June is Pride month. At the Center, we stand with the LGBTQIA community this month and every month, because dignity is being able to live and belong as you are, trans rights matter, and love is love.
This Pride month, we encourage you to buy books by LGBTQIA authors from LGBTQIA-owned bookstores. As always, Bookshop.org is an invaluable resource for both; unless otherwise noted, all book links in this post lead to Bookshop.org, where your purchases support independent bookstores across the U.S.
Here is Bookshop’s complete PRIDE 2024 curated list (plus 15% discount code through June 30), with some of our favorite recent releases in more detail below.
Happy reading, and happy Pride!
Books to read during Pride month and through summer 2024
Fair Play: How Sports Shape the Gender Debates (nonfiction)
Certainly, the conversation about the value of women's sports has been heating up in recent years (think Caitlin Clark and the WNBA, or the work of National Women's Soccer League players to close the pay gap). In this well-reported book, Katie Barnes explores a different aspect of women's sports: the culture wars that would keep transgender people out of professional athletics. Barnes "traces the evolution of women's sports as a pastime and a political arena where equality and fairness have been fought over for generations." This book was listed as one of TIME Magazine's 100 Must-Read Books of 2023, and will hopefully open minds to a more inclusive culture of competition.
Heartstopper #5 (YA graphic novel)
Alice Oseman's Heartstopper series brings to YA readers a close look at what it means to be young, gay, and in love. It's an acclaimed Netflix series, but the book is always better, right? Tween and teen readers will enjoy the graphics and a story about a queer relationship that has been developing over five thick volumes. At a time in history when young LGBTQ people are watching their human rights and personhood debated and eroded in political spheres, it's more important than ever for them—for all of us—to see their relationships normalized and celebrated alongside cisgender and heterosexual romances. The fifth installment was released at the end of 2023, and the sixth and final one doesn't even have a release date yet, so your favorite younger readers have plenty of time to get caught up.
Martyr! (novel)
When an award-winning poet whom NPR once called "poetry's biggest cheerleader" finally releases a novel, you can bet it's going to be a good one. Kaveh Akbar is an Iranian-American writer whose poems have graced the pages of all the most prestigious literary journals. His own sobriety journey informs his shaping of Cyrus Shams (what a name!), the protagonist obsessed with martyrs as much as with stories and their meanings. A New York Times Bestseller - Most Anticipated Book, Martyr!, released in January, is already widely reviewed and loved; writer Lauren Groff called it "the best novel you'll ever read about the joy of language, addiction, displacement, martyrdom, belonging, homesickness."
Survival Takes a Wild Imagination: Poems
Fariha Róisín grapples with some of the same questions as Akbar's protagonist concerning family and what brings meaning to our lives. Her first book of poems won critical acclaim and established her as a powerful voice in poetry. Her second has proven just as strong, with an underlying message of hope as she explores identity and heritage. A Muslim, queer, Bangladeshi writer who has also published fiction and nonfiction, Róisín's poems are in conversation with her literary predecessors and have been described as "ladders out of lit fires."
Do the Work: A Guide to Understanding Biases and Creating Change (nonfiction)
From the inimitable Roxane Gay, co-editor and writer Megan Pillow, and bestselling illustrator Aurélia Durand comes a book designed to help make better citizens of all of us who are committed to doing the work. Its aim is to provide "a foundation for examining hierarchies and inequalities and [establish] a framework for understanding power and how it shapes our lives and communities." What even is power, who has it and why, and how can the most marginalized among us reclaim it in hopes of shaping a better existence, now and for future generations? This book promises to cover a lot of ground, and builds in time and space for reflection to maximize its impact. Release date is June 18, and in a critical election year for the U.S., there probably isn't a more important summer read.
Have you or will you read any of these books this summer? Share with us in the comments.
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