Happy Pride!
When offered the chance to write a post highlighting some LGBTQ+ titles, I knew I wanted to show how broadly our stories are disbursed throughout the bookstore, often in categories you might not expect. Because, to borrow a title from Leighton Brown’s and Matthew Riemer’s beautiful history of queer liberation:
We Are Everywhere.
I’ve focused on recently published nonfiction, because, well,
there’s been a lot going on and these books didn’t get the attention they deserved. I feel a real kinship with these titles because, like me, they came out at a difficult time.
FOOD WRITING
The Man Who Ate Too Much
by John Birdsall
John Birdsall gloriously expands his James Beard Award-winning essay about important figures in midcentury American food who were forced in the closet and, in Beard’s case, it’s decades after Beard’s death and only now has he been let out. A particular treat for Portland readers, Birdsall’s sumptuously detailed descriptions of locales and cuisines are so rich that reading this book often feels like hedonism.
TRAVEL WRITING
Love Is an Ex-Country
by Randa Jarrar
My whole project of placing books into little genre boxes was obviously never going to last long, and I believe that Randa Jarrar would be pleased to disrupt any such endeavor. Jarrar’s memoir is framed by a cross-country road trip, but her freewheeling book shows no interest in committing to that structure. Instead, she is committed to a true fearlessness about sharing the pain caused by the various labels laid upon her, and how she transcended them.
POLITICAL SCIENCE
The Pink Line
by Mark Gevisser
The gay rights movement in the United States has been remarkably successful, but in many parts of the world reactionary forces are pointing to the U. S. as justification for cracking down on queer populations, as the American culture wars are exported. The new borders between freedom and oppression are what Mark Gevisser calls the Pink Line, and his globe-spanning book explores it with a series of moving profiles of individuals caught in the middle.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Queer Love in Color
by Jamal Jordan
I am grateful to all the authors on this list, but I think one of the many joys of Queer Love in Color is watching Jamal Jordan actively alleviate a problem. He first identified the absence of representation of queer couples and families of color in a New York Times piece that went viral, and, as he wrote: “It’s hard to do something you’ve never seen.” So, he set out to see for himself and now to show all of us with a charming collection of stories and photos.
ESSAY
Nothing Personal
by James Baldwin
This essay was originally published in a volume with photos by Richard Avedon in 1964. This is the first time that James Baldwin’s text has been published on its own, now with a foreword by Imani Perry and an afterword by Eddie S. Glaude Jr. I already considered Baldwin to be one of the greatest American writers, but I was still astonished by how well he predicted the state of the nation 50 years after he set pen to paper. I thought I had some understanding of just how perceptive Baldwin was, but reading this book left me shocked and stunned.
AMERICAN STUDIES
Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing
by Lauren Hough
Lauren Hough’s essays about the hardscrabble side of American life cover a lot of ground: cults, jails, homelessness, and installing cable. One telling moment is when she has to tell her new, newly-out girlfriend that, yes, they do have to be concerned about homophobia in a rural Virginia Bojangles. Much of the book mirrors this moment: Hough has learned to recognize dangers the hard way. It’s also very funny! Hough’s humor is often so dry that it is positively arid, and feels more than a bit dangerous itself.
PETS
Good Boy
by Jennifer Finney Boylan
My third-grade teacher read Where the Red Fern Grows aloud to the class, and I felt then that I never needed another sad dog story. I still feel that way. Lucky for me, Jennifer Finney Boylan’s memoir-in-seven-dogs is a rich personal history with an entirely different arc. One of the difficulties every memoirist has to deal with is how to regard their past selves as they recreate themselves on the page. This challenge is significantly heightened, and even traumatic, for many trans authors. The way that Boylan navigates this is uniquely her own, and I’m so glad that she did. I’ll even forgive any sad dog parts of her story.
MUSIC CRITICISM
Glitter Up the Dark
by Sasha Geffen
Glitter Up the Dark is an exploration of pop music’s power to subvert the gender binary, or rather to reveal that it was always false. Sasha Geffen’s writing is, like the best music criticism, idiosyncratic — teaching you to listen in a new way: through their ears. Its deeply personal view of art and artists is similar to Jenn Shapland’s My Autobiography of Carson McCullers. Special shout-out to the University of Texas Press and their wonderful American Music Series, of which this book is a part.
ECONOMICS
The Case for Gay Reparations
by Omar G. Encarnación
Economics? I’m reaching here. I mean, this sounds like a book that would have a substantial economic component, but of the five types of reparations considered, only one involves paying victims of discrimination. The main focus is on compelling governments to acknowledge past wrongdoing and undertake efforts to repair victims’ reputations and reduce social stigma. Omar G. Encarnación covers the shameful history of animus and official discrimination by the federal government, and looks to examples of other countries that have taken steps far beyond what the U. S. Congress has thus far been unwilling to do: issue a simple apology.
LAW
Is Rape a Crime?
by Michelle Bowdler
This is a list full of brave, bold authors, but Michelle Bowdler is in another league. I can barely conceive of how hard this book must have been to write. She begins by recounting her own rape and the long, unending path to addressing the trauma. She then looks into the minimal investigation that her rape received at the time and demonstrates that this heinous crime is almost never punished. But this isn’t a conclusion to which you can read the topline, agree with it, and move on. If you haven’t lived it, you have to read and fully reckon with this book.
ETHNIC STUDIES
Finding Latinx
by Paola Ramos
Paola Ramos went around the country to find out about the lives of members of the Latinx community, including many who would reject that label entirely. Political analysists find it very useful to regard this broad group of humans as a homogenous line item on surveys and vote tallies, but that reductive view is clearly unsustainable. A reminder of just how diverse demographic groups are, Finding Latinx is about what connects us, what separates us, and how a shared identity is lived and regarded by its members.
SOCIOLOGY
Gay Bar
by Jeremy Atherton Lin
For purposes of this post, I am calling this book sociology, but the tone seems closer to literary criticism, such is its simultaneously personal and impersonal view of its subject. Three books in one, Jeremy Atherton Lin includes memoir, history, and cultural criticism to analyze the past and future roles of the gay bar. There is disagreement in my house about just how successful each element of the book is (creating a discord similar to that of the great Wagnerism debate of 2020), but everyone agrees that Lin’s meditation on the sexual behavior of dust alone is worth the cover charge.
RELIGION
Love and Rage
by Lama Rod Owens
Lama Rod Owens offers exactly what I look for in Buddhist teaching or mindfulness guidance: he creates the space to feel welcome, recognized, and accepted — even the difficult parts, like anger and trauma. In fact, those feelings and experiences are central to his teaching, not as unfortunate things that should be quickly discarded, but as inevitable results of a society containing so much discrimination. As Lama Rod shows, anger need not be regarded as a barrier to a spiritual practice, it can be fuel for it.
SCIENCE
The Disordered Cosmos
by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein has thought a lot about our place in the universe and how we’ve discerned it. Astrophysics is an arena you may think is so gloriously abstract and removed from the shortcomings of our society that surely it is free of our destructive racial and gender biases, but Dr. Prescod-Weinstein has important and troubling news for you. From terminology to tenure, the discipline is tilted towards sustaining discriminatory practices, and is resistant to reform. This is a book that will help to change that.
HISTORY
The Deviant’s War
by Eric Cervini
The discrimination covered in aggregate in The Case for Gay Reparations is detailed here, showing its impact on an individual. But Frank Kameny was no ordinary individual. An astronomer fired from the Department of Defense for his homosexuality, Kameny was also denied a security clearance and therefore could never again work in his field. Instead, he cofounded the Washington, DC, branch of the Mattachine Society and took his case as far as he could before a contemptuous bureaucracy and a hostile judiciary. Eric Cervini shows both Kameny’s shortcomings as a leader focused on maintaining gender norms and enforcing respectability politics, but also his remarkable resolve and willingness to stand up to anyone, anywhere who challenged his credo: “Gay is Good!”
SPORTS
The Secret to Superhuman Strength
by Alison Bechdel
Like any sensible person, I revere Alison Bechdel. When I first heard of her new graphic novel, The Secret to Superhuman Strength, I thought it would be a whimsical tour of the last few decades worth of exercise fads. And, sure, I was game for that. I now feel a powerful need to apologize for my misunderstanding. This is actually a rich, philosophical memoir about the ambivalence of self-realization, full of Bechdel’s masterful storytelling and, yes, whimsy. This book benefits tremendously from the enriching addition of full color. Don’t mistake this for a lesser work or a triviality: this is a masterpiece.
TRUE CRIME
Last Call
by Elon Green
I’m closing with a title that fits exactly into the genre listed, by design. Here is the largely unknown story of a serial killer who preyed on gay and bisexual men in New York at the end of the 20th century (why this story is so unknown in our age of true crime saturation is not clear, but you can probably guess). That said, it’s not really the story of a killer, it is the story of the victims. Marginalized people are more vulnerable to violent crime and they are less likely to leave a well-documented life behind them. Elon Green has done important work to recreate their lives and times, and the result reminds me of my favorite work of thoughtful, literate crime reportage: Robert Kolker’s Lost Girls.
And, as a bonus factoid for Pride: this book was in part inspired by The Bridge of San Luis Rey, making it the second great nonfiction title inspired by a Pulitzer Prize-winning work by Thornton Wilder in as many years (after Jon Mooallem’s This Is Chance!. Does that mean a book about climate change inspired by The Skin of Our Teeth is inevitable? I sure hope not!
Find more booklists, essays, and staff recommendations on our Pride Month page.