby Dyke, Krista Burton attempts to answer these questions firsthand, venturing on an epic cross-country pilgrimage to the last few remaining dyke bars. Her pilgrimage includes taking in her first drag show since the onset of the pandemic at The Back Door in Bloomington, Indiana; competing in dildo races at Houston's Pearl Bar; and, despite her deep-seated hatred of karaoke, joining a group serenade at Nashville's Lipstick Lounge and enjoying the dreaded pastime for the first time in her life. While Burton sets out on the excursion to assess the current state of lesbian bars, she also winds up examining her own personal journey, from coming out to her Mormon parents to recently marrying her husband, a trans man whose presence on the trip underscores the important conversation about who precisely is welcome in certain queer spaces--and how they and their occupants continue to evolve. Moby Dyke is an insightful and hilarious travelogue that celebrates the kind of community that can only be found in windowless rooms soundtracked by Britney Spears-heavy playlists and illuminated by overhead holiday lights no matter the time of year.

Thirsty by Jas Hammonds + Book Club Discussion Guide

From Jas Hammonds, award-winning author of We Deserve Monuments, comes a gripping read about a queer teen risking it all to pledge an underground sorority with her best friends the summer before college--perfect for fans of Euphoria and Girl in Pieces.

It's the summer before college and eighteen-year-old Blake Brenner and her girlfriend, Ella, have one goal: join the mysterious and exclusive Serena Society. The sorority promises status and lifelong connections to a network of powerful, trailblazing women of color. Ella's acceptance is a sure thing--she's the daughter of a Serena alum. Blake, however, has a lot more to prove. As a former loner from a working-class background, Blake lacks Ella's pedigree and confidence. Luckily, she finds courage at the bottom of a liquor bottle. When she drinks, she's bold, funny, and unstoppable--and the Serenas love it. But as pledging intensifies, so does Blake's drinking, until it's seeping into every corner of her life. Ella assures Blake that she's fine; partying hard is what it takes to make the cut. But success has never felt so much like drowning. With her future hanging in the balance and her past dragging her down, Blake must decide how far she's willing to go to achieve her glittering dreams of success--and how much of herself she's willing to lose in the process.

The Male Gazed by Manuel Betancourt

Manuel Betancourt has long lustfully coveted masculinity--in part because he so lacked it. As a child in Bogotá, Colombia, he grew up under the social pressure to appear strong, manly, and, ultimately, straight. And yet in the films and television he avidly watched, Betancourt saw glimmers of different possibilities. From the stars of telenovelas and the princes of Disney films to pop sensation Ricky Martin and teen heartthrobs in shows like Saved By the Bell, he continually found himself asking: Do I want him or do I want to be him? The Male Gazed grapples with the thrall of masculinity, examining its frailty and its attendant anxieties even as it focuses on its erotic potential. Masculinity, Betancourt suggests, isn't suddenly ripe for deconstruction--or even outright destruction--amid so much talk about its inherent toxicity. Looking back over decades' worth of pop culture's attempts to codify and reframe what men can be, wear, do, and desire, this book establishes that to gaze at men is still a subversive act. Written in the spirit of Hanif Abdurraqib and Olivia Laing, The Male Gazed mingles personal anecdotes with cultural criticism to offer an exploration of intimacy, homoeroticism, and the danger of internalizing too many toxic ideas about masculinity as a gay man.

Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco by K. Iver

In their debut collection, K. Iver tells a story of queer love and queer grief in the deep South that cuts right down to the bone. Their poems chronicle the lives of two young queer and trans people, with all their wounds and joys and scars. It is both elegiac and celebratory, a fierce love song about queer resilience, as well a mourning song about familial abuse and the violence inherent in the gender binary.

A Place of Our Own by June Thomas

A “riveting” and “indispensable” (Alison Bechdel) cultural history of queer women’s lives in the second half of the twentieth century, told through six iconic spaces.

For as long as queer women have existed, they’ve created gathering grounds where they can be themselves. From the intimate darkness of the lesbian bar to the sweaty camaraderie of the softball field, these spaces aren’t a luxury—they’re a necessity for queer women defining their identities. In A Place of Our Own, journalist June Thomas invites readers into six iconic lesbian spaces over the course of the last sixty years, including the rural commune, the sex toy boutique, the vacation spot, and the feminist bookstore. Thomas blends her own experiences with archival research and rare interviews with pioneering figures like Elaine Romagnoli, Susie Bright, and Jacqueline Woodson. She richly illustrates the lives of the business owners, entrepreneurs, activists, and dreamers who shaped the long struggle for queer liberation. Thomas illuminates what is gained and lost in the shift from the exclusive, tight-knit women’s spaces of the ’70s toward today’s more inclusive yet more diffuse LGBTQ+ communities. At once a love letter, a time capsule, and a bridge between generations of queer women, A Place of Our Own brings the history—and timeless present—of the lesbian community to vivid life.

The House of Hidden Meanings by RuPaul

A profound introspection of his life, relationships, and identity, The House of Hidden Meanings is a self-portrait of the legendary icon on the road to global fame and changing the way the world thinks about drag.

Central to RuPaul's success has been his chameleonic adaptability. From drag icon to powerhouse producer of one of the world's largest television franchises, RuPaul's ever-shifting nature has always been part of his brand as both supermodel and supermogul. Yet that adaptability has made him enigmatic to the public. In this memoir, his most intimate and detailed book yet, RuPaul makes himself truly known. In The House of Hidden Meanings, RuPaul strips away all artifice and recounts the story of his life with breathtaking clarity and tenderness, bringing his signature wisdom and wit to his own biography. From his early years growing up as a queer Black kid in San Diego navigating complex relationships with his absent father and temperamental mother, to forging an identity in the punk and drag scenes of Atlanta and New York, to finding enduring love with his husband Georges LeBar and self-acceptance in sobriety, RuPaul excavates his own biography life-story, uncovering new truths and insights in his personal history. Here in RuPaul's singular and extraordinary story is a manual for living--a personal philosophy that testifies to the value of chosen family, the importance of harnessing what makes you different, and the transformational power of facing yourself fearlessly.

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

A story of queer love and working-class families, Young Mungo is the brilliant second novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain.

Acclaimed as one of the best books of the year by NPR, Kirkus Reviews, Time, and Amazon, and named a Top 10 Book of the Year by the Washington Post, Young Mungo is a brilliantly constructed and deeply moving story of queer love and working-class families by the Booker Prize–winning author of Shuggie Bain. Growing up in a housing estate in Glasgow, Mungo and James are born under different stars—Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic—and they should be sworn enemies. Yet against all odds, they fall in love as they find sanctuary and dream of escape in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds. But when Mungo’s mother sends him on a fishing trip to a remote loch with two strange men, he will need all his strength and courage to find his way back to a place where he and James might still have a future.

lesbian couple reading together

These books provide a glimpse into the rich experiences, struggles, and triumphs of LGBTQIA+ individuals. They promote empathy, understanding, and a celebration of diverse identities. Pride Month serves as a reminder to honor and support the LGBTQIA+ community, not just during June but throughout the year. Let's engage in these powerful narratives and continue to foster inclusivity, acceptance, and love for all. Happy Pride Month! ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

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