Ray, Douglas, ed. The Queer South: LGBTQ Writers on the American South. Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014.

This anthology, dreamed up and edited by Douglas Ray, features poetry and prose that sings of and explores the queer experience of the American South. From hilarious to heartbreaking, anxious to angry, religious to reluctant, contemplative to celebratory, this anthology expands our ideas of what it means to be queer and what it means to represent the land south of the Mason-Dixon.

Thompson, Brock. The Un-Natural State. University of Arkansas Press, 2010.

The Un-Natural State is a one-of-a-kind study of gay and lesbian life in Arkansas in the twentieth century, a deft weaving together of Arkansas history, dozens of oral histories, and Brock Thompson's own story. Thompson analyzes the meaning of rural drag shows, including a compelling description of a 1930s seasonal beauty pageant in Wilson, Arkansas, where white men in drag shared the stage with other white men in blackface, a suggestive mingling that went to the core of both racial transgression and sexual disobedience. These small town entertainments put on in churches and schools emerged decades later in gay bars across the state as a lucrative business practice and a larger means of community expression, while in the same period the state's sodomy law was rewritten to condemn sexual acts between those of the same sex in language similar to what was once used to denounce interracial sex.

New York Public Library, Edmund White and Jason Baumann, eds. The Stonewall Reader Paperback. Penguin Random House, 2019.

June 28, 2019 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, which is considered the most significant event in the gay liberation movement, and the catalyst for the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States. Drawing from the New York Public Library's archives, The Stonewall Reader is a collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented both the years leading up to and the years following the riots. Most importantly the anthology spotlights both iconic activists who were pivotal in the movement, such as Sylvia Rivera, co-founder of Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR), as well as forgotten figures like Ernestine Eckstein, one of the few out, African American, lesbian activists in the 1960s.

Evans, Rachel Held. Searching for Sunday. Nelson Books, 2015.

Like millions of her millennial peers, Rachel Held Evans didn’t want to go to church anymore. The hypocrisy, the politics, the gargantuan building budgets, the scandals—church culture seemed so far removed from Jesus. Yet, despite her cynicism and misgivings, something kept drawing her back to Church. And so she sets out on a journey to understand Church and to find her place in it. Centered around seven sacraments, Evans’s quest takes readers through a liturgical year with stories about baptism, communion, confirmation, confession, marriage, vocation, and death that are funny, heartbreaking, and sharply honest.

Cantorna, Amber. Unashamed: A Coming-Out Guide for LGBTQ Christians. Westminster John Knox Press, 2019.

In this handy guide, LGBTQ people of faith will find personal and practical advice for the coming-out process. Unashamed tackles such topics as internalized homophobia, re-establishing your worth as a child of God, finding an affirming faith community, and deciding when and how to come out. In her accessible and compassionate style, Cantorna equips LGBTQ Christians for the coming-out process, helps them create communities that will support and love them during the journey, and offers a bridge to re-establish their relationship with God.

Howard, John. Men Like That: A Southern Queer History. University of Chicago Press, 1999.

We don’t usually associate thriving queer culture with rural America, but John Howard’s unparalleled history of queer life in the South persuasively debunks the myth that same-sex desires can’t find expression outside the big city. In fact, this book shows that the nominally conservative institutions of small-town life—home, church, school, and workplace—were the very sites where queer sexuality flourished. As Howard recounts the life stories of the ordinary and the famous, often in their own words, he also locates the material traces of queer sexuality in the landscape: from the farmhouse to the church social, from sports facilities to roadside rest areas.

Decaro, Frank. Drag: Combing Through the Big Wigs of Show Business.Rizzoli, 2019.
Drag is a multimedia collection of interviews, commentaries and photos on drag history and culture, featuring contributions from some of the most influential drag artists of our time from around the globe, including Bianca del Rio, Miss Coco Peru, Hedda Lettuce, Lypsinka, and Varla Jean Merman. Illustrated with more than 100 photos, many never-before-seen images from performers’ personal collections, and a timeline of drag “herstory.”

Sontag, Susan. Notes on Camp. Penguin Modern, 2018. (Originally published 1964.)

'The ultimate Camp statement: it's good because it's awful.' These two classic essays were the first works of criticism to break down the boundaries between 'high' and 'low' culture, and made Susan Sontag a literary sensation.

Naidoo, Jamie Campbell. Rainbow Family Collections: Selecting and Using Children’s Books with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Content. Libraries Unlimited, 2012.

Research shows that an estimated 2 million children are being raised in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) families in the United States; that the number of same-sex couples adopting children is at an all-time high; and that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) couples raising children live in 96 percent of all counties in the United States. Today's educators and youth librarians therefore need guidance in choosing, evaluating, and selecting high-quality children's books with LGBTQ content. As one of the only highly praised resources on this important topic, this thoughtfully compiled book examines and suggests picture books and chapter books presenting LGBTQ content to children under the age of 12.

Harker, Jaime.The Lesbian South: Southern Feminists, the Women in Print Movement, and the Queer Literary Canon. The University of North Carolina Press, 2018.

In this book, Jaime Harker uncovers a largely forgotten literary renaissance in southern letters. Anchored by a constellation of southern women, the Women in Print movement grew from the queer union of women’s liberation, civil rights activism, gay liberation, and print culture. Broadly influential from the 1970s through the 1990s, the Women in Print movement created a network of writers, publishers, bookstores, and readers that fostered a remarkable array of literature. With the freedom that the Women in Print movement inspired, southern lesbian feminists remade southernness as a site of intersectional radicalism, transgressive sexuality, and liberatory space.

Chu, Jeff.Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian's Pilgrimage in Search of God in America.Harper Collins, 2014.

Part memoir and part investigative analysis that explores the explosive and confusing intersection of faith, politics, and sexuality in Christian America. The quest to find an answer is at the heart of Does Jesus Really Love Me? —apersonal journey of belief. From Brooklyn to Nashville to California, from Westboro Baptist Church and their “God Hates Fags” protest signs, to the pioneering Episcopalian bishop Mary Glasspool—who proclaims a message of liberation and divine love, Chu captures spiritual snapshots of Christian America at a remarkable moment, when tensions between both sides in the culture wars have rarely been higher.

Arceneaux, Michael.I Can’t Date Jesus: Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I've Put My Faith in Beyoncé. Atria Books, 2018.

I Can’t Date Jesusis Michael Arceneaux’s impassioned, forthright, and refreshing look at minority life in today’s America. Leaving no bigoted or ignorant stone unturned, he describes his journey in learning to embrace his identity when the world told him to do the opposite. He eloquently writes about coming out to his mother; growing up in Houston, Texas; being approached for the priesthood; his obstacles in embracing intimacy that occasionally led to unfortunate fights with fire ants and maybe fleas; and the persistent challenges of young people who feel marginalized and denied the chance to pursue their dreams. Perfect for fans of David Sedaris, Samantha Irby, and Phoebe Robinson, Arceneaux tells us—without apologies—what it’s like to be outspoken and brave in a divisive world.

McNally, Terrence.Corpus Christi. Dramatists Play Service, 1998.

The most controversial and talked about play of the 1998 theatrical season begins: “We are going to tell you an old and familiar story.” But from that point on, nothing feels quite familiar again. What follows is a story that parallels the New Testament's, and its subject is nothing less than the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus. But McNally's Christ figure is a character named Joshua, a young man born and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas, in the early 1950s. Different from the other boys because he is homosexual, Joshua grows up in isolation and torment, an object of scorn. He flees Corpus Christi in search of a more accepting environment, gathering along the way a group of disciples who are bound to him by his message of love and tolerance.

Cherry, Kittredge.The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision. Apocryphile Press, 2014.

Meet Jesus as a gay man of today in a contemporary city with The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision. In stunning new images, the modern Christ figure is jeered by fundamentalists, tortured by Marine look-alikes, and rises again to enjoy homoerotic moments with God. His surprisingly diverse friends join him on a journey from suffering to freedom. Readers call it “accessible but profound.” Some are moved to tears. The 24 paintings in the gay Passion reveal Jesus’ final days, including his arrest, trial, crucifixion, and resurrection. A queer Passion is important now because Christianity is being used to justify hate and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.

Winterson, Jeannette.Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Grove Press, 1997.

Jeanette is a bright and rebellious orphan who is adopted into an evangelical household in the dour, industrial North of England and finds herself embroidering grim religious mottoes and shaking her little tambourine for Jesus. But as this budding missionary comes of age, and comes to terms with her unorthodox sexuality, the peculiar balance of her God-fearing household dissolves. Jeanette’s insistence on listening to truths of her own heart and mind—and on reporting them with wit and passion—makes for an unforgettable chronicle of an eccentric, moving passage into adulthood.

O’Connor, Flannery. “A Temple of the Holy Ghost.” 1955. InThe Complete Stories. FSG Classics, 1971.

Published posthumously in 1971, The Complete Stories combines into one accessible volume the collected short stories of Southern Gothic luminary Flannery O’Connor. With wit and shrewd observation, O’Connor brings to life a mid-century South rife with contradiction and simmering conflict, populated by misfits and outcasts. Famous for her proclamation that "anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic," O’Connor spurns sentimentality in favor of truth, revealing a South that is layered, beautiful, and utterly unique.

Randolph, Vance.Ozark Magic and Folklore. 1947. Dover Publications, 1964.

People are normally reticent about their deepest beliefs, especially with outsiders. The author, however, has lived in the Ozarks since 1920 and has long since been a student of Ozark life—and a writer of a number of books and articles on various aspects of the subject. Through casual conversations rather than by direct questioning, he has been able gradually to compile a singularly authentic record of Ozark superstition. His book contains a vast amount of folkloristic material, including legends, beliefs, ritual verses and sayings and odd practices of the hillpeople, plus a wealth of general cultural data.

Proulx, Annie.Brokeback Mountain.Simon & Schuster, 2005.

Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, two ranch hands, come together working as sheepherder and camp tender one summer on a range above the tree line. At first, sharing an isolated tent, the attraction is casual, inevitable, but something deeper catches them that summer. Both men work hard, marry, and have kids because that’s what cowboys do. But over the course of many years and frequent separations this relationship becomes the most important thing in their lives, and they do anything they can to preserve it.

Rodi, Robert.Drag Queen. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013.

Mitchell Sayer, a buttoned-down gay attorney at a prestigious Chicago law firm, discovers he has a long-lost twin. But his well-ordered life comes apart at the seams when the separated siblings finally meet, and Mitchell discovers his brother Donald is better known as Kitten Kaboodle, star of the city's most infamous drag revue. Plunged into a chaotic world where he's forced to confront his own fluid masculinity, Mitchell learns that appearances aren't just deceiving - they're even more disturbingly revealing. Building to a riotous climax in which identities blur and destinies go bust, all to the accompaniment of a cabaret pianist, Drag Queen is a rip-snorting romp through wigs and wardrobes, wit and wantonness.

Aciman, André.Call Me by Your Name. Picador, 2008.

Andre Aciman's Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents’ cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera. Each is unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, when, during the restless summer weeks, unrelenting currents of obsession, fascination, and desire intensify their passion and test the charged ground between them. Recklessly, the two are catapulted toward the one thing both fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy. It is an instant classic and one of the great love stories of our time.

Conley, Garrard.Boy Erased. Riverhead Books, 2016.

The son of a Baptist pastor and deeply embedded in church life in small town Arkansas, as a young man Garrard Conley was terrified and conflicted about his sexuality. 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.

Andrews, Arin.Some Assembly Required: The Not-So-Secret Life of a Transgender Teen.Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2015.

In this revolutionary first-of-its-kind memoir, Arin Andrews details the journey that led him to make the life-transforming decision to undergo gender reassignment as a high school junior. Andrews reveals the challenges he faced as a boy in a girl’s body, the humiliation and anger he felt after getting kicked out of his private school, and all the changes—both mental and physical—he experienced once his transition began. Some Assembly requiredis a true coming-of-age story about knocking down obstacles and embracing family, friendship, and first love. But more than that, it is a reminder that self-acceptance does not come ready-made with a manual and spare parts. Rather, some assembly is always required.

Moon, Sarah. The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Notes to Their Younger Selves. Arthur A. Levine Books, 2014.

In this anthology, sixty-four award-winning authors such as Michael Cunningham, Amy Bloom, Jacqueline Woodson, Gregory Maguire, David Levithan, and Armistead Maupin make imaginative journeys into their pasts, telling their younger selves what they would have liked to know then about their lives as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender people. Through stories, in pictures, with bracing honesty, these are words of love and understanding, reasons to hold on for the better future ahead. They will tell you things about your favorite authors that you never knew before. And they will tell you about yourself.

Kuklin, Susan.Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out.Candlewick, 2014.

Author and photographer Susan Kuklin met and interviewed six transgender (or gender-neutral) young adults and presents their stories thoughtfully and respectfully before, during, and after their personal acknowledgment of gender preference. Portraits, family photographs, and candid images grace the pages, augmenting the emotional and physical journey each youth has taken. Each honest discussion and disclosure, whether joyful or heartbreaking, is completely different from the other because of family dynamics, living situations, gender, and the transition these teens make in recognition of their true selves.

Hartzler, Aaron.Rapture Practice: A True Story about Growing up Gay in an Evangelical Family. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2014.

Aaron Hartzler grew up in a home where he was taught that at any moment the Rapture could happen. That Jesus might come down in the twinkling of an eye and scoop Aaron and his family up to heaven. As a kid, Aaron was thrilled by the idea that every moment of every day might be his last one on planet Earth. But as Aaron turns sixteen, he finds himself more attached to his earthly life and curious about all the things his family forsakes for the Lord. He begins to realize he doesn’t want the Rapture to happen just yet–not before he sees his first movie, stars in the school play, or has his first kiss. Eventually Aaron makes the plunge from conflicted do-gooder to full-fledged teen rebel.

Sanchez, Alex.The God Box. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2009.

Paul, a religious teen living in a small conservative town, finds his world turned upside down when he meets Manuel—a young man who says he’s both Christian and gay, two things that Paul didn’t think could coexist in one person. Doesn’t the Bible forbid homosexuality? As Paul struggles with Manuel’s interpretation of the Bible, thoughts that Paul has long tried to bury begin to surface, and he finds himself re-examining his whole life. This is an unforgettable book on an extremely timely topic that strives to open minds on both ends of the spectrum.

Brown, Jaye Robin.Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit. Harper Teen, 2016.

Joanna Gordon has been out and proud for years, but when her popular radio evangelist father remarries and moves the family from Atlanta to the more conservative Rome, Georgia, he asks Jo to do the impossible: to lie low for the rest of her senior year. And Jo reluctantly agrees. Although it is (mostly) much easier for Jo to fit in as a straight girl, things get complicated when she meets Mary Carlson, the oh-so-tempting sister of her new friend at school. But Jo couldn’t possibly think of breaking her promise to her dad. Even if she’s starting to fall for the girl. Even if there’s a chance Mary Carlson might be interested in her, too. Right?

Love, Jessica.Julián is a Mermaid.Penguin Random House, 2018.
While riding the subway home from the pool with his abuela one day, Julián notices three women spectacularly dressed up. Their hair billows in brilliant hues, their dresses end in fishtails, and their joy fills the train car. When Julián gets home, daydreaming of the magic he’s seen, all he can think about is dressing up just like the ladies in his own fabulous mermaid costume: a butter-yellow curtain for his tail, the fronds of a potted fern for his headdress. But what will Abuela think about the mess he makes — and even more importantly, what will she think about how Julián sees himself? Mesmerizing and full of heart, this is a jubilant picture of self-love and a radiant celebration of individuality.

Atta, Dean.The Black Flamingo. Hachette, 2019.

A boy comes to terms with his identity as a mixed-race gay teen – then at university he finds his wings as a drag artist, The Black Flamingo. A bold story about the power of embracing your uniqueness. Sometimes, we need to take charge, to stand up wearing pink feathers – to show ourselves to the world in bold color.

Waters, Tawn. Beauty of the Broken. Simon and Schuster, 2015.

Growing up in conservative small-town New Mexico, fifteen-year-old Mara was never given the choice to be different. Her parents—an abusive, close-minded father and a detached alcoholic mother—raised Mara to be like all the other girls in Barnaby: God-fearing, churchgoing, and straight. Mara wants nothing to do with any of it. She feels most at home with her best friend and older brother, Iggy, but Iggy hasn’t been the same since their father beat him and put him in the hospital with a concussion. As Mara’s mother feeds her denial with bourbon and Iggy struggles with his own demons, Mara finds an escape with her classmate Xylia. A San Francisco transplant, Xylia is everything Mara dreams of being: free-spirited, open, wild. The closer Mara and Xylia become, the more Mara feels for her—even though their growing relationship is very much forbidden in Barnaby. Just as Mara begins to live a life she’s only imagined, the girls’ secret is threatened with exposure and Mara’s world is thrown into chaos.

Ellis, Deborah. Moon At Nine. Pajama Press, 2016.

Fifteen-year-old Farrin has many secrets. Although she goes to a school for gifted girls in Tehran, as the daughter of an aristocratic mother and wealthy father, Farrin must keep a low profile. It is 1988; ever since the Shah was overthrown, the deeply conservative and religious government controls every facet of life in Iran. If the Revolutionary Guard finds out about her mother’s Bring Back the Shah activities, her family could be thrown in jail, or worse. The day she meets Sadira, Farrin’s life changes forever. Sadira is funny, wise, and outgoing; the two girls become inseparable. But as their friendship deepens into romance, the relationship takes a dangerous turn. It is against the law to be gay in Iran; the punishment is death.