Favorite Fridays highlight media the HCDL staff recommend. Find your next favorite book, audiobook, movie, TV show, magazine, etc., here every Friday—and share your own favorites in the weekly posts’ comments!
The Read Woke Challenge runs October 1 through November 30. Today we’ll be sharing the book list for the LGBTQIA+ Voices category— keep an eye out for the ones that our staff particularly recommend!
Have you read any of these titles? Do you recommend any not listed? Share with us in the comments!
LGBTQIA+ Voices Fiction
A Burning by Megha Majumdar
HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby
After a fiery attack on a train leaves 104 people dead, the fates of three people become inextricably entangled. A novel about fate, power, opportunity, and class; about innocence and guilt, betrayal and love, and the corrosive media cycle that manufactures falsehoods masquerading as truths. A Burning is a debut novel of exceptional power and urgency, haunting and beautiful, brutal, vibrant, impossible to forget.
Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman
HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby
The story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents’ cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera. Unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, at first each feigns indifference. But during the restless summer weeks that follow, unrelenting buried currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire, intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them.
The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassar
A gritty and gorgeous debut that follows a cast of gay and transgender club kids navigating the Harlem ball scene of the 80s and 90s, inspired by the real House of Xtravaganza made famous by the seminal documentary “Paris is Burning.”
*Hoopla is available to Howell library district residents only.
Marriage of a Thousand Lies by SJ Sindu
Lakshmi, called Lucky, is an unemployed millennial programmer. Lucky’s husband, Krishna, is an editor for a greeting card company. Both are secretly gay. They present their conservative Sri Lankan-American families with a heterosexual front, while each dates on the side. When Lucky’s grandmother has a nasty fall, Lucky returns to her mother’s home to act as caretaker and unexpectedly reconnects with her childhood best friend and first lover, Nisha. Nisha has agreed to an arranged marriage with a man she doesn’t know, but finds herself attracted to her old friend. As Lucky, an outsider no matter what choices she makes, is pushed to the breaking point, Marriage of a Thousand Lies offers a moving exploration of friendship, family, and love, shot through with humor and loss.
*Hoopla is available to Howell library district residents only.
Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuistion * Staff Choice *
HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby | Hoopla*
First Son Alex Claremont-Diaz, with his sister and the Veep’s genius granddaughter, are the White House Trio, a beautiful millennial marketing strategy for his mother, President Ellen Claremont. Then photos of a confrontation with his longtime nemesis Prince Henry at a royal wedding leak to the tabloids. The plan for damage control: stage a fake friendship between the First Son and the Prince. Alex soon discovers that beneath Henry’s Prince Charming veneer, there’s a soft-hearted eccentric with a dry sense of humor and more than one ghost haunting him. As President Claremont kicks off her reelection bid, Alex finds himself hurtling into a relationship with Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations.
*Hoopla is available to Howell library district residents only.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby
Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one in the journalism community is more astounded than Monique herself. Her husband, David, has left her, and her career has stagnated. Regardless of why Evelyn has chosen her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career. Summoned to Evelyn’s Upper East Side apartment, Monique listens as Evelyn unfurls her story: from making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the late 80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way. As Evelyn’s life unfolds, revealing a ruthless ambition, an unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love, Monique begins to feel a very a real connection to the actress. But as Evelyn’s story catches up with the present, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.
Something to Talk About by Meryl Wilsner * Staff Choice *
HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby
A showrunner and her assistant give the world something to talk about when they accidentally fuel a ridiculous rumor in this debut romance. Hollywood powerhouse Jo is photographed making her assistant Emma laugh on the red carpet, and just like that, the tabloids declare them a couple. As the gossip spreads, it starts to affect all areas of their lives. But their only comment is “no comment.” With the launch of Jo’s film project fast approaching, the two women begin to spend even more time together, getting along famously. Emma seems to have a sixth sense for knowing what Jo needs. And Jo, known for being aloof and outwardly cold, opens up to Emma in a way neither of them expects. They begin to realize the rumor might not be so off base after all…but is acting on the spark between them worth fanning the gossip flames?
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller * Staff Choice *
HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby | Hoopla*
Set during the Trojan War, Patroclus, an awkward young prince, follows Achilles into war, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they have learned, everything they hold dear. And that, before he is ready, he will be forced to surrender his friend to the hands of Fate.
*Hoopla is available to Howell library district residents only.
This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel * Staff Choice *
HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby | Hoopla*
When Rosie and Penn and their four boys welcome the newest member of their family, no one is surprised it’s another baby boy. But Claude is not like his brothers. One day he puts on a dress and refuses to take it off. He wants to bring a purse to kindergarten. He wants hair long enough to sit on. When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl. Rosie and Penn aren’t panicked at first. Kids go through phases, after all, and make-believe is fun. But soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes. This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family.
*Hoopla is available to Howell library district residents only.
Witchmark by C.L. Polk * Staff Choice *
HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby
Magic marked Miles Singer for suffering the day he was born, doomed either to be enslaved to his family’s interest or to be committed to a witches’ asylum. He went to war to escape his destiny and came home a different man, but he couldn’t leave his past behind. The war between Aeland and Laneer leaves men changed, strangers to their friends and family, but even after faking his own death and reinventing himself as a doctor at a cash-strapped veterans’ hospital, Miles can’t hide what he truly is. When a fatally poisoned patient exposes Miles’ healing gift and his witchmark, he must put his anonymity and freedom at risk to investigate his patient’s murder. To find the truth he’ll need to rely on the family he despises, and on the kindness of the most gorgeous man he’s ever seen.
LGBTQIA+ Voices Nonfiction
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts
HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby
By the time Rock Hudson’s death in 1985 alerted all America to the danger of the AIDS epidemic, the disease had spread across the nation, killing thousands of people and emerging as the greatest health crisis of the 20th century. America faced a troubling question: What happened? How was this epidemic allowed to spread so far before it was taken seriously? Shilts tells the heroic stories of individuals in science and politics, public health and the gay community, who struggled to alert the nation to the enormity of the danger it faced. And the Band Played On is both a tribute to these heroic people and a stinging indictment of the institutions that failed the nation so badly.
Boy Erased: A Memoir by Garrard Conley
HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby
When Garrard was a nineteen-year-old college student, he was outed to his parents, and was forced to make a life-changing decision: either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy program that promised to “cure” him of homosexuality; or risk losing family, friends, and the God he had prayed to every day of his life. Through an institutionalized Twelve-Step Program heavy on Bible study, he was supposed to emerge heterosexual, ex-gay, cleansed of impure urges and stronger in his faith in God for his brush with sin. Instead, even when faced with a harrowing and brutal journey, Garrard found the strength and understanding to break out in search of his true self and forgiveness.
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel * Staff Choice *
Meet Alison’s father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family’s Victorian house, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with male students and a family babysitter. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter’s complex yearning for her father. And yet, apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned ‘fun home, ‘ as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescence, the denouement is swift, graphic, and redemptive.
*Hoopla is available to Howell library district residents only.
Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe * Staff Choice *
In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity–what it means and how to think about it–for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.
*Hoopla is available to Howell library district residents only.
In the Dream House: A Memoir by Carmen Maria Machado
HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby
For years Carmen Maria Machado has struggled to articulate her experiences in an abusive same-sex relationship. In this extraordinarily candid and radically inventive memoir, Machado tackles a dark and difficult subject with wit, inventiveness and an inquiring spirit, as she uses a series of narrative tropes—including classic horror themes—to create an entirely unique piece of work which is destined to become an instant classic.
Life Isn’t Binary: On Being Both, Beyond and In-between by Meg-John Barker and Alex Iantaffi * Staff Choice *
Much of society’s thinking operates in a highly rigid and binary manner; something is good or bad, right or wrong, a success or a failure, and so on. Challenging this limited way of thinking, this ground-breaking book looks at how non-binary methods of thought can be applied to all aspects of life, and offer new and greater ways of understanding ourselves and how we relate to others. Using bisexual and non-binary gender experiences as a starting point, this book addresses the key issues with binary thinking regarding our relationships, bodies, emotions, wellbeing and our sense of identity and sets out a range of practices which may help us to think in more non-binary, both/and, or uncertain ways. A truly original and insightful piece, this guide encourages reflection on how we view and understand the world we live in and how we all bend, blur or break society’s binary codes.
Once a Girl, Always a Boy: A Family Memoir of a Transgender Journey by Jo Ivester
Once a Girl, Always a Boy is Jeremy’s journey from childhood through coming out as transgender and eventually emerging as an advocate for the transgender community. This is not only Jeremy’s story but also that of his family, told from multiple perspectives — those of the siblings who struggled to understand the brother they once saw as a sister, and of the parents who ultimately joined him in the battle against discrimination.
A Queer History of the United States by Michael Bronski
HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby
A Queer History of the United States looks at how American culture has shaped the LGBT, or queer, experience, while simultaneously arguing that LGBT people not only shaped but were pivotal in creating our country. Using numerous primary documents and literature, as well as social histories, Bronski’s book takes the reader through the centuries–from Columbus’ arrival and the brutal treatment the Native peoples received, through the American Revolution’s radical challenging of sex and gender roles–to the violent, and liberating, 19th century–and the transformative social justice movements of the 20th.
Queer (In)justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States by Joey L. Mogul
Drawing on years of research, activism, and legal advocacy, Queer (In)Justice is a searing examination of queer experiences–as “suspects,” defendants, prisoners, and survivors of crime. The authors unpack queer criminal archetypes–like “gleeful gay killers,” “lethal lesbians,” “disease spreaders,” and “deceptive gender benders”–to illustrate the punishment of queer expression, regardless of whether a crime was ever committed. Tracing stories from the streets to the bench to behind prison bars, the authors prove that the policing of sex and gender both bolsters and reinforces racial and gender inequalities.
Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock
HCDL Catalog | Overdrive/Libby | Hoopla*
In 2011, Marie Claire magazine published a profile of Janet Mock in which she stepped forward for the first time as a trans woman. Those twenty-three hundred words were life-altering for the People.com editor, turning her into an influential and outspoken public figure and a desperately needed voice for an often voiceless community. In these pages, she offers a bold and inspiring perspective on being young, multicultural, economically challenged, and transgender in America.
*Hoopla is available to Howell library district residents only.
* Adapted from the summaries provided by the publishers
Check out What’s Your pronoun?: Beyond He & She by Dennis Baron for how pronoun use for genders has changed over the centuries.