LGBTQIA+ Resources: Reading List

Books That Matter

The libraries' own collection of books from LGBTQ+ authors and LGBTQ+ stories. You can find the Books that Matter collection on the second floor of the Main Library past the amphitheater stairs. More books can be found in the Ebook collection online. 

Fiction

The Song of Achilles
Patroclus, an awkward young prince, follows Achilles into war, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they have learned, everything they hold dear. And that, before he is ready, he will be forced to surrender his friend to the hands of Fate. Set during the Trojan War.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship -- the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be.

One Last Stop

Cynical twenty-three-year old August doesn't believe in much. She doesn't believe in psychics, or easily forged friendships, or finding the kind of love they make movies about. And she certainly doesn't believe her ragtag band of new roommates, her night shifts at a 24-hour pancake diner, or her daily subway commute full of electrical outages are going to change that. But then, there's Jane. Beautiful, impossible Jane. he one who makes her forget about the cities she lived in that never seemed to fit, and her fear of what happens when she finally graduates, and even her cold-case obsessed mother who won't quite let her go. And when August realizes her subway crush is impossible in more ways than one-namely, displaced in time from the 1970s-she thinks maybe it's time to start believing.

Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir

Eschewing female stereotypes throughout her early years and failing to gain acceptance on the boys' baseball team, Liz learns to embrace her own views on gender as she comes of age, in an anecdotal graphic novel memoir.

Gender Queer: A Memoir

Maia Kobabe's, e/em/eir, Gender Queer started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity--what it means and how to think about it--for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.

Biography of X

When X - an iconoclastic artist, writer, and polarizing shape-shifter - falls dead in her office, her widow, wild with grief and refusing everyone's good advice, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. Though X was recognized as a crucial creative force of her era, she kept a tight grip on her life story. Not even CM, her wife, knew where X had been born, and in her quest to find out, she opens a Pandora's box of secrets, betrayals, and destruction. All the while, she immerses herself in the history of the Southern Territory, a fascist theocracy that split from the rest of the country after World War II, as it is finally, in the present day, forced into an uneasy reunification.

Women on Women: An Anthology of American Lesbian Short Fiction

This groundbreaking collection brings together 28 stunning stories by literary talents never before assembled in a single volume. With contributions from both established and bright new voices in lesbian fiction, 'Women on Women' ranges from the subtlety and restraint of Willa Cather's 'Tommy, the Unsentimental' to Sapphire's daring and highly erotic 'Eat' and Valerie Miner's suspenseful 'Trespassing.' Some of the stories are universal in theme - the joy and excitement of new romance, the ageless problems of family life, and the pain of lost love and of death. And many are written by or about members of racial, ethnic, and other minorities within the gay community. These are stories that offer stirring, eloquent, often passionate insights into the lesbian experience in a long-overdue collection that represents the best of lesbian short fiction from past to present Nonfiction

Non-Fiction

Bisexuality conference
​Author Robin Ochs reflects on the discussions from a conference panel. The panel dealt with the question "How do we live as bisexual?" Several options were presented at the conference.

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence
Adrienne Rich's essay is published in several books. Historically speaking it helped spur the feminist movement. 

The Invention of Heterosexuality 

Author Jonathan Katz posits that "the concept of heterosexuality is only one particular historical way of perceiving, categorizing, and imagining the social relations of the sexes."

Trans People in Higher Education

Addresses the experiences of trans college students, faculty, and staff in a single volume for the first time.

Female, Lesbian, and Jewish: Complex and Invisible
Managing a marginal identity different from the dominant culture is a difficult process. For a woman who is a lesbian and also Jewish, this means feeling marginal in each of the communities she considers to be her primary support systems.

Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United States
Comprehensive in scope and accessible to students and general readers, Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United States explores contemporary American LGBTQ literature and its social, political, cultural, and historical contexts. 

LGBTQ youth and education: policies and practices
This book offers a nuanced portrait of students, showing how issues of race, gender, gender identity, and class shape and complicate their experience; examines the history and contemporary movements for LGBTQ rights; describes a variety of discipline-based approaches to teaching students to think about LGBTQ-related concerns; shows examples of youth organizing into extracurricular groups or creating school- and community-based interventions, and highlights the role of online communities and web-based resources.

Living Out Islam: Voices of Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Muslims
While many gay Muslims remain closeted, fearful of shaming their family, their mosque and their peers, some are finding inspiring -- and unconventional -- ways to cope.

Trans and Gender Diverse Voices in Libraries

This book centers the lived experiences of trans and gender diverse people in LIS work and education. All authors and editors are self-identified trans and gender diverse people.

The Reparative Impulse of Queer Young Adult Literature
This book is a provocative meditation on emotion, mood, history, and futurism in the critique of queer texts created for younger audiences. Given critical demands to distance queer youth culture from narratives of violence, sadness, and hurt that have haunted the queer imagination, this volume considers how post-2000s YA literature and media negotiate their hopeful purview with a broader—and ongoing—history of queer oppression and violence.

The Queer Art of History: Queer Kinship After Fascism
Jennifer V. Evans examines postwar and contemporary German history to broadly argue for a practice of queer history that moves beyond bounded concepts and narratives of identity. Drawing on Black feminism, queer of color critique, and trans studies, Evans points out that although many rights for LGBTQI people have been gained in Germany, those rights have not been enjoyed equally.