LGBTQ Book's Recommendations Part 1

From drag queens and discos, to black holes and monsters, these stories and poems wrestle with love and loneliness and the fight to be seen. By turns serious and fantastical, hilarious and confrontational, We Were Always Here addresses the fears, mysteries, wonders and variety of experience that binds our community together.

We Were Always Here is a snapshot of current LGBTI+ writing and a showcase of queer talent.

Contributors: Alice Tarbuck, Andrés Ordorica, April Hill, AR Crow, Bibi June, BD Owens, Callum Harper, Christina Neuwirth, Ciara Maguire, Elaine Gallagher, Elva Hills, Eris Young, Etzali Hernández, Felicity Anderson-Nathan, Freddie Alexander, Garry Mac, Gray Crosbie, Harry Josephine Giles, Heather Parry, Heather Valentine, Jack Bigglestone, Jane Flett, Jay G Ying, Jay Whittaker, Jonathan Bay, Jo Clifford, Kirsty Logan, Laura Waddell, Lori England, MJ Brocklebank, Rachel Plummer, Ross Jamieson, Sandra Alland, Shane Strachan, Zoe Storrie. 

Written 12 years before Teleny by Saul, this account of Victorian cross-dressing and rent-boys is a legend all its own. Based on the true story of a male brothel in Cleveland Street (later shut down).
Subtitled: "The Recollections of a Mary-Ann", the "Cities of the Plain" are of course Sodom and Gomorrah.
One of the first exclusively homosexual works of pornographic literature published in English. It has been suggested that it was largely written by James Campbell Reddie and the painter Simeon Solomon, who had been convicted of public indecency in 1873 and disgraced.

Happy Pride 2021 - Books

        Hello to all you beautiful LGBTQ people around the world.

I hope you are all having a happy and safe pride so far, over the next couple of days I will be posting queer books I have read/ currently reading and recommendations, just because I can. #HappyPride2021

Outlaw Marriages by Rodger Streitmatter

For more than a century before gay marriage became a hot-button political issue, same-sex unions flourished in America. Pairs of men and pairs of women joined together in committed unions, standing by each other “for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health” for periods of thirty or forty—sometimes as many as fifty—years. In short, they loved and supported each other every bit as much as any husband and wife.

In Outlaw Marriages, cultural historian Rodger Streitmatter reveals how some of these unions didn’t merely improve the quality of life for the two people involved but also enriched the American culture.

Red Azalea by Anchee Min

Red Azalea is Anchee Min’s celebrated memoir of growing up in the last years of Mao’s China. As a child, she was asked to publicly humiliate a teacher; at seventeen, she was sent to work at a labour collective. Forbidden to speak, dress, read, write, or love as she pleased, she found a lifeline in a secret love affair with another woman. Miraculously selected for the film version of one of Madame Mao’s political operas, Min’s life changed overnight. Then Chairman Mao suddenly died, taking with him an entire world. A revelatory and disturbing portrait of China.