Curated by Charlie Jarvis, Marriott Library Collection Services Supervisor

Pride Month is a time to honor the LGBTQ+ community and recognize the powerful impact they’ve had on culture, history and society. To celebrate this vibrant and meaningful month, we’ve curated a list of 5 inspiring books that uplift LGBTQ+ voices and stories.

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (2017)
By Andrea Lawlor

Set in 1993, Andrea Lawlor’s “Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl” follows Paul, a student of queer studies, a lover of music and a shapeshifter. Paul often changes his body and gender presentation: a lesbian at a music festival one weekend, a gay man at a bar the next, and on and on. In various cities, relationships, and bodies, Paul rejects the seriousness and specificity of labels, expectations, and norms, and plays, in the true sense of the word, with gender.

Hijab Butch Blues (2023)
By Lamya H

Real Life (2020)
By Brandon Taylor

Brandon Taylor’s stellar debut novel, “Real Life,” tells of a young man named Wallace, a gay, Black graduate student of biochemistry at a predominantly white midwestern university. Set over the course of a single weekend, the novel offers a glimpse of a life with intertwining experiences of isolation and racism as well as pleasure and connection.

Gay Bar: Why We Went Out (2021)
By Jeremy Atherton Lin

Both poetic and academic, Jeremy Atherton Lin’s “Gay Bar: Why We Went Out” is a work that adds to collective queer memory. Atherton Lin chronologizes past evenings with his lover(s) and friends, unapologetically philosophizes on concepts and terms like “fag,” and discusses the politics of the physical spaces wherein he congregated with others in his youth.

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel (2018)
By Alexander Chee

Speaking of queer memory, in “How to Write an Autobiographical Novel,” Alexander Chee’s essays beautifully reflect on experiences from his life as a gay Korean American writer. As well as writing about writing, Chee tells stories about growing a rose garden, working as a cater-waiter to a wealthy anti-gay public figure, reading tarot, engaging in activism and experiencing the losses of friends and lovers from HIV/AIDS.