As we see more and more queer art and literature targeted by things like book bans across the country, show your support of the LGBTQ+ community by advocating for and reading queer authors this Pride month, and all year long.
Available this month:
Queering Architecture: Methods, Practices, Spaces, Pedagogies by Marko Jobst, Naomi Stead | Bloomsbury Publishing
Featuring contributions from a range of significant voices in the field, this volume renews the conversation around what it means to speak of the ‘queer’ in the context of architecture, and offers a fresh take on the methodological and epistemological challenges this poses to the discipline of architectural theory.
Pageboy: A Memoir by Elliot Page | Flatiron Books
Full of intimate stories, from chasing down secret love affairs to battling body image and struggling with familial strife, Pageboy is a love letter to the power of being seen. With this evocative and lyrical debut, Oscar-nominated star Elliot Page captures the universal human experience of searching for ourselves and our place in this complicated world.
Who Does That Bitch Think She Is? Doris Fish and the Rise of Drag by Craig Seligman | PublicAffairs
A vivid new history of drag told through the life of the pioneering queen Doris Fish.
Gay Life Stories by Robert Aldrich | Thames and Hudson
A fascinating portrait of gay men and women throughout time whose lives have influenced society at large, as well as what we recognize as today’s varied gay culture. This book gives a voice to more than eighty people from every major continent and from all walks of life. It includes poets and philosophers, rulers and spies, activists and artists.
Queer Premises: LGBTQ+ Venues in London Since the 1980s by Ben Campkin | Bloomsbury Publishing
Queer Premises offers evidence for how London’s diverse LGBTQ+ populations have embedded themselves into urban space, systems and resources. It sets out to understand how, across their different material dimensions, bars, cafes, nightclubs, pubs, community centers, and hybrids of these typologies, have been imagined, created and sustained.
The Digital Closet: How the Internet Became Straight by Alexander Monea | The MIT Press
In The Digital Closet, Alexander Monea argues provocatively that the internet became straight by suppressing everything that is not, forcing LGBTQIA+ content into increasingly narrow channels—rendering it invisible through opaque algorithms, automated and human content moderation, warped keywords, and other strategies of digital overreach.
Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America by Margot Canaday | Princeton University Press
Workplaces have traditionally been viewed as “straight spaces” in which queer people passed. As a result, historians have directed limited attention to the experiences of queer people on the job. Queer Career rectifies this, offering an expansive historical look at sexual minorities in the modern American workforce.
Rainbow Parenting: Your Guide to Raising Queer Kids and Their Allies by Lindz Amer | St. Martin’s Griffin
In the face of so many injustices across society for LGBTQ+ people, it can be easy for parents of young children to feel helpless and hopeless. While they may not be able to address every problem across the country, there’s a simple place to start: right at home. Rainbow Parenting is an indispensable stepping stone for adults who want to raise and teach kids in a queer and gender-affirming way, but might not know how.
Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary by Miss Major Griffin-Gracy and Toshio Meronek | Verso
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy is a veteran of the infamous Stonewall Riots, a former sex worker, and a transgender elder and activist who has survived Bellevue psychiatric hospital, Attica Prison, the HIV/AIDS crisis and a world that white supremacy has built. Miss Major Speaks is both document of her brilliant life–told with intimacy, warmth and an undeniable levity-and a roadmap for the challenges black, brown, queer and trans youth will face on the path to liberation today.
Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir by Lamya H | Random House Group
A queer hijabi Muslim immigrant survives her coming-of-age by drawing strength and hope from stories in the Quran in this daring, provocative, and radically hopeful memoir.
Available later in the year:
Mainstreaming Gays: Critical Convergences of Queer Media, Fan Cultures, and Commercial Television by Eve Ng | Rutgers University Press
Mainstreaming Gays discusses a key transitional period linking the eras of legacy and streaming, analyzing how queer production and interaction that had earlier occurred outside the mainstream was transformed by multiple converging trends: the emergence of digital media, the rising influence of fan cultures, and increasing interest in LGBTQ content within commercial media.
About Face: Stonewall, Revolt, and New Queer Art by Jonathan D. Katz | Phaidon
Though the Stonewall Riots might now be shorthand for the start of the gay rights movement, so much of art and culture has been queer since the beginning of time. In About Face, art historian and curator Jonathan D. Katz explores this concept head-on, curating a tapestry of works that connect historical threads and reveal how gender and sexual identity have been interwoven by artists contemporaneous to and since Stonewall.
A Place for Us: A Memoir by Brandon J. Wolf | Little a
Chronicling his survival of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in 2016, Brandon Wolf shares his transformative journey from young outsider to galvanizing activist. Marshaling the compassion and strength of a community, Wolf explores how to get through the darkest times with healing, hope, and resistance. “With our backs against the wall,” he writes, “we find a way out together.”
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