Happy Pride Month! June marks the beginning of a month long celebration of LGBTQIA+ individuals, their accomplishments, and identities. But, did you know why Pride happens in June? Be sure to check out these books covering Queer history and events to better understand how the fight for human rights regardless of identity or orientation continues to shape the world in which we live today.
The Book of Pride: LGBTQ Heroes Who Changed the World
Meet the leaders and activists on the front lines of the LGBTQ movement, from the 1960’s to the present, through stunning interviews and compelling black and white photographs compiled and presented by OUTWORDS, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the stories of LGBTQ people.
The 75 individuals featured in THE BOOK OF PRIDE—including marriage pioneer Evan Wolfson, trans icon Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, Stonewall-era rabblerouser Mark Segal and legendary anti-DADT activist Grethe Cammermeyer—fought battles frequently under the threat of violence and persecution.
By capturing these accounts, we honor an important chapter in American history and ensure that the story of the LGBTQ community is safeguarded for generations to come. The brave and determined activists celebrated in THE BOOK OF PRIDE inspire each of us to resist all forms of oppression with ferocity, and to do so with great pride.
Gay Gotham: Art and Underground Culture in New York
Uncovering the lost history of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender artists in New York City. Queer people have always flocked to New York seeking freedom, forging close-knit groups for support and inspiration. Gay Gotham brings to life the countercultural artistic communities that sprang up over the last hundred years, a creative class whose radical ideas would determine much of modern culture. More than 200 images—both works of art, such as paintings and photographs, as well as letters, snapshots, and ephemera—illuminate their personal bonds, scandal-provoking secrets at the time and many largely unknown to the public since.Starting with the bohemian era of the 1910s and 1920s, when the pansy craze drew voyeurs of all types to Greenwich Village and Harlem, the book winds through midcentury Broadway as well as Fire Island as it emerged as a hotbed, turns to the post-Stonewall, decade-long wild party that revolved around clubs like the Mineshaft and Studio 54, and continues all the way through the activist mobilization spurred by the AIDS crisis and the move toward acceptance at the century’s close. Throughout, readers encounter famous figures, from James Baldwin and Mae West to Leonard Bernstein, and discover lesser-known ones, such as Harmony Hammond, Greer Lankton, and Richard Bruce Nugent. Surprising relationships emerge: Andy Warhol and Mercedes de Acosta, Robert Mapplethorpe and Cecil Beaton, George Platt Lynes and Gertrude Stein. By peeling back the overlapping layers of this cultural network that thrived despite its illicitness, this groundbreaking publication reveals a whole new side of the history of New York and celebrates the power of artistic collaboration to transcend oppression.
LGTBQ Social Movements in America
LGBTQ Social Movements in America looks at social change movements in the country’s LGBTQ history, including the Stonewall riots that started the modern gay rights movement and die-ins that pressured the US government to take note of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Features include a glossary, further readings, websites, source notes, and an index.
Pride: the LGBTQ+ Rights Movement: a Photographic Journey
This lavishly illustrated book commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising and is an inspiring photographic journey through the LGBTQ+ Pride movement over the last century.
“A stirring history of the LGBTQ Pride movement.” —Publishers Weekly
This celebratory book is the most in-depth visual tribute to the LGBTQ+ pride movement ever created. The story starts in the bohemian subculture of post–World War I American cities. Author Christopher Measom next covers the influence of World War II, which relocated millions of people to single-sex barracks and factories, encouraging a freedom and anonymity that helped spark the formation of gay communities after the war. The repressive ’50s era saw the launch of two important rights organizations, the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, that led to the rebellions of the 1960s—culminating in the game-changing Stonewall Uprising of June 1969. The book then explores the devastation of the AIDS crisis, its impact on gay culture, and the fight to bring awareness to the disease. The narrative is brought up to the present day with coverage of the struggles for equality in marriage, the military, and beyond—and the push for gender rights. With more than 120 photos, posters, artworks, ads, and other rarely seen memorabilia; profiles of icons in the movement such as Christine Jorgensen, Marsha P. Johnson, Harry Hay, and Stormé DeLarverie; excerpts from key news reports; speeches by leading activists and political figures including Harvey Milk, Urvashi Vaid, and Barack Obama; and passages from important dramatic, musical, and literary works such as Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, this book is a groundbreaking homage to a historic movement and its milestone achievements and hurdles.
Queer: a Graphic History
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.
From identity politics and gender roles to privilege and exclusion, Queer explores how we came to view sex, gender and sexuality in the ways that we do; how these ideas get tangled up with our culture and our understanding of biology, psychology and sexology; and how these views have been disputed and challenged.
Along the way we look at key landmarks which shift our perspective of what’s ‘normal’ – Alfred Kinsey’s view of sexuality as a spectrum, Judith Butler’s view of gendered behaviour as a performance, the play Wicked, or moments in Casino Royale when we’re invited to view James Bond with the kind of desiring gaze usually directed at female bodies in mainstream media.
Presented in a brilliantly engaging and witty style, this is a unique portrait of the universe of queer thinking.
Queer, There, and Everywhere: 23 People who Changed the World
World history has been made by countless lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals—and you’ve never heard of many of them.
Queer author and activist Sarah Prager delves deep into the lives of 23 people who fought, created, and loved on their own terms. From high-profile figures like Abraham Lincoln and Eleanor Roosevelt to the trailblazing gender-ambiguous Queen of Sweden and a bisexual blues singer who didn’t make it into your history books, these astonishing true stories uncover a rich queer heritage that encompasses every culture, in every era.
Queerstory: An Infographic History of the Fight for LGBTQ+ Rights
Celebrate the remarkable stories, events, and landmarks of the global LGBTQ+ movement with this inspirational and empowering infographic guide to the path toward equality throughout history.
There have been many ups and downs during the long and arduous fight for LGBTQ+ rights all over the world, but it helps to have a visual and joyful timeline of events to see just how far the movement has come. Queerstory is an accessible infographic of the global LGBTQ+ movement over the past 100 years that provides the perfect overview of all the significant people and events that changed the course of history.
Telling a visual story through graphically represented statistics, key dates and events, quotes, and facts about rights, campaigns, and queer pioneers, this easy-to-read and inspiring guide is sure to provide a jolt of empowerment for the next generation of LGBTQ+ activists and allies.
The Stonewall Riots: Coming Out in the Streets
This book is about the Stonewall Riots, a series of spontaneous, often violent demonstrations by members of the gay (LGBTQ+) community in reaction to a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. The Riots are attributed as the spark that ignited the LGBTQ+ movement. 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, and other period objects. A timely and necessary read, The Stonewall Riots helps readers to understand the history and legacy of the LGBTQ+ movement.
Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans
For two years, Philip Gambone traveled the length and breadth of the United States, talking candidly with LGBTQ people about their lives. In addition to interviews from David Sedaris, George Takei, Barney Frank, and Tammy Baldwin, Travels in a Gay Nation brings us lesser-known voices—a retired Naval officer, a transgender scholar and “drag king,” a Princeton philosopher, two opera sopranos who happen to be lovers, an indie rock musician, the founder of a gay frat house, and a pair of Vermont garden designers.
In this age when contemporary gay America is still coming under attack, Gambone captures the humanity of each individual. For some, their identity as a sexual minority is crucial to their life’s work; for others, it has been less so, perhaps even irrelevant. But, whether splashy or quiet, center-stage or behind the scenes, Gambone’s subjects have managed—despite facing ignorance, fear, hatred, intolerance, injustice, violence, ridicule, or just plain indifference—to construct passionate, inspiring lives.
Finalist, Foreword Magazine’s Anthology of the Year
Outstanding Book in the High School Category, selected by the American Association of School Libraries
Best Book in Special Interest Category, selected by the Public Library Association
Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution
A Supreme Court lawyer and political pundit details the enthralling and groundbreaking story of the gay rights movement, revealing how a dedicated and resourceful minority changed America forever.
When the modern struggle for gay rights erupted—most notably at a bar called Stonewall in Greenwich Village—in the summer of 1969, most religious traditions condemned homosexuality; psychiatric experts labeled people who were attracted to others of the same sex “crazy”; and forty-nine states outlawed sex between people of the same gender. Four decades later, in June 2011, New York legalized gay marriage—the most populous state in the country to do so thus far. The armed services stopped enforcing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, ending a law that had long discriminated against gay and lesbian members of the military. Successful social movements are always extraordinary, but these advances were something of a miracle.
Political columnist Linda Hirshman recounts the long roads that led to these victories, viewing the gay rights movement within the tradition of American freedom as the third great modern social-justice movement, alongside the civil rights movement and the women’s rights movement. Drawing on an abundance of published and archival material, and hundreds of in-depth interviews, Hirshman shows, in this astute political analysis, how the fight for gay rights has changed the American landscape for all citizens—blurring rigid gender lines, altering the shared culture, and broadening our definitions of family.
From the Communist cross-dresser Harry Hay in 1948 to New York’s visionary senator Kirsten Gillibrand in 2010, the story includes dozens of brilliant, idiosyncratic characters. Written in vivid prose, at once emotional and erudite, Victory is an utterly vibrant work of reportage and eyewitness accounts, revealing how, in a matter of decades, while facing every social adversary—church, state, and medical establishment—a focused group of activists forged a classic campaign for cultural change that will serve as a model for all future political movements.
