A Literary Prescription for
For the complexity, the joy, the grief, and the ongoing work of being exactly who you are.
LGBTQ+ identity is not a problem to be solved, but the literature around it holds something for every part of the experience — the coming out, the coming in, the complicated relationship with family and community, the grief for the years spent performing a different self, and the particular relief and joy of finally not having to. The books, poems, and words gathered here are for all of those parts, at whatever stage you find yourself in.
“We are the ones we have been waiting for.”June Jordan
Books
Books that understand LGBTQ+ experience from the inside, written by people who lived it.
Baldwin’s second novel — about an American man in Paris unable to accept his love for another man — is one of the most devastating accounts in literature of what it costs to refuse your own identity. Written in 1956 and still completely contemporary, it is essential reading for anyone who has ever tried to be someone they are not, and for anyone who knows the cost of that trying.
Bechdel’s graphic memoir about coming out as a lesbian while simultaneously discovering that her father had kept his own homosexuality secret is a formally extraordinary book about family, secrets, and the relationship between the stories we tell and the selves we become. It is funny, sad, and one of the most intelligent memoirs of the last thirty years.
Peters’s novel — about trans women, detransition, and unconventional family-making — is one of the freshest and most honest books about trans experience in recent fiction. It takes its characters seriously as full human beings rather than symbols, and it is extraordinarily funny. For trans readers in particular, it offers the rare gift of recognition.
Feinberg’s semi-autobiographical novel about a butch lesbian growing up in the 1950s and 60s is one of the foundational texts of queer literature — a book about survival, community, and the cost of existing outside the categories your culture provides. It remains one of the most important accounts of gender non-conformity ever written.
Poetry
Poems from writers who knew exactly what it meant to be themselves.
“A Litany for Survival” (extract)
Audre Lorde, 1978
Lorde wrote for those who were told in every possible way that they were not supposed to exist — and wrote with a fury and tenderness that made survival not just possible but meaningful. Her work is essential reading for any LGBTQ+ reader who has internalised the message that they are too much, or not enough, or simply wrong.
“somewhere i have never travelled”
e.e. cummings, 1931
Cummings’s love poem — genderless, unashamed, precise about the particular vulnerability of loving and being truly seen — has offered readers of all identities a mirror for the experience of being known by someone else. Its lack of gendered language makes it one of the most genuinely inclusive love poems in English.
“The Bees” (extract)
Carol Ann Duffy, 2011
Duffy, Britain’s first female Poet Laureate, has written with consistent joy and precision about queer love across her career. This extract from her collection written after her partner’s serious illness is one of the most quietly ecstatic pieces of writing about same-sex love in recent poetry.
Quotes & Prose
Lines for the days when being yourself still takes courage.
There is nothing more beautiful than someone who goes out of their way to make life beautiful for others.
Mandy Hale
It is absolutely imperative that every human being’s freedom and human rights are respected, all over the world.
Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir
Not everyone will understand your journey. That’s okay. You’re here to live your life, not to make everyone understand.
Banksy
We should indeed keep calm in the face of difference, and live our lives in a state of inclusion and wonder at the diversity of humanity.
George Takei
No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.
Alice Walker
From Georgia
A short practice for sitting with lgbtq+ identity, whenever you need somewhere to land.
Embracing Your True Self Meditation
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