LGBTQ+ Book Recs
Fellas, is it gay to read? It is if you’re reading these books! Perfect for the beach, the park, the coffee shop, the subway, your bedroom, pretty much any place you’re going during pride month or any month of the year. Sit back, relax, and crack the spine of one of these great, gay reads:
Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir, by Akwaeke Emezi
This is easily one of the most beautiful, haunting, and evocative works of writing I have ever read. Emezi’s memoir takes the form of a series of intimate letters to loved ones, idols, and other people in their life, exploring how each relationship has helped shape Emezi’s understanding of their physical, emotional, and spiritual selves. Emezi is unsparing and uncompromising in exploring the intricacies of their body, relationships, career, and more, all founded on their position as an embodied spirit in, but not of, this world. In vivid, ethereal prose, Emezi reinvents the memoir.
Hola Papi: How to Come Out in a Wal Mart Parking Lot and Other Life Confessions, by JP Brammer
I listened to the audiobook for this sweet, thoughtful memoir and absolutely loved it! You might recognize the title from Brammer's popular advice column, the style of which he emulates in this brief but intimate book. Each essay is at once an admission, a reflection, and a an honest attempt at reconciling his past and present selves. If you've ever asked yourself a question and struggled to arrive at the answer, this book is for you.
Detransition, Baby, by Torrey Peters
I’ve recommended this book to so many people that I sincerely cannot remember the last time I spoke with someone who hadn’t read it! There's nothing that Reese, a trans woman living in New York City, wants more than to be a mother. She came close to adopting once — but that was before her girlfriend Amy detransitioned to live as Ames, their relationship crumbled, and the two fell out of touch. So when Ames calls up Reese out of the blue to tell her that his boss, Katrina, is pregnant with his child, and that he wants Reese to help them raise it, she gawks in disbelief. Peters’ prose is conversational and astute, with a critical eye that positions each character equally as observer of, and participant in, their own story. Detransition, Baby is delightfully sincere, self-indulgent, and searing all at the same time. Pick it up, flip through a few pages, and I promise that you won’t be able to put it back down.
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, by Audre Lorde
In this biomythography (history, biography, and myth), Lorde recalls coming of age and into her identity as a Black lesbian in Harlem in the mid-twentieth century. In vivid, poetic writing, Lorde ushers the reader not only into her own life, but the lives of the women who surround her: her mother, sisters, aunts, friends, and lovers, all of whom shape the way she sees and experiences the world. The result is stunning.
Afterparties, by Anthony Veasna So
The short stories in Afterparties, by the late Anthony Veasna So, read more like love letters than fiction, each one an intimate and attentive portrait of daily life in the Cambodian-American communities in which So was raised. The set-ups are simple — two cousins parting ways for college, a father and son struggling to keep their car repair shop afloat, and a young man ushering the passage of his father's spirit to the next life, to name a few. Many of his characters are queer, wrestling with desire, intimacy, and the way that being queer intersects with their other identities and obligations. Afterparties is the most captivating book I've read in years, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Milk Fed, by Melissa Broder
Milk Fed's protagonist, Rachel, is a 24-year-old lapsed Jewish woman who works at a talent agency in Los Angeles and spends the bulk of her time observing restrictive diet and exercise regimens — that is, until she cuts off her mother for three months and develops an intense relationship with a young Orthodox woman intent on making her eat. This sharp, funny novel is rife with candid explorations of food, family, spirituality, and sexuality, all written in prose as quick-witted and obsessive as its narrator. I can confidently say that I've never read anything like it! And I'm really glad I did.
Filthy Animals, by Brandon Taylor
I loved each and every sentence of this poignant, beautiful book! The interconnected short stories in Filthy Animals examine the intimacy between ordinary people at inflection points in their lives: A dancer privy to a terrible secret, a teen on the precipice of a life-changing move, and a young man caught in the crosshairs of a couple on the mend. It is rife with queer intimacy, love, conflict, and chaos. It is the nuance with which Taylor writers their flaws that truly renders his characters flesh and bone.