Does your community have a book club or discussion group? Take a look at the titles you’ve read over the last couple of years and consider whether they are fully inclusive of LGBTQ people and themes.
Sometimes groups inadvertently adopt suggested lists created for books groups that don’t take into diversity into account when making their recommendations. But having books that speak to a wide variety of human experience sends a message of inclusion to everyone in your community and expands the horizons of those in the book group.
Here are just a few suggestions to get you started if you’d like to add some LGBTQ books to your current reading lists:
Spiritually Themed:
- The Jewish Book Council has a list of Queer Jewish Narratives and a Gay Jewish Reading list blog
- QSpirit has annual lists of the best LGBTQ Christian books
- The American Library Association’s GLBT Roundtable has an extensive bibliography of titles from a variety of religious traditions: GLBT Religion & Spirituality and secular suggestions and reviews.
Many book clubs, even in communities of faith, focus on more secular reads. If you are looking for some broader suggestions, check these out:
- Lambda Literary: this foundation supports all aspects of LGBTQ literature. Their website includes reviews of books as well as a book club feature that suggests specific titles.
- Goodreads has useful lists of Popular Queer Book Club Books and Popular Queer POC titles (with overlap between the two lists);
- Check out LoveReading’s 30+ Books for LGBT+ History Month 2024;
- Barnes & Noble posts an extensive listing of books with LGBTQ+ themes;
- Penguin Random House has a list of books for Pride—good reads anytime; and
- Literary Hub recommends these books by authors from places where being LGBTQ is illegal
That should keep you and your community reading for quite a while!