Rage poetry, personal essays, lots of love stories, and a dancing queen: Here are 12 Black LGBTQ+ books to teach and inspire you during Black History Month.
[ BIOGRAPHY ]
‘The Fabulous Sylvester’
Ru Paul brought disco fever to the stage in Drag Race’s 13th season and gave a shoutout to a legend from the era named Sylvester.
It’s safe to say most of the show’s younger viewers - indeed even the show’s contestants - had never heard of this Queen of Disco before, and that’s really a shame.
The flashy and flamboyant performer was part of the Disquotays (a group of Black drag and transgender women in L.A.) and later joined a drag group in San Francisco known as The Cockettes. Sylvester recorded a few albums and landed a couple of top disco hits ("You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" and "Dance (Disco Heat)").
Read more about this incredible barrier-breaker in Joshua Gamson’s biography, “The Fabulous Sylvester.”
[ Poetry + Biography ]
‘The Black Unicorn’ + ‘Warrior Poet’
Amanda Gorman’s stirring Inauguration Day performance brought poetry back en vogue (literally).
And if the young word wizard inspired you to venture further into verse, you should check out the works of Audre Lorde.
Born to Caribbean immigrants and growing up in Harlem in the later part of the Great Depression, Audre experienced racism, sexism, homophobia, and ableism throughout her life.
“I am defined as other in every group I’m part of,” she said.
“From a Land Where Other People Live” was nominated for a National Book Award in 1973. Her 1976 book “Coal” decried racial injustice, and her 1978 book “The Black Unicorn” explored her African female identity within African mythology.
And if you’re interested in a deeper look into the life of this fierce voice for civil rights, see Alexis De Veaux’s “Warrior Poet.”
[ Autobiography ]
‘Revelations’
There are many ways to tell the African-American experience and story — including through dance.
And in that realm, Alvin Ailey reigns supreme.
Born in Texas in 1931, Alvin was a strong advocate for young Black artists. He established the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, which was recognized as a “vital American cultural ambassador to the world” by Congress in 2008.
He blended theater, jazz, and dance to share the story of Black America with the world. His greatest choreographic work, “Revelations,” is known as one of the most popular and most performed ballets in the world.
It’s also the title of his autobiography!
[ Fiction ]
‘Speak No Evil’
In Uzodinma Iweala’s novel “Speak No Evil,” race, nationality, religion, sexuality, gender, and class all collide in one boy, Niru, as he navigates his friends, his family, his home, and himself in a story sadly so relevant to today’s headlines.
[ Memoir ]
‘How We Fight For Our Lives’
Saeed Jones’s award-winning coming-of-age memoir “How We Fight for Our Lives” is a powerful and painful portrait of a young gay black kid growing up in the south.
The prolific poet takes us back to his childhood and his struggles with his family, and moves us forward to his college years and the professional life, recounting relationships that highlight the often tumultuous intersectionality of race and sexuality.
[ Essays ]
‘Brown White Black’
She’s brown.
Her wife is white.
Their son is black.
Through essays on race, sexuality, religion, and motherhood, Nishta Mehra’s “Brown White Black” gives us a glimpse inside her family and the different struggles they all face in a society that is quick to offer confusion and concern instead of understanding and acceptance.
And the perilous challenge of raising a black son in America.
[ Nonfiction ]
‘Black on Both Sides’
In “Black on Both Sides,” author, scholar, and activist C. Riley Snorton brings to light the hidden lives of Black trans people, going all the way back to accounts from fugitive slaves and the antebellum North.
In this expansive history, Snorton explores our society’s evolution on both Blackness and transness and how those inhabiting both spheres had to navigate the shadows of their shifting cultural landscapes.
[ YA fiction ]
‘The Stars and the Blackness Between Them’
A Coretta Scott King Honor book, Junauda Petrus’s young adult novel “The Stars and the Blackness Between Them” tells the story of two very different girls — in their two very different voices — and the journey they take to find each other and themselves in a world trying to keep them away from both.
[ YA Fiction ]
‘The Black Flamingo’
Dean Atta was just named one of the most influential LGBTQ in the U.K., and his latest book, “The Black Flamingo,” won a Stonewall Book Award.
From the publisher: “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 colour.”
[ YA Fiction ]
‘Felix Ever After’
Kacen Callender has made a name for themselves, winning both Stonewall and Lambda Literary awards.
Their newest young adult novel is all about Love. Felix Love, that is. In “Felix Ever After,” Felix is desperate to fall in love — just to know what it feels like.
But as a Black, queer, transgender student facing threatening anonymous messages at school, his happily-ever-after could come when he least expects it.
[ Fiction ]
‘Real Life’
A highly decorated book — including a finalist for the 2020 Booker Prize, a National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, a New York Times Editors’ Choice book, and a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Public Library, Vanity Fair, Elle, NPR, The Guardian, The Paris Review, Harper's Bazaar, Financial Times, Huffington Post, BBC, Shondaland, Barnes & Noble, Vulture, Thrillist, VICE, SELF, Electric Literature, and Shelf Awareness — Brandon Taylor’s “Real Life” is a deep dive.
From the publisher: “Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends—some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness. But over the course of a late-summer weekend, a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with an ostensibly straight, white classmate, conspire to fracture his defenses while exposing long-hidden currents of hostility and desire within their community.
‘Real Life’ is a novel of profound and lacerating power, a story that asks if it’s ever really possible to overcome our private wounds, and at what cost.”
