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The Best LGBTQ+ Literature for Pride 2021
Celebrate the contributions of the LGBTQ+ community with these reads.
Опубликовано 29 мая 2021
Patsy: A Novel
Nicole Dennis-BennIn this winner of the 2020 Lambda Award for best Lesbian Fiction, many tough choices face the titular Patsy: She decides to leave Jamaica, her daughter, and her husband looking for a better life in America and her first love, Cicely. While she grabs the reins of her life, it doesn’t stay on course, and she’s left trying to navigate through her desired dreams and harsher reality. A bold exploration of immigration and motherhood.
Her Body and Other Parties: Stories
Carmen Maria MachadoCarmen Maria Machado’s collection of stories is so wonderfully weird, queer, and feminist. Genre-bending, uncanny, and often very funny, each of these unusual stories has something poignant to say about being a person and about being an artist.
Red, White & Royal Blue: A Novel
Casey McQuistonAlex, the First Son of the United States, starts off frenemies and ends up lovers with Henry, the Prince of Wales. A sweet LGBTQ+ love story that provides a heavy dose of much-needed escapism from real-world politics.
The House in the Cerulean Sea
TJ KluneThere’s nothing quite like “The House in the Cerulean Sea” — wonderfully weird, quietly romantic, and full of magic and queerness. Caseworker Linus Baker doesn’t push boundaries; he meticulously reports about orphanages taking care of children with supernatural powers. But his worldview is taken for a spin when he is assigned to work at Marsyas Island Orphanage, where the children are particularly monstrous and the caretaker extremely mysterious. One of the finest found family stories around.
Black Water Sister
Zen ChoThe second we saw author Zen Cho describe her fantasy adventure as “A stressed zillennial lesbian fights gods, ghosts, gangsters & grandmas in 21st century Penang” on Twitter, we were in! Equal parts sass, suspense, family drama, and heart, you don’t want to miss this charmer set in modern Malaysia.
The House of Impossible Beauties: A Novel
Joseph CassaraIf you’re a fan of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” you might’ve heard the expression “category is.” (RuPaul even wrote a song called “Category Is!”) This phrase hails from the underground ballroom scenes of the 1980s and early ’90s, which is where and when “The House of Impossible Beauties” takes place. A heartbreaking, yet vibrant, story with the drag culture in 1980s Harlem at its heart.
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Jeanette WintersonThis semi-autobiographical novel by Jeanette Winterson won the Whitbread Award honoring an outstanding first novel. It’s a coming-of-age story of a lesbian girl growing up in a conservative religious household.
Beijing Comrades: A Novel
Bei TongIt took decades for an English translation of this cult classic novel from China to be published, but now this important work of queer literature is available to a whole new audience. “Beijing Comrades” follows a traditional forbidden love formula while also critiquing homophobia and governmental policies in the world’s most populous country.
Everything Is Awful and You're a Terrible Person
Daniel Zomparelli“Everything is Awful and You’re a Terrible Person” is a series of funny, sparse, and sometimes surreal short stories that cut right to the core. It reveals how we are all victims and perpetrators in a system not designed to let us love each other.
The Deep
Rivers SolomonRivers Solomon’s novel, “The Deep,” is based on a Hugo Award-nominated song from Clipping, the rap group headed by Daveed Diggs. It’s about a group of mermaid-like people who are descended from pregnant slaves who perished when they were tossed overboard crossing the Atlantic. This Lammy Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror winner defines the word haunting.
Orlando: A Biography
Virginia WoolfOne of Virginia Woolf’s most popular novels, “Orlando” is the story of a poet who changes sex from man to woman, meeting key figures in English literature. It was racy for its time, but was a critical success, and considered a love letter to Woolf’s real-life partner, Vita Sackville-West.
This Is How It Always Is: A Novel
Laurie Frankel“It is not surprising that the life I concocted at 23 for a not yet extant human did not turn out to apply. But the plot twists that came later were the ones I never saw coming. One surprising thing that happened, slowly … was that my son switched from shorts to skirts,” author Laurie Frankel wrote in a Literary Hub essay about her son transitioning to her daughter. Frankel draws from her personal family experience to write this big-hearted novel about a transgender child.