Celebrate Pride! Display
The month of June was chosen for LGBTQIA+ Pride Month to commemorate the Stonewall riots, which occurred early on the morning of Saturday, 28 June 1969, in response to a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar at 54 Christopher Street in New York City. The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender persons and drag queens rioted in anger at police harassment. This riot lasted for days and is the watershed moment for the LGBTQIA+ rights movement and the impetus for organizing pride events. Pride is a celebration of the LGBTQIA+ community and an opportunity to bring awareness to the community's struggle for equal rights. One of the easiest ways to celebrate Pride is by reading books that center LGBTQIA+ authors and characters. Check out some of this year's titles:
"Walk Softly On This Heart of Mine" by Callie Collins is set against the vibrant backdrop of 1970s Austin. "Austin, Texas is a town in the throes of social upheaval and the Rush Creek Saloon, five miles on its outskirts, is a bar without a crowd. Until a strange new house band transforms it from moribund honky-tonk to thriving blues bar. But are the throngs of people and the rowdy music worth the chaos that comes with them? "Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine" is told through three perspectives, each of whom is in some ways responsible for the rebirth of Rush Creek and for the violence that follows in the afterbirth. Doug Moser, a country-and-blues guitarist from San Antonio, is seizing his long-awaited chance at fame but cannot turn away from the easy booze and drugs that come with the life. Deanna Teague owns Rush Creek. Her marriage is rocky and so is her sense of herself, but she sees a crack of light if she can just hold it all together. And Steven Francis is a boy who loves too fiercely. He grapples with his sexuality, his God, and his place in a town where he badly wants to belong."
I am a huge fan of "Stag Dance" by Torrey Peters. "In this collection of one novel and three stories, bestselling author Torrey Peters's keen eye for the rough edges of community and desire push the limits of trans writing. In 'Stag Dance,' the titular novel, a group of restless lumberjacks working in an illegal winter logging outfit plan a dance that some of them will volunteer to attend as women. When the broadest, strongest, plainest of the axmen announces his intention to dance as a woman, he finds himself caught in a strange rivalry with a pretty young jack, provoking a cascade of obsession, jealousy, and betrayal that will culminate on the big night in an astonishing vision of gender and transition. Three startling stories surround 'Stag Dance:' 'Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones' imagines a gender apocalypse brought about by an unstable ex-girlfriend. In 'The Chaser,' a secret romance between roommates at a Quaker boarding school brings out intrigue and cruelty. In the last story, 'The Masker,' a party weekend on the Las Vegas strip turns dark when a young crossdresser must choose between two guides: a handsome mystery man who objectifies her in thrilling ways, or a cynical veteran trans woman offering unglamorous sisterhood."
"Mothers and Sons" by Adam Haslett reveals all that is lost by looking away from the past and the love that might be restored by facing it. "At forty, Peter, an asylum lawyer in New York City, is overworked and isolated. He spends his days immersed in the struggles of immigrants only to return to an empty apartment and occasional hook-ups with a man who wants more than Peter can give. But when the asylum case of a young gay man pierces Peter's numbness, the event that he has avoided for twenty years returns to haunt him. Ann, his mother, who runs a women's retreat center she founded after leaving his father, is hurt by the estrangement from Peter but cherishes the world she has built. She long ago put behind her the decision that divided her from her son. But as Peter's case plunges him further into the fraught memory of his first love and the night of violence that changed his life, he and his mother must confront the secret that tore them apart."
"Mexican Gothic" meets "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo" in Christina Li's haunting novel "The Manor of Dreams." This book is about "the secrets that lie in wait in the crumbling mansion of a former Hollywood starlet, and the intertwined fates of the two Chinese American families fighting to inherit it. They say what you don't know can't hurt you. But silence can be deadly. Vivian Yin is dead. The first Chinese actress to win an Oscar, the trailblazing ingénue rose to fame in the eighties, only to disappear from the spotlight at the height of her career and live out the rest of her life as a recluse. Now her remaining family members are gathered for the reading of her will and her daughters expect to inherit their childhood home: Vivian's sprawling, Southern California garden estate. But due to a last-minute change to the will, the house is passed on to another family instead--one that has suddenly returned after decades of estrangement. In hopes of staking their claim, both families move into the mansion. Amidst the grief and paranoia of this unhappy reunion, Vivian's daughters race to piece together what happened in the last weeks of their mother's life, only to realize they are being haunted by something much more sinister and vengeful than their regrets. After so many years of silence, will the families finally confront the painful truth about the last fateful summer they spent in the house, or will they cling to their secrets until it's too late? Told in dual timelines, spanning three generations, and brimming with forbidden romance, betrayal, ambition and sacrifice, The Manor of Dreams is a thrilling family gothic that examines the true cost of the American dream--and what happens when the roots we set down in this country turn to rot."
You'll find these and lots of other titles in our "Celebrate Pride" display. For additional title suggestions, see the lists below:
