10 Queer Books You Need in Your Life
And don’t forget to celebrate Pride by giving queer authors your money all-year-round.
Alas, another Pride Month comes to an end. No more parades. No more endless partying. No more free PrEP in lieu of the lollipops at TD Bank. But, while the rainbow-hued brand logos and storefronts are fleeting (I had to; I’m so sorry), gay books are forever. And they just keep on—you finish that pun and I’ll start on this one.
Read on below for ten queer reads that make my heart flutter like the iced coffees I drink no matter what the temperature is outside.
***
1. The Town of Babylon by Alejandro Varela
I need you to know that the pile of to-be-read books on my nightstand is two books away from needing scaffolding. But, when this book showed up on my radar, I said, precarious pile be damned: this one is going right on top. And I suggest you do yourself a favor by getting this book and doing the same.
In the wake of his husband’s infidelity, Andrés, a queer Latinx professor, returns to his suburban hometown. With not much to do besides care for his aging parents, he attends his twenty-year high school reunion where he reconnects with friends from his youth. Before long, he falls into old habits with these people he used to call friends, and becomes re-entangled with his first love, Jeremy, who is now married with two children after having been incarcerated and is recovering from addiction. On top of it all, he confronts the death of his brother and the many sacrifices their parents had made before having them, and along the way to offer them a better life.
The Town of Babylon does not hesitate to plunge into the wounds the past has left us with, and beautifully threads queer, racial, and class identities with a portrait of personhood that Varela masterfully executes with both poise and power. It’s a gift of a book from an extraordinary talent.
2. High-Risk Homosexual by Edgar Gomez
I read an advanced copy of this book at the end of last year, and I’m already ready to revisit it. This is one of those memoirs you keep close by, like your favorite David Sedaris or Samantha Irby. It’s that friend whom you can return to no matter how much time passes, and the degree of comfort it brings never wavers, the laughs it elicits never cease.
In this triumphant debut, Edgar Gomez confronts their queerness and Latinx identity against a backdrop of machismo culture. From their uncle’s cockfighting ring in Nicaragua, to a strip tease they performed as part of an experimental performance-art group, and the various gay clubs in Orlando (including Pulse, sharing the grief they will forever hold in their heart on the page), High-Risk Homosexual is a book that has it all, truly. (I’m sorry, but when’s the last time you met a Honda Civic named Speed Queen?) But it’s the pit stops along the way—a balcony overlooking a jam-packed dance floor, a Cup O’ Noodles in a bath house vending machine, art hanging in a doctor’s office—that offer a masterclass in making art out of the mundane, mining the messy for meaning. What results is a memoir whose heart and hilarity emanate like poppers on the dance floor.
3. Greenland by David Santos Donaldson
This book is a trip, literally and metaphorically. I’m serious when I say my face had the expression of someone in one of those candid rollercoaster photos the entire time I read this book—and I mean that in the best way possible.
Already one of my favorite books of the year, Greenland is a novel-within-a-novel about an author who has only three weeks to deliver a complete manuscript to a legendary book editor who’s promised to consider it for publication, but only if he can successfully re-write it. Kip Sterling locks himself in his basement study, and immerses himself in his writing to tell the story of Mohammad el Adi, the young Egyptian lover of British author E.M. Forster. Like Kip, Mohammad is Black, queer, and well-educated. But the similarities don’t end there. Two lives, lived almost a century apart, run parallel and eventually collide as Kip plunges deeper into his protagonist’s psyche, resulting in an odyssey to the wilderness in search of the truth.
If your book club is reading this—as it should!—please invite me over for discussion. I can’t talk and gesture wildly enough about this book!
4. Virology by Joseph Osmundson
In a world where “I hope you’re doing as well as can be, considering literally everything"—or any variation of the sort—has become a standard greeting, joy can be hard to find. If I do come across a morsel of it, the source is, more times than not, Joseph Osmundson. Whether it’s following him on Twitter (he’s one of the first I look to when it comes to science and activism), listening to his podcast, Food 4 Thot, or just being in his delightful company, he’s always able to thaw my frost-bound heart and make me feel like—dare I say?—everything’s going to be okay.
His first book, Virology, is required reading for all. (Replace the Gideon Bible in hotel rooms across the United States with it, you cowards!) In this critical multidisciplinary collection, Osmundson examines the ways viruses have shaped—and continue to shape—social, political, and economic landscapes. From HIV to COVID-19, Osmundson draws on his expertise in microbiology to help us understand viruses at the cellular level, and how their mechanics go on to redefine our daily lives. Building on the work of activists, writers, thinkers alike—from those on the forefront of the HIV/AIDS crisis to critical scholars like José Esteban Munoz—Osmundson delivers an opus born from where the empirical meets the empathetic.
May we all answer his call for collective responsibility.
5. Kings of B’More by R. Eric Thomas
Like the title of his national bestselling first book, Here for It, suggests, I am, indeed, here for it—it being every single word written by my friend and fellow Bulletin writer, R. Eric Thomas.
In his newly released YA debut, Kings of B’More, Thomas gifts us with the story of Harrison and Linus, two queer Black best friends who face imminent adulthood—and all its uncertainty and complexity—together. But when Harrison finds out that Linus is moving out-of-state at the end of the week, he plans a send-off reminiscent of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off for his best friend. From a mini road trip, to their first Pride, and a rooftop dance party, they attempt to squeeze all the transformative experiences they thought they would be able to share together into one day before facing one of the most challenging experiences of them all: saying goodbye to someone you love.
Whether you read YA or not, this book is a respite for everyone. Prepare to have your heartstrings tangled like headphones.
6. How You Get Famous by Nicole Pasulka
As someone who’s lived in Brooklyn for about six years now, and has watched Facebook friend after Facebook friend appear on RuPaul’s Drag Race, I knew a spotlight would be shown on the Brooklyn drag community sooner or later. At long last, that spotlight comes in the form of journalist Nicole Pasulka’s new book.
A necessity for any lover of drag and queer history, How You Get Famous catalogs the renaissance of the scene that has churned out one iconoclastic performer with charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent after another. Readers will meet Merrie Cherry, who The New York Times has called “The Mother of Brooklyn Drag,” who used the hundred dollars she convinced her boss to give her to host a drag show at a local dive bar. It also closely follows a handful of other queens—like Thorgy Thor, Sasha Velour, Untitled Queen, among others—alongside the growing ubiquity of drag in mainstream media, and explores the long-standing issues of generational and class divides. As local queens continue to get plucked by the fingers of fame, up-and-comers make their way to the stage left behind by those whose names are now known by millions, ready to carve their own space in the world.
The rest is herstory.
7. Nevada by Imogen Binnie
Like Willow bringing Buffy back from the grave in Season 6 (as many of you know, I am currently in the middle of a full-series rewatch, so apologies for yet another Buffy reference in this newsletter—and apologies in advance for the [many] more to come), Farrar, Straus, & Giroux just recently reissued this seminal trans novel to great fanfare—and rightfully so.
Twenty-nine-year-old Maria Griffiths is a punk rocker who works at a used bookstore in New York City. (My chips are already all in, obviously.) She takes random pills left and right and drinks too much. (Do you know what a twin flame is?) After breaking up with her girlfriend, Steph, she is sent into a tailspin and decides to embark on a cross-country trek—in the car that she steals from Steph. (I am in the passenger seat.) She ends up in Star City, Nevada, where she meets James, whom she suspects is trans. They travel to Reno together, and, as their relationship deepens, Maria begins to feel like a trans role model for him—for better, or, as she begins to fear, for worse.
If you can’t tell, I am obviously deeply in love with this book, and I am certain you will fall for it, too.
8. I Feel Love edited by Samantha Mann
Am I including this anthology in this round-up because I have a brand-new essay in it? Yes. Would I still include this anthology in this round-up even if I didn’t? Also yes! This collection is a treasure trove—creative non-fiction, memoir, and poetry overfloweth! At the heart of it all: joy. Specifically, queer joy. Shout-out to our editor, Samantha Mann (speaking of queer books, buy hers immediately), for making space for ours on bookshelves far and wide.
9. We Do What We Do in the Dark by Michelle Hart
A longtime champion of LGBTQ+ voices ever since her previous role as assistant books editor at O, The Oprah Magazine and Oprah Daily, Michelle Hart has remained a vital artery stemming from the heart of publishing. After repeatedly speaking it out loud (it being: “a novel from Michelle Hart”), at my desk, at parties, at Yankee Candle, I firmly believe I’ve had a hand in manifesting Hart’s debut, We Do What We Do in the Dark.
Reeling from the loss of her mother a few months earlier, Mallory begins her freshman year of college by continuing to seek solace in solitude. She quickly becomes enamored with a charming, older woman after spotting her in the university’s gym one day. She learns that the woman is a professor at her school, and, later, married. Unable to resist her increasing attraction to her, Mallory pursues her, and, before long, the two begin a furtive affair. As Mallory allows herself to be consumed by this successful and brilliant older woman whom she greatly admires, she finds herself leaning into the self-imposed isolation that she’s known for so long. It isn’t until years later, her life still textured by the affair that ended long ago, that she considers life beyond her self-constructed loneliness, the possibility of abandoning her space of secrecy for the world beyond it.
Every sentence will make you swoon, promise.
10. Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart
I don’t smoke cigarettes anymore, but I was very close to filling my tub with Marlboro Lights and smoking my way to the bottom after reading Shuggie Bain. That ending (IYKYK!). Now Douglas Stuart is back with yet another temptation to start smoking again, and I. am. ready. to. sigh. wistfully.
In Young Mungo, we are served suspense when Mungo (a Protestant) and James (a Catholic)—who should, in any circumstance, be sworn enemies—become best friends, and, eventually, lovers. As they fall deeper in love and begin dreaming of abandoning Glasgow for a place they can be together—be themselves—Mungo works assiduously to hide his true self from everyone around him, especially his big brother, Hamish, a local gang leader notorious for his brutality. A few months later, when Mungo’s alcoholic mother sends him on a fishing trip to Western Scotland with two strange men who harbor ominous intentions, Mungo clings to a future with James while trying to escape a biome loyal to flagrant displays of masculinity.
Once again delivering characters that leap off the page, Stuart poignantly depicts the dangers of unmitigated selfhood in a hostile environment—and the intrinsic resilience of queer love.
Credits
Art by: James Jeffers
Editorial assistant: Jesse Adele
You can follow my other unhinged missives by following me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. My debut memoir, Born to Be Public, is out now.