You Have History: A Guide to LGBTQ History Reading

Happy Pride month!

Something I want people to realize is that history grounds a person. History validates and reinstates an existence… it gives it dimension and lineage and a family. Without a history, a people can be erased or made unstable. This is the reason libraries and museums are often burned in times of war… eliminate a people’s stories, and you eliminate a sense of being.

I don’t know about you, but I never learned about a queer person, ever. I think this contributes to people’s sense of “well I just don’t understand gay people, so I don’t support it.” to which I always say Congratulations!!!! You are straight!!!!! Being queer is not a new concept. It’s not the hipster way. It’s not revolutionary or strange or an experiment… it’s literally existed since the beginning of time. People need to know this.

Having a sense of queer history does not just prove existence to a straight, cis person. It grounds a queer person, and eases the loneliness and fear that being queer in our society can force upon a person.

History grounds us.

So hello, curious friend. Delve into the history of queerness, and familiarize yourselves with the people who have contributed to our world today!

and if you prefer very bite size pieces of information, may I suggest:

a woman who took it upon herself to care for and burry men dying alone of aids.
performance art acknowledging the name of queer victims of hate crimes.
6 major moments in lgbtq+ history, beside stonewall.
how artists take on stonewall.
queer rulers on coins.
lgbtqia thru history + brief biographies

histories

Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women by Leila J. Rupp
From the ancient poet Sappho to tombois in contemporary Indonesia, women throughout history and around the globe have desired, loved, and had sex with other women. In beautiful prose, Sapphistries tells their stories, capturing the multitude of ways that diverse societies have shaped female same-sex sexuality across time and place.

Bisexuality in the Ancient World by Eva Cantarella and Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin (translator)
In this readable and thought-provoking history of bisexuality in the classical age, Eva Cantarella draws on the full range of sources – from legal texts, inscriptions, and medical documents to poetry and philosophical literature – to reconstruct and compare the bisexual cultures of Athens and Rome.

Asegi Stories: Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory by Qwo-Li Driskill
As the first full-length work of scholarship to develop a tribally specific Indigenous Queer or Two-Spirit critique, Asegi Stories examines gender and sexuality in Cherokee cultural memory, how they shape the present, and how they can influence the future.

Sappho in Early Modern England: Female Same-Sex Literary Erotics, 1550-1714 by Harriette Andreadis
Before the language of modern sexual identities developed, a variety of discourses in both literary and extraliterary texts began to form a lexicon of female intimacy. Looking at accounts of non-normative female sexualities in travel narratives, anatomies, and even marital advice books, Andreadis outlines the vernacular through which a female same-sex erotics first entered verbal consciousness.

Out in the Union: A Labor History of Queer America by Miriam Frank
Out in the Union tells the continuous story of queer American workers from the mid-1960s through 2013. Miriam Frank shrewdly chronicles the evolution of labor politics with queer activism and identity formation, showing how unions began affirming the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers in the 1970s and 1980s. She documents coming out on the job and in the union as well as issues of discrimination and harassment, and the creation of alliances between unions and LGBT communities. ​

The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps by Heinz Heger
The first, and still the best known, testimony by a gay survivor of the Nazi concentration camps translated into English, this harrowing autobiography opened new doors onto the understanding of homosexuality and the Holocaust when it was first published in 1980 by Gay Men’s Press.The Men with the Pink Triangle has been translated into several languages, with a second edition published in 1994 by Alyson Books. Heger’s book also inspired the 1979 play Bent by Martin Sherman, which became the 1997 movie of the same name, directed by Sean Mathias.

All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens Throughout the Ages
Seventeen young adult authors across the queer spectrum have come together to create a collection of beautifully written diverse historical fiction for teens.

general LGBTQ+ history

A Queer History of the United States by Michael Bronski

Looks at how American culture has shaped the LGBT, or queer, experience, while simultaneously arguing that LGBT people not only shaped but were pivotal in creating our country. Using numerous primary documents and literature, as well as social histories, Bronski’s book takes the reader through the centuries .

There’s a new adaptation for young people too!

Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History in America
This new three-volume set is an accessible and scholarly reference that provides a comprehensive survey of lesbian and gay history and culture in the United States.

Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolutionby Susan Stryker
Covering American transgender history from the mid-twentieth century to today, Transgender Historytakes a chronological approach to the subject of transgender history, with each chapter covering major movements, writings, and events. Chapters cover the transsexual and transvestite communities in the years following World War II; trans radicalism and social change, which spanned from 1966 with the publication of The Transsexual Phenomenon, and lasted through the early 1970s; the mid-’70s to 1990-the era of identity politics and the changes witnessed in trans circles through these years; and the gender issues witnessed through the ’90s and ’00s.

Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton
The story of Christine Jorgensen, America’s first prominent transsexual, famously narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives—ones lived by African Americans such as Lucy Hicks Anderson and James McHarris. Their erasure from trans history masks the profound ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence.

Gay & Lesbian History for Kids: The Century-Long Struggle for LGBT Rights, with 21 Activities by Jerome Pohlen
Given today’s news, it would be easy to get the impression that the campaign for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) equality is a recent development, but it is only the final act in a struggle that started more than a century ago. The history is told through personal stories and firsthand accounts of the movement’s key events.

Queer: A Graphic History by Meg-John Barker and Julia Scheele
Activist-academic Meg John Barker and cartoonist Julia Scheele illuminate the histories of queer thought and LGBTQ+ action in this groundbreaking non-fiction graphic novel. A kaleidoscope of characters from the diverse worlds of pop-culture, film, activism and academia guide us on a journey through the ideas, people and events that have shaped queer theory.

Politics, Protest, Justice, and Stonewall

Here’s the thing. Queer existence is political and revolutionary. That’s just the way it has been. Therefore, much of the above could fit into this category, but the following books place a specific emphasis on revolution.

We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride In The History of Queer Liberation by Leighton Brown and Matthew Riemer
Through the lens of pride, protest, and progress, We Are Everywhere is a visual record and celebration of LGBTQ+ identity, life, modern history, and the queer liberation movement. Tracing queer history from the early 20th century before the 1969 Stonewall riots to today, this beautifully packaged book contains thousands of photos and pieces of ephemera with detailed captions that tell the story of the fight for LGBTQ+ civil rights.

Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America
by Dudley Clendinen
It all began one night in early summer 1969, when a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village, turned ugly. The bar’s patrons, for the first time ever, resisted arrest–and voila! The gay rights movement was spawned. It has been a long, difficult climb from that day to this, an uphill battle that Clendinen and Nagourney follow in a spirited, edifying narrative. Theirs is a big, long, epic narrative, but they sensibly bring it down to human proportions by focusing on individuals’ tales of participation in the movement. The problem in the early stages was simply getting organized; concomitant with that was the issue of getting gay men together with gay women, two camps with agendas that were not always compatible. And just when the program for civil rights for gays seemed to be turning some important corners, the advent of the AIDS epidemic threatened to derail the whole enterprise.

The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle by Lillian Faderman
A chronicle of the modern struggle for gay, lesbian and transgender rights draws on interviews with politicians, military figures, legal activists and members of the LGBT community to document the cause’s struggles since the 1950s.

The Stonewall Riots: Coming Out in the Streets by Gayle E. Pitman
The author describes American gay history leading up to the Riots, the Riots themselves, and the aftermath, and includes her interviews of people involved or witnesses, including a woman who was ten at the time. Profusely illustrated, the book includes contemporary photos, newspaper clippings among other period objects. A timely and necessary read, The Stonewall Riots helps readers to understand the history and legacy of the LGBTQ+ movement.

Stonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights by Ann Bausum
A dramatic retelling of the Stonewall riots of 1969, introducing teen readers to the decades-long struggle for gay rights.

Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States by Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock
A groundbreaking work that turns a “queer eye” on the criminal legal system, and winner of the2011 PASS (Prevention for a Safer Society) Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.

Aids

How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France
From the creator of and inspired by the seminal documentary of the same name–an Oscar nominee–the definitive history of the successful battle to halt the AIDS epidemic, and the powerful, heroic stories of the gay activists who refused to die without a fight.

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
by Randy Shilts
An examination of the AIDS crisis critiques the federal government for its inaction, health authorities for their greed, and scientists for their desire for prestige in the face of the AIDS pandemic, in a twentieth anniversary edition of the acclaimed exposé.

Art

Work!: A Queer History of Modeling by Elspeth H Brown
In Work! Elspeth H. Brown traces the history of modeling from the advent of photographic modeling in the early twentieth century to the rise of the supermodel in the 1980s. Brown outlines how the modeling industry sanitized and commercialized models’ sex appeal in order to elicit and channel desire into buying goods. She shows how this new form of sexuality—whether exhibited in the Ziegfeld Follies girls’ performance of Anglo-Saxon femininity or in African American models’ portrayal of black glamour in the 1960s—became a central element in consumer capitalism and a practice that has always been shaped by queer sensibilities. By outlining the paradox that queerness lies at the center of capitalist heteronormativity and telling the largely unknown story of queer models and photographers, Brown offers an out of the ordinary history of twentieth-century American culture and capitalism.

Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance by A.B. Christa Schwarz
This groundbreaking study explores the Harlem Renaissance as a literary phenomenon fundamentally shaped by same-sex-interested men.

Queer Images by Harry M. Benshoff
From Thomas Edison’s first cinematic experiments to contemporary Hollywood blockbusters, Queer Images chronicles the representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer sexualities over one hundred years of American film.

David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 Years of LGBT Music by Darryl W. Bullock
LGBT musicians have shaped the development of music over the last century, with a sexually progressive soundtrack in the background of the gay community’s struggle for acceptance. With the advent of recording technology, LGBT messages were for the first time brought to the forefront of popular music. David Bowie Made Me Gay is the first book to cover the breadth of history of recorded music by and for the LGBT community and how those records influenced the evolution of the music we listen to today.

The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood by Diana McLellan
Diana McLellan reveals the complex and intimate connections that roiled behind the public personae of Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Tallulah Bankhead, and the women who loved them. Private correspondence, long-secret FBI files, and troves of unpublished documents reveal a chain of lesbian affairs that moved from the theater world of New York, through the heights of chic society, to embed itself in the power structure of the movie business. The Girls serves up a rich stew of film, politics, sexuality, psychology, and stardom.

Biography

Sewing the Rainbow: The Story of Gilbert Baker and the Rainbow Flag by Gayle E. Pitman (Goodreads Author), Holly Clifton-Brown
Sewing the Rainbow is the powerful story of Gilbert Baker and the creation of the rainbow flag. This book takes readers from Gilbert’s childhood in a small town in Kansas where he didn’t fit in, to his historic artistic career in San Francisco. Today the flag is everywhere, even in the small town where Gilbert grew up! This book shows that when you see a rainbow flag, you’ll know it’s okay to be your colorful self.

Queer, There and Everywhere: 23 People Who Changed the World by Sarah Prager
An LGBTQ chronicle for teens shares facts about 23 influential gay and gender-ambiguous notables from the era of the Roman Empire to the present, exploring how they defied convention to promote civil rights, pursue relationships on their own terms and shape culture.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde
Sister Outsider presents essential writings of black poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, an influential voice in 20th century literature. In this varied collection of essays, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, offering a message of struggle but also of hope. This commemorative edition is, in Lorde’s own words, a call to “never close our eyes to the terror, to the chaos which is Black which is creative which is female which is dark which is rejected which is messy which is. . . .”

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays by Alexander Chee
From the author of The Queen of the Night, an essay collection exploring how we form our identities in life, in politics, and in art.

Modern HERstory: Stories of Women and Nonbinary People Rewriting History by Blair Imani
An illustrated and informative primer on the progressive social change movements of the last 60 years as told through the stories of 60 diverse female and non-binary leaders in those movements, from the Civil Rights Movement and Stonewall riots through today.

want more options?

Carolyn Yates wrote a 25 title long list of LGBTQ history books…
and Casey wrote about 13 more!
​The Skimm has a great list of books.
Not enough? Bookriot has 50; there’s something in there for you.
Have an interesting article for me to add? Please let me know!

love you much-- you are valid and real and seen. take care,
​m