15 (fairly) new books you should read this Pride Month
15 books to read during Pride Month
Ten Speed Press, Crown, Penguin Books
Whether you like fiction, nonfiction, historical novels, biographies or memoirs, our Pride Month selection has something for you.
Not only do these 15 books cover a range of genres, but they also address the many intersections of LGBTQ+ identity. Race, class, gender, health, immigration status, or housing status are all addressed. And these books are all contemporary, having been published in the last five years.
While this list is by no means exhaustive, here are some tips to get you started this month if you’re LGBTQ+ and want to get in the spirit, or if you’re not and want to learn more.
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The T in LGBT: Everything you need to know about being trans
Sourcebooks
This best-selling book by Jamie Raines combines the YouTube star’s experience of gender transition with accounts from other transgender people and aims to educate readers on “so many issues surrounding gender identity: realizing you’re trans, starting hormone treatment, considering surgery, and everything in between.”
Making room: Three decades of fighting for beds, belonging and a safe place for LGBTQ youth
Convergent Books
Carl Siciliano’s haunting novel, released in May, documents his experiences working with LGBTQ+ youth in New York City during the AIDS epidemic and pays tribute to the Black nonbinary youth whose murder spurred his fight.
We are everywhere
Ten-speed press
Published in 2019 on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, We are everywhere by Matthew Riemer and Leighton Brown offers a detailed photographic history of the queer liberation movement.
Radiant: The Life and Work of Keith Haring
Harper
New York-based artist Keith Haring was known for calling for change with his powerful line drawings at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Brad Gooch’s 2024 biography of Haring explores the figure’s legacy in art and activism.
Not all boys are blue: A memoir manifesto
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
George M. Johnson’s powerful 2020 memoir “weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by queer black boys” and tackles themes such as “gender identity, toxic masculinity, brotherhood, family, structural marginalization, consent, and black joy.”
Gender Queer: A Memoir
Oni Press
Gender Queer is currently the most banned book in the United States. What began as a way for author Maia Kobabe to explain nonbinary and asexual identity is now one of the most influential books of the 21st century.
Your driver is waiting
Double day
Full of social satire, Priya Guns’ novel explores themes of race, class and alliance. It is about a young Sri Lankan rideshare driver who falls in love with a wealthy white customer.
Night crawling
vintage
Night crawling follows a young black woman living in Oakland who must turn to prostitution to survive before she becomes embroiled in a police scandal. Leila Mottley’s 2022 novel examines the injustices of poverty, racism, sexism, and the criminal justice system.
The Guardian of Sorrow
Nancy Paulsen Books
Alexandra Villasante’s 2019 young adult novel is about an undocumented immigrant who embarks on a risky new experiment to stay in the country, becoming a “keeper of grief” who processes another person’s shame, regret, fear and grief.
Cantors
vintage
Beginning in 1970s Uruguay, where homosexuality is criminalized, Carolina De Robertis’ brilliant 2020 novel finds five women returning to the same Cape to meet in secret over three decades.
Search for Latinx
vintage
Bringing together stories of Afrolatinos, Indigenous people, Muslims, queers, and undocumented people, this powerful collection by Paola Ramos illuminates the experiences of those who have been “chronically overlooked in representations of the diverse population of nearly sixty million Latinos in the United States.”
I will greet the sun again
Hogarth
Only released on June 4th this year, Khashayar J. Khabushani’s novel explores what it means to be queer and Muslim, following a young Iranian immigrant and his family as they struggle to make ends meet.
On earth we are briefly beautiful
Penguin Books
Ocean Vuong’s 2021 novel explores race, class, masculinity, addiction, violence, and trauma. Written as “a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read,” the book is about the love between a single mother and her son living in Vietnam.
Legendary Children
Penguin Books
If you are a fan of RuPaul’s Drag RaceTom Fitzgerald and Lorenzo Marquez’s 2020 guide delves into the history of the LGBTQ+ movement, examining it through its portrayal in the hit reality show, which the authors say has evolved into a “museum of queer cultural and social history.”
Tomorrow everything will be different
Crown
Thought Tomorrow Will Be Different is an autobiography and more. Delaware Senator Sarah McBride also sums up the fight for LGBTQ+ equality. The book includes a foreword by President Joe Biden, who wrote, “If you are going through your own inner struggle, this book can help you find a way to live authentically, fully, and freely.”
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