October is LGBTQIA+ History Month, dedicated to celebrating the diversity and history of the community. We are celebrating with books that shed light on the history of the community, with stories from inspiring individuals to the struggle for LGBTQIA+ rights to significant events that influenced LGBTQIA+ culture going forward.
Delve into our list of recommended titles:
Here is a definitive deep-dive into queer history and culture with hit reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race as a touchstone. Each chapter is an examination of a specific aspect of the show that ties to a specific aspect of queer cultural history and/or the work of certain legendary figures in queer cultural history.
Here is an inspiring and intimate self-portrait of Billie Jean King and her ongoing commitment to fairness and social justice. She poignantly recalls the cultural backdrop of the years that encompass her brilliant tennis career, and the profound impact on her worldview by the LGBTQIA+ rights movement.
In Speak Now, a renowned legal scholar tells the definitive story of the trial that will stand as the most potent argument for marriage equality. In telling the story of Hollingsworth v. Perry, the groundbreaking federal lawsuit against Proposition 8, Kenji Yoshino has also written a paean to the vanishing civil trial.
The Queering of Corporate America
The Queering of Corporate America gives a surprising history of how corporate America joined the cause for LGBTQIA+ rights and complicates the narrative of corporate conservatism and provides insights into the future legal, political, and cultural implications of this unexpected relationship.
The Stonewall Reader is a collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented both the years leading up to and the years following the riots. The anthology focuses on the events of 1969, the five years before, and the five years after.
Here is the riveting story of the conflict over same-sex marriage in the United States—the most significant civil rights breakthrough of the new millennium. This richly detailed narrative follows the coast-to-coast conflict to shed light on every aspect of a political and legal controversy that divided Americans like no other.
Here is a revealing portrait of one of the most gifted Black artists and intellectuals of the twentieth century. Although best-known for her work A Raisin in the Sun, her short life was full of extraordinary experiences and achievements, and she had an unflinching commitment to social justice.
Here is the definitive account of five remarkable years in American civil rights history, when the United States experienced a tectonic shift on the issue of marriage equality, taking the reader from the Oval Office to the Supreme Court ruling, from state-by-state campaigns to an astounding shift in national public opinion.
A Queer History of the United States
Here is the first book to cover the entirety of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, from pre-1492 to the present, abounding with startling examples of unknown or often ignored aspects of American history including the impact of new technologies on LGBTQIA+ life in the nineteenth century.
Just two years after the Stonewall riots, Merle Miller wrote a poignant essay for the New York Times Magazine entitled “What It Means To Be a Homosexual” in response to a homophobic article published in Harper’s Magazine. It carried the seed that would blossom into On Being Different—one of the earliest memoirs to affirm the importance of coming out.
Here is a graphic memoir recounting George Takei’s childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II. The book also delves into local California politics, including the assassination of Harvey Milk and the Marriage Equality Act, and the similarities between the modern threats to LGBTQIA+ rights and the past threats to Asian-American rights.
