Pride is a time for celebration, no doubt about it. It’s a time for remembrance, to reflect on how we got here, and on the people who got us here. Those stories are worth telling, and worth hearing. To kick off Pride Month 2023, this week Beaverdale Books is highlighting LGBTQ+ history and biography. Come celebrate, and remember, with us.
Rainbow History Class : Your Guide Through Queer and Trans History
By Hannah McElhinney
Fiction
Hardie Grant Books
Rainbow History Class is your entry into LGBTQ+ history, sharing queer and trans stories from Ancient civilisations all the way up to the internet. So much of queer and trans history and culture has been erased, but Hannah McElhinney, writer and creator of Rainbow History Class (as seen on TikTok), is here to help us all with this crash course. This history lesson isn’t dry and academic, nor is it glitter-soaked and reductive. It’s a comprehensive and entertaining romp through queer and trans history, full of secret queer codes, gender-bending icons, pop-culture knowledge and incredible activists. More than anything, Rainbow History Class will make you feel connected to the stories of our rich and vibrant community. This knowledge will help spark conversations between your friends and family and be a source of comfort as you stand up for yourself and your community. This illustrated hardback book is a celebration for all LGBTQ+ people, and an invitation to the newly out that says, ‘Welcome to the club, let’s get you caught up!’
Let the Record Show : A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993
Biography – Social Activism – LGBTQ+
Picador
In just six years, ACT UP, New York, a broad and unlikely coalition of activists from all races, genders, sexualities, and backgrounds, changed the world. Armed with rancor, desperation, intelligence, and creativity, it took on the AIDS crisis with an indefatigable, ingenious, and multifaceted attack on the corporations, institutions, governments, and individuals who stood in the way of AIDS treatment for all. They stormed the FDA and NIH in Washington, DC, and started needle exchange programs in New York; they took over Grand Central Terminal and fought to change the legal definition of AIDS to include women; they transformed the American insurance industry, weaponized art and advertising to push their agenda, and battled — and beat — The New York Times, the Catholic Church, and the pharmaceutical industry. Their activism, in its complex and intersectional power, transformed the lives of people with AIDS and the bigoted society that had abandoned them. Based on more than two hundred interviews with ACT UP members and rich with lessons for today’s activists, Let the Record Show is a revelatory exploration — and long-overdue reassessment of — the coalition’s inner workings, conflicts, achievements, and ultimate fracture. Schulman, one of the most revered queer writers and thinkers of her generation, explores the how and the why, examining, with her characteristic rigor and bite, how a group of desperate outcasts changed America forever, and in the process created a livable future for generations of people across the world.
The Stonewall Reader: Edited by the New York Public Library
By Jason Baumann
Social Sciences – LGBTQ+
Penguin Classics
June 28, 2019 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, which is considered the most significant event in the gay liberation movement, and the catalyst for the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States. Drawing from the New York Public Library’s archives, The Stonewall Reader is a collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented both the years leading up to and the years following the riots. Most importantly the anthology spotlights both iconic activists who were pivotal in the movement, such as Sylvia Rivera, co-founder of Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR), as well as forgotten figures like Ernestine Eckstein, one of the few out, African American, lesbian activists in the 1960s. The anthology focuses on the events of 1969, the five years before, and the five years after. Jason Baumann, the NYPL coordinator of humanities and LGBTQ collections, has edited and introduced the volume to coincide with the NYPL exhibition he has curated on the Stonewall uprising and gay liberation movement of 1969.
The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. The United States of America
By Eric Cervini
History – LGBTQ+
Picador
In 1957, Frank Kameny, an astronomer working for the US Defense Department in Hawaii, received a summons to report immediately to Washington, D.C. The Pentagon had reason to believe he was a homosexual, and after a series of humiliating interviews, Kameny—like countless gay men and women for before him—was promptly dismissed from his government job. Unlike many others, though, he fought back. Eric Cervini tells the story of what followed in this pathbreaking history of an early champion of gay liberation. Based on firsthand accounts, recently declassified FBI records, and forty thousand personal documents, The Deviant’s War, the first book of LGBTQ+ history to hit the New York Times best seller list in over 25 years, is a story of America (and Washington) at a cultural and sexual crossroads, of shocking, byzantine public battles with Congress, of FBI informants, murder, betrayal, sex, love—and ultimately victory.
By Martin Duberman
Social Sciences – LGBTQ+
Plume
On June 28, 1969, the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village, was raided by police. But instead of responding with the typical compliance the NYPD expected, patrons and a growing crowd decided to fight back. The five days of rioting that ensued changed forever the face of gay and lesbian life. In Stonewall, renowned historian and activist Martin Duberman tells the full story of this pivotal moment in history. With riveting narrative skill, he re-creates those revolutionary, sweltering nights in vivid detail through the lives of six people who were drawn into the struggle for LGBTQ rights. Their stories combine to form an unforgettable portrait of the repression that led up to the riots, which culminates when they triumphantly participate in the first gay rights march of 1970, the roots of today’s pride marches. Fifty years after the riots, Stonewall remains a rare work that evokes with a human touch an event in history that still profoundly affects life today.
By Krista Burton
Travel – LGBTQ+
Simon and Schuster
Lesbian bars have always been treasured safe spaces for their customers, providing not only a good time but a shelter from societal alienation and outright persecution. In 1987, there were 206 of them in America. Today, only a couple dozen remain. How and why did this happen? What has been lost—or possibly gained—by such a decline? What transpires when marginalized communities become more accepted and mainstream? In Moby Dyke, Krista Burton attempts to answer these questions firsthand, venturing on an epic cross-country pilgrimage to the last few remaining dyke bars. Her pilgrimage includes taking in her first drag show since the onset of the pandemic at The Back Door in Bloomington, Indiana; competing in dildo races at Houston’s Pearl Bar; and, despite her deep-seated hatred of karaoke, joining a group serenade at Nashville’s Lipstick Lounge and enjoying the dreaded pastime for the first time in her life. While Burton sets out on the excursion to assess the current state of lesbian bars, she also winds up examining her own personal journey, from coming out to her Mormon parents to recently marrying her husband, a trans man whose presence on the trip underscores the important conversation about who precisely is welcome in certain queer spaces—and how they and their occupants continue to evolve.
It Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror
Edited by Joe Vallese
Film – Horror – LGBTQ+
The Feminist Press at CUNY
Horror movies hold a complicated space in the hearts of the queer community: historically misogynist, and often homo- and transphobic, the genre has also been inadvertently feminist and open to subversive readings. Common tropes—such as the circumspect and resilient “final girl,” body possession, costumed villains, secret identities, and things that lurk in the closet—spark moments of eerie familiarity and affective connection. Still, viewers often remain tasked with reading themselves into beloved films, seeking out characters and set pieces that speak to, mirror, and parallel the unique ways queerness encounters the world. It Came from the Closet features twenty-five essays by writers speaking to this relationship, through connections both empowering and oppressive. From Carmen Maria Machado on Jennifer’s Body, Jude Ellison S. Doyle on In My Skin, Addie Tsai on Dead Ringers, and many more, these conversations convey the rich reciprocity between queerness and horror.
Legendary Children : The First Decade of RuPaul’s Drag Race and the Last Century of Queer Life
By Tom Fitzgerald, Lorenzo Marquez
Social Sciences — LGBTQ+
Penguin
From the singular voices behind Tom and Lorenzo comes the ultimate guide to all-things RuPaul’s Drag Race and its influence on modern LGBTQ culture. Legendary Children centers itself around the idea that not only is RuPaul’s Drag Race the queerest show in the history of television, but that RuPaul and company devised a show that serves as an actual museum of queer cultural and social history, drawing on queer traditions and the work of legendary figures going back nearly a century. In doing so, Drag Race became not only a repository of queer history and culture, but also an examination and illustration of queer life in the modern age. It is a snapshot of how LGBTQ folks live, struggle, work, and reach out to one another–and how they always have–and every bit of it is tied directly to Drag Race. Each chapter is an examination of a specific aspect of the show–the Werk Room, the Library, the Pit Crew, the runway, the Untucked lounge, the Snatch Game–that ties to a specific aspect of queer cultural history and/or the work of certain legendary figures in queer cultural history.
Gender Magic
By Rae McDaniel
Self-Help – Gender & Sexuality – Transgender
Balance
Taking everything they know from more than a decade of working with the queer and trans community, their personal journey of gender exploration, and clinical best practices, licensed therapist, coach, and speaker Rae McDaniel created the Gender Freedom Model. A uniquely supportive narrative for gender exploration and transition grounded in queer joy, their nine-pillar model has helped thousands of transgender and nonbinary individuals explore gender through play, pleasure, and freedom. And now, it can help you too.
Gender Euphoria
Edited by Laura Kate Dale
Social Science – Transgender
Unbound
A powerful feeling of happiness experienced as a result of moving away from one’s birth-assigned gender. So often the stories shared by trans people about their transition center on gender dysphoria: a feeling of deep discomfort with their birth-assigned gender, and a powerful catalyst for coming out or transitioning. But for many non-cisgender people, it’s gender euphoria that pushes forward their transition: the joy the first time a parent calls them by their new chosen name, the first time they have the confidence to cut their hair short, the first time they truly embrace themself. In this groundbreaking anthology, nineteen trans, non-binary, agender, gender-fluid, and intersex writers share their experiences of gender euphoria: an agender dominatrix being called “Daddy,” an Arab trans man getting his first tattoos, a trans woman embracing her inner fighter.What they have in common are their feelings of elation, pride, confidence, freedom and ecstasy as a direct result of coming out as non-cisgender, and how coming to terms with their gender has brought unimaginable joy into their lives.
