LGBTQIA+ Experience
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde Find in catalog Summary: In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, 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, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope. | |
Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story by Jacob Tobia Find in catalog Summary: A gender-diverse cultural influencer examines how their religious, political and educational experiences revealed the need for greater cultural inclusion and anti-discrimination legislation that acknowledges the gender spectrum. | |
Brown White Black: An American Family at the Intersection of Race, Gender, Sexuality and Religion by Nishta J. Mehra Find in catalog Summary: Essays describe how the author’s experiences as an Indian American, the wife of a white Christian woman, and the mother of an adopted black son have been challenged by rigid cultural family norms. | |
Over the Top: A Raw Journey to Self-Love by Jonathan Van Ness Find in catalog Summary: The style-expert star of Queer Eye shares deeply personal stories from his Midwestern childhood, revealing how he channeled his passions and setbacks into the positive energy that shaped his signature brand. | |
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado Find in catalog Summary: The award-winning author of Her Body and Other Parties shares the story of her relationship with an abusive partner and how it was shaped by her religious upbringing, her sexual orientation and inaccurate cultural beliefs about psychological trauma. | |
How We Fight For Our Lives: A Memoir by Saeed Jones Find in catalog Summary: The co-host of BuzzFeed’s AM to DM, award-winning poet and author of Prelude to Bruise documents his coming-of-age as a young, gay, black man in an American South at a crossroads of sex, race and power. | |
Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock Find in catalog Summary: A journalist and activist offers her perspective on the realities of being young, multi-racial, economically challenged, and transgender, recounting her disadvantaged youth and decision to undergo gender reassignment surgery at the age of eighteen. |
Cleanness by Garth Greenwell Find in catalog Summary: A queer American teacher describes a series of intimate encounters with lovers, friends, and students in and around Sofia, Bulgaria | |
Lot: Stories by Bryan Washington Find in catalog Summary: Coming of age in his family’s Houston restaurant, a mixed-heritage teen navigates bullying, his newly discovered sexual orientation and the ripple effects of a disadvantaged community impacted by an affair, a youth baseball season and displaced hurricane survivors. | |
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin Find in catalog Summary: Giovanni’s Room is set in the Paris of the 1950s, where a young American expatriate finds himself caught between his repressed desires and conventional morality. David has just proposed marriage to his American girlfriend, but while she is away on a trip he becomes involved in a doomed affair with a bartender named Giovanni. | |
Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown Find in catalog Summary: Born out of wedlock and adopted by a poor, loving family, Molly Bolt finds the South and even bohemian New York a hostile world for a lesbian but manages to thrive and remain confident. | |
Juliet Takes A Breath by Gabby Rivera Find in catalog Summary: Coming out to her Puerto Rican-American family, a girl from the Bronx pursues an internship under a legendary feminist author during a summer of exploring identity, race and first love. | |
Carol by Patricia Highsmith Find in catalog Summary: Two women from different backgrounds, one a department store clerk who dreams of a better life, the other who is wealthy and married, strike up a love affair with each other in 1950s New York. | |
Black Deutschland by Darryl Pickney Find in catalog Summary: In the age of Reagan and AIDS in a city on the verge of tearing down its walls, Jed—a young, gay black man—arrives in Berlin where he, encountering outcasts, expats, intellectuals, artists and misfits on his way to adulthood, hopes to escape what it means to be a black male in America. | |
Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman Find in catalog Summary: The sudden and powerful attraction between a teenage boy and a summer guest at his parents’ house on the Italian Riviera has a profound and lasting influence that will mark them both for a lifetime.
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Southernmost by Silas House Find in catalog Summary: A natural disaster inspires an evangelical preacher to reverse his position about gay rights, a transition that ends his marriage and job, forcing him to take desperate measures to introduce his son to a more accepting world. | |
Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jedrowski Find in catalog Summary: In early 1980s Poland during the violent decline of communism, two young men fall in love but eventually find themselves on opposite sides of the political divide. |
Tomorrow Will Be DIfferent: Love, Loss and the Fight for Trans Equality by Sarah McBride Find in catalog Summary: Informative, heartbreaking, and profoundly empowering, Tomorrow Will Be Different is McBride’s story of love and loss and a powerful entry point into the LGBTQ community’s battle for equal rights and what it means to be openly transgender. From issues like bathroom access to health care to gender in America, McBride weaves the important political and cultural milestones into a personal journey that will open hearts and change minds. | |
The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History by Marc Stein Find in catalog Summary: A 50th anniversary tribute to the Greenwich Village raid that became a turning point in LGBTQ history draws on a wide range of sources, from alternative media and political fliers to first-person accounts and state court decisions, to chronicle how LGBTQ life has changed or stayed the same. | |
And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts Find in catalog Summary: An examination of the AIDS crisis exposes 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. | |
The Pride Guide: A Guide to Sexual and Social Health for LGBTQ Youth by Jo Langford Find in catalog Summary: Focuses on the realities of being a sexual minority teen, providing guidance and understanding for children, parents, and supporters. | |
Unapologetic: A Black, Queer and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements by Charlene A. Carruthers Find in catalog Summary: Drawing on Black intellectual and grassroots organizing traditions, including the Haitian Revolution, the US civil rights movement, and LGBTQ rights and feminist movements, Unapologetic challenges all of us engaged in the social justice struggle to make the movement for Black liberation more radical, more queer, and more feminist. This book provides a vision for how social justice movements can become sharper and more effective through principled struggle, healing justice, and leadership development. | |
Bury It: Poems by Sam Sax Find in catalog Summary: Sam Sax’s bury it, winner of the 2017 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, begins with poems written in response to the spate of highly publicized young gay suicides in the summer of 2010. What follows are raw and expertly crafted meditations on death, rituals of passage, translation, desire, diaspora, and personhood. | |
Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States by Samantha Allen Find in catalog Summary: Capturing profound cultural shifts underway in unexpected places and revealing a national network of chosen family fighting for a better world, this is a treasure trove of uplifting stories and a much-needed source of hope and inspiration in these divided times. | |
Sorted: Growing Up, Coming Out, and Finding My Place by Jackson Bird Find in catalog Summary: Internet creator and activist Jackson Bird demystifies the transgender experience by sharing his own story, while debunking trans history milestones and educating readers with Transgender 101 facts. | |
When Brooklyn Was Queer by Hugh Ryan Find in catalog Summary: When Brooklyn Was Queer is a groundbreaking exploration of the LGBT history of Brooklyn, from the early days of Walt Whitman in the 1850s up through the women who worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II, and beyond. | |
The Economic Case for LGBT Equality: Why Fairness and Equality Benefits Us All by M.V. Lee Badgett Find in catalog Summary: Badgett offers some new ways of thinking to convert the many people who use their power to hurt LGBT people, whether in passing discriminatory laws, firing them from jobs, harassing them in school, beating them on the streets, failing to protect them from beatings, kicking them out of families, or depriving them of appropriate health care-in short, in excluding them from the core institutions that make it possible to live a good life. Understanding the economic cost of that homophobia and transphobia gives activists, businesses, development agencies, and policymakers a new tool that can help change lives |
After Stonewall [DVD] Find in catalog Summary:Chronicles the history of lesbian and gay life from the riots at Stonewall to the end of the century. Captures the hard work, struggles, tragic defeats and exciting victories experienced since then. It explores how AIDS literally changed the direction of the movement. | |
Transgeneration [DVD] Find in catalog Summary: Follows four American college students as they prepare for gender reassignment. They discuss their lives, their hopes and setbacks, and deal with varying reactions from family and friends. | |
Paris is Burning [DVD] Find in catalog Summary: A documentary about the young homosexual men of Harlem who originated "voguing" and turned these stylized dance competitions into glittering expressions of fierce personal pride. A story of street-wise urban survival, gay self-affirmation, and the pursuit of a desperate dream. | |
Transamerica [DVD] Find in catalog Summary: Bree Osborne, a pre-operative transsexual, learns she fathered a child back when she was Stanley Osborne. The wheels of fortune take Bree and her teenaged son on a cross-country trip that will change both their lives. | |
Moonlight [BluRay] Find in catalog Summary: A timeless story of human self-discovery and connection, Moonlight chronicles the life of a young black man from childhood to adulthood as he struggles to find his place in the world while growing up in a rough neighborhood of Miami | |
Love, Simon [DVD] Find in catalog Summary: Everyone deserves a great love story, but for seventeen year old Simon Spier, it’s a little more complicated. He hasn’t told his family or friends that he’s gay, and he doesn’t know the identity of the anonymous classmate that he’s fallen for online. Resolving both issues proves hilarious, terrifying and life changing. | |
Pride [DVD] Find in catalog Summary: U.K. gay activists work to assist miners during their extended strike of the National Union of Mineworkers in the summer of 1984. | |
Milk [DVD] Find in catalog Summary: Milk is based on the inspiring true story of the first openly gay man elected to major public office. This compelling film follows Milk’s powerful journey to inspire hope for equal rights | |
The Danish Girl [BluRay] Find in catalog Summary: The remarkable love story inspired by the lives of artists Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener. Lili and Gerda’s marriage and work evolve as they navigate Lili’s groundbreaking journey as a transgender pioneer. Other formats: Book | |
Dallas Buyers Club [DVD] Find in catalog Summary: Texas cowboy Ron Woodroof’s free-wheeling life was overturned in 1985 when he was diagnosed as HIV-positive. Shunned and ostracized by many old friends and bereft of government-approved medicines, he decided to take matters in his own hands, tracking down alternative treatments from all over the world by means both legal and illegal. Bypassing the establishment, he joined forces with an unlikely band of renegades and outcasts and established a hugely successful "buyers’ club." |