It's Read A Book Day - 10 LGBT History Books We Recommend

These 10 books will feed your knowledge on LGBT history. Whether you’re LGBT yourself or an ally of the rainbow family, we encourage you to download, order or share these books in the name of LGBT education. 

Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States by Joey Mogul, Andrea Ritchie and Kay Whitlock

This book explores cases of injustices within the LGBT community as they’re accused of crimes and framed as “gleeful gay killers,” “lethal lesbians,” “disease spreaders,” and “deceptive gender benders.”

Equal Ever After: The fight for same-sex marriage – and how I made it happen by Lynne Featherstone 

Read about the fight for same-sex marriage and how this woman made it happen.

The author is a British Liberal Democrat parliamentarian and member of the House of Lords. This book details her work to establish legal same-sex marriage in the United Kingdom.

Queer: A Graphic History by Meg-John Barker (Author) and Julia Scheele (Illustrator)

Activist-academic Meg-John Barker and cartoonist Julia Scheele portray the LGBT history of queerness in this brilliant non-fiction graphic novel.

This book explores how society “came to view sex, gender and sexuality in the ways that we do; how these ideas get tangled up with our culture and our understanding of biology, psychology and sexology; and how these views have been disputed and challenged.”

Sapphistries: A Global History of Love between Women (Intersections) by Leila J. Rupp

This lesbian history book is another must-read over LGBT history month.

From the ancient poet Sappho to modern women today, this monograph threads lesbian history together in a brilliant and thought-provoking way.

Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman by Leslie Feinberg

In this extraordinary journal, Feinberg gives readers an insight into trans lives.

Transgender Warriors explores transgender history and what trans people have faced through their lives with ongoing cissexism and gender discrimination.

A History of Bisexuality by Steven Angelides

“Why is bisexuality the object of such skepticism? Why do sexologists steer clear of it in their research? Why has bisexuality, in stark contrast to homosexuality, only recently emerged as a nascent political and cultural identity? Bisexuality has been rendered as mostly irrelevant to the history, theory, and politics of sexuality.”

Read A History of Bisexuality, for a retrace through the evolution of sexology, gay liberation, social constructionism, queer theory, biology, and human genetics.

New Lesbian Studies: Into the Twenty-First Century by Bonnie Zimmerman and Toni Mcnaron

This lesbian studies book consists of 40 essays exploring the themes of identity, community, feminism and queer theories. The essayists address the ways in which lesbian studies has transformed and what further cases we will see in the future.

Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II by Allan Bérubé

This book includes interviews with gay veterans, and the author delves into military documents and wartime letters. Overall, it shows the relationship between gay citizens and the US government during World War II.

Since 1990, this LGBT history book remains a valuable contribution to the background of World War II and the ongoing debate regarding the role of gay men and women in the military.

Don’t Tell Me to Wait: How the Fight for Gay Rights Changed America and Transformed Obama’s Presidency by Kerry Eleveld 

This is an excellent modern LGBT history book looking at gay rights in the US during Obama’s presidency. It looks at results from the government after “intense pressure from lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender activists.”

A Gay History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Men Since the Middle Ages by Matt Cook

“Covering nearly a thousand years from the Norman Conquest to the internet age, this is a history rich in personalities, not only public figures like Richard Lionheart or Derek Jarman, but also little-known individuals such as Eleanor, a cross-dresser in Chaucer s England, and Mark Partridge, branded a mollying bitch in eighteenth-century London.”

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References:

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/01/25/10-lgbt-history-books-lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender/