LGBT+ History Month Recommendations

Recommendations1st February 2024

February is LGBT+ History Month, and here at the shop we've rounded up some of our favourite books (fiction and nonfiction) that shed light on the lives and identities of LGBT+ people throughout history.

To learn more about LGBT+ History Month visit the Schools OUT website, which offers a great variety of educational reading material, and where you can explore 2024's calendar of events: https://lgbtplushistorymonth.co.uk/lgbt-history-month-2024/

The New Life cover

The New Life

Based on the lives of John Addington Symonds and Havelock Ellis, Tom Crewe’s debut novel summons up the atmosphere of Victorian London only to expose its contradictions and hypocrasies surrounding love, sex and sexuality. Crewe’s scene-writing is artful and compact, and surprisingly spicy; but it’s the book’s dialogue, which reflects its specific context meticulously while also casting a glancing, hopeful eye to the future, that makes the most pressing emotive claims.

Marc

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Published: 11th Jan '24

Format: Paperback

Price: £9.99

Uncomfortable Labels cover

Uncomfortable Labels

In this series of essays, Laura Kate Dale explores what it's like to live at the intersection of marginalised identities. As a trans, gay and autistic woman, she writes about her own struggles and experiences of isolation, and shines a light on the overlap between queerness and neurodiversity.

Ness

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Published: 18th Jul '19

Format: Paperback

Price: £15.99

Dear Senthuran cover

Dear Senthuran

Akwaeke Emezi is a literal god and not of this world. Each chapter of Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir is set up like a letter to someone as they write about their existence and coming to understand their identity that isn't necessarily of this world. It is raw, painful, and beautiful as they unfold their stories and experiences as an entity that lives in flesh. Suspend Western terminology around queerness and the body as you approach this book because it is insufficient - the irony that I am a Western person using this language to recommend a book is not lost on me. But Dear Senthuran is an important and necessary memoir in understanding the numerous and endless ways of how queer people navigate the world.

Jenna

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Published: 21st Jul '22

Format: Paperback

Price: £10.99

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Tipping The Velvet

Nan Astley, the refreshingly chaotic protagonist of Sarah Waters' debut novel, walks away from her life as an oyster girl to join a drag king act in Victorian London. Tipping the Velvet is a subversive (and sexy!) testament to queer people's ability to carve out spaces of authenticity and joy in the face of a culture that tries to erase them; it is also a rich, twisting bildungsroman that foregrounds the unsung historical intersections between queerness and class liberation.

Amos

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Published: 15th Jun '23

Format: Paperback

Price: £9.99

Giovanni's Room cover

Giovanni's Room

Truly, any piece of writing written by James Baldwin is a treasure, but Giovanni's Room is such a tender and devastating story that it would be remiss of me if I didn't choose it. Wandering around Paris, David contemplates marriage, masculinity, and relationships when he meets a bartender named Giovanni at a gay bar. They begin a passionate love affair, but the entire situation is put at risk when David's girlfriend arrives in Paris. Tragedy and heartbreak ensues when David decides to pretend the love affair never happened. Written in 1956, Giovanni's Room is a melancholic and thoughtful novel about love, identity, and internalised homophobia.

Jenna

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Published: 2nd Aug '07

Format: Paperback

Price: £7.99

The Transgender Issue cover

The Transgender Issue

The Transgender Issue is a vital book which looks at the issues facing trans people today and historically. Shon Faye examines issues such as the misconceptions perpetuated about trans people in the media as well as access to healthcare, state violence, class and employment. The result is a thorough examination of what it means to be transgender today, and a rallying call for trans liberation.

Lily

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Published: 5th May '22

Format: Paperback

Price: £10.99

The Argonauts cover

The Argonauts

In The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson dwells on the details of her life with her partner, the artist Harry Dodge, to explore the ways Western society clings so tightly to binaries and as a result does harm to us all. Nelson's work often defies categorisation, and this memoir is no different, exploring themes of queerness, family, love, birth, art and sexuality in fragments. She writes about the couple's experiences (including Nelson's IVF and Dodge's gender-affirming healthcare) in an intimate way but always on her own terms.

Molly

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Published: 7th Apr '16

Format: Paperback

Price: £10.99

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All the Young Men

When she discovered a young gay man with AIDS abandoned in a hospital in his last moments, Ruth Coker Burks had to help. Before she knew it, word had gotten around. Soon she was coaching "her guys" on how to get tested and how to get support, and was burying them when they passed away.  A deeply moving memoir about the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, and one woman who refused to stand aside and let it happen.

Ness

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Published: 5th Aug '21

Format: Paperback

Price: £8.99

Maurice cover

Maurice

An early work of modern gay literature, Maurice is about a young man's sexual awakening at a time when homosexuality was a criminal offence. Forster's novel is beautifully written, exploring with tender insight the feelings of young love while also condemning Britain's repressive attitudes.

Lily

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Published: 28th Jul '05

Format: Paperback

Price: £9.99

Lesbian Love Story cover

Lesbian Love Story

Perfect for readers who enjoyed Nothing Ever Just Disappears by Diarmuid Hester and A Short History of Queer Women by Kirsty Loehr, Amelia Possanza seeks out seven sapphic love stories that history overlooked, bringing to light the incredible lesbian role models we didn't grow up knowing but can now discover and find solace in. Expertly told in an accessible, intriguing style, Possanza is sensitive in her handling of intersectionality, the politics of a woman's body and mind, and acknowledges that many of the historical women she discovers could very well have been trans or non-binary in today's age but were confined to 'lesbian' or 'male impersonator' due to their limiting societal structures. A truly joyful read to unearth so many beautiful lesbians living, loving and thriving in plain sight - despite what the history books may have erased.

Kira

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Published: 22nd Jun '23

Format: Hardback

Price: £20.00

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All the Violet Tiaras

“Poetry, queer identity, and Greek mythology have been inextricably interwoven throughout history.” Menzies draws from original Ancient Greek material and brings in modern day retellings; exploring possible queer readings of Greek myths, detailing evidence of LGBTQIA+ mythological figures and championing the necessity of adaptations. From Heracles, Artemis and Apollo to Percy Jackson, Song of Achilles and Autobiography of Red, this is an interesting foray into the power of modern interpretation and relation to Ancient Greek texts.

Kira

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Published: 25th Jan '24

Format: Paperback

Price: £7.50

Greekling cover

Greekling

In mining the personal as well as the political, Tsolakis has written from the heart and formed a collection that explores Greek identity, queerness, home, desire, joy and trauma with great finesse. Sunkissed yet fraught with the struggle of becoming one's truest self. I will treasure it.

Euan

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Published: 26th Oct '23

Format: Paperback

Price: £10.99

Nothing Ever Just Disappears cover

Nothing Ever Just Disappears

A diligently researched, carefully argued book in which readers are challenged to think more about the spaces in which queer history has happened, rather than than the chronology of culture. Hester's writing is lovely, and there's an inherent care for each of the book's subjects: a fact especially clear in the final chapter, on the writer Kevin Killian and San Francisco - which was this reader's highlight.

Marc

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Published: 31st Aug '23

Format: Hardback

Price: £25.00

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? cover

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

If Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit is a book that has stuck with you, I would always recommend reading Winterston's autobiography, described as the 'silent twin' to the novel. A striking, moving and at times darkly funny account of Winterston's life which served as inspiration for the events of the novel. Winterston explores her difficult relationship with her parents, their faith and the impact this had on her as she discovered her sexuality.

Niamh

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Published: 12th Apr '12

Format: Paperback

Price: £9.99

Can the Monster Speak? cover

Can the Monster Speak?

This book was born out of a lecture that the author delivered to a conference of psychoanalysts during which he was heckled off the stage and unable to finish. This translated edition provides the entire lecture that Precadio intended to give. Precadio was not afraid to critise the damaging impact that the profession and their rigid approaches to sexuality have had and the resulting argument is concise, compelling and incredibly sharp.

Niamh

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Published: 2nd Jun '21

Format: Paperback

Price: £12.99