Celebrate Pride Month

Pride Month Blog Image of rainbow colored book covers

Happy LGBTQ+ Pride Month! Celebrated in the month of June, Pride Month honors the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, a six-day stretch of protests in which LGBTQ+ activists fought back against a police raid of the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in New York City. It was a major protest against anti-LGBTQ+ laws and discrimination and a catalyst for the Pride celebrations known today.

The following list of resources can help you celebrate Pride Month by learning about the history of LGBTQ+ communities in the United States, reading about the lives of LGBTQ+ persons, and experiencing the works of LGBTQ+ authors and creators. Many of the titles and authors included on this list have received awards or other honors, but this list is by no means comprehensive. 

 

Adult Fiction 

  • Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis: In the midst of the Uruguayan dictatorship, five wildly different women find each other as lovers, friends, and ultimately family. 

  • Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters: The lives of three women collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces them to confront their deepest desires. 

  • The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai: In 1985, Yale Tishman’s career as the director of a Chicago art gallery starts to flourish while the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. 

  • In the Lives of Puppets by T. Klune: This charming fantasy novel features a found family comprised of inventors and robots.  

  • Love & Other Disasters by Anita Kelly: The first openly nonbinary contestant on America’s favorite cooking show falls for their clumsy competitor in this romantic comedy. 

  • Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides: In this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Calliope’s sense of identity is shaken by the discovery that she is intersex. 

  • One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston: A young woman meets the love of her life on the subway, but there's one problem: her dream girl is actually a time traveler from the 1970s. 

  • Rainbow Rainbow: Stories by Lydia Conklin: This collection of humorous and heartrending stories follows queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming characters as they seek love and connection. 

  • The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid: Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. 

  • Sirens & Muses by Antonia Angress: Four artists are drawn into a web of rivalry and desire at an elite art school in New York. 

  • Siren Queen by Nghi Vo: This tale of movie magic follows Luli, a Chinese American girl who is determined to realize her dreams of movie stardom, no matter how much she must lie, cheat, or steal. 

  • Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon: Vern lives in the woods, isolated from society and determined to raise her twins far from its influence, but now her body is undergoing strange transformations. 

  • To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers: Ariadne O'Neill and a team of explorers are shifting through space and time on a mission to ecologically survey potentially habitable worlds. 

  • The Unfortunates by JK Chukwu: Sahara sets out to find the truth about a group of Black college students who have been mysteriously disappearing. 

 

Adult Nonfiction 

  • The Book of Pride: LGBTQ Heroes Who Changed the World by Mason Funk: Through interviews with leaders and activists, this book tells the story of the LGBTQ+ rights movement from the 1960s to the present. 

  • Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir by Akwaeke Emezi: This memoir, written by an award-winning nonbinary author, reveals the harrowing yet inspiring truths of their personal, spiritual, and artistic journey. 

  • Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel: This darkly funny graphic novel memoir tells the story of Alison Bechdel's family, including her coming out of the closet. 

  • How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones: The memoir of a young, Black, gay man from the South who fights to carve out a place for himself within his family and his country. 

  • The Stonewall Reader edited by the New York Public Library: This anthology records the tumultuous fight for LGBTQ+ rights in the 1960s and the activists who spearheaded the movement. 

  • Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality by Sarah McBride: This memoir chronicles the story of transgender activist Sarah McBride, the first transgender person to speak at a national political convention in 2016. 

  • Unprotected: A Memoir by Billy Porter: Billy Porter recounts his struggles growing up gay and Black in America before he became a prominent actor. 

 

Young Adult Fiction 

  • Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz: When Ari Mendoza meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before. 

  • Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender: Felix Love, a transgender teenager, attempts to get revenge by catfishing his anonymous bully, but lands in a quasi-love triangle with his former enemy and his best friend. 

  • If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo: Amanda Hardy wants to fit in at her new school, but she is conflicted about revealing her transgender identity to her new crush. 

  • Lakelore by Anna-Marie McLemore: Two nonbinary teens are pulled into a magical world under a lake and struggle to keep their real lives intact. 

  • Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo: America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown, where Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone. 

  • Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me by Mariko Tamaki: This graphic novel follows Frederica "Freddy" Riley through her struggles with her on-again, off-again relationship with Laura Dean. 

  • Little & Lion by Brandy Colbert: Suzette returns home to Los Angeles from boarding school and grapples with her bisexual identity when she and her brother Lionel fall in love with the same girl. 

  • Loveless by Alice Oseman: Eighteen-year-old Georgia comes to understand her aromantic/asexual identity as she starts college. 

  • They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera: In a near-future New York City where a service alerts people on the day they will die, teenagers Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio are faced with the challenge of living a lifetime on their End Day. 

 

Movies 

  • Carol: Visit our DVD2GO machine to borrow this film about two women from very different backgrounds who find themselves in an unexpected love affair in 1950s New York. 

  • The Danish Girl: This love story was inspired by the lives of artists Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener as they navigate Lili's groundbreaking journey as a transgender pioneer. 

  • For They Know Not What They Do: Log in to Kanopy to watch this documentary that explores the intersection of religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity in modern-day America. 

  • Milk: This film is based on the true story of Harvey Milk, a middle-aged New Yorker who, after moving to San Francisco, became a gay rights activist and city politician. 

  • The Miseducation of Cameron Post: Based on the novel of the same name, this film follows Cameron, a teenage girl who is sent to a conversion therapy center in the 1990s. 

  • Moonlight: A young Black man struggles to find his place in the world while growing up in a rough neighborhood of Miami. 

  • Portrait of a Lady on Fire: This French language film set in 1760 follows Marianne, who is commissioned to paint the wedding portrait of Héloïse, a young woman who has just left the convent.