This year marks 20 years of UK LGBT+ History Month! This year’s theme is Activism and Social Change. Throughout history, LGBT+ people have been activists and helped shape and create social change, advancing society for everyone. We have created a list of books about LGBT+ activists, both historical and present, real and fictional – as a way of celebrating the long history of ordinary LGBT+ people changing the world and their communities.
Activism and Social Change
A reading list curated by Hackney libraries
@HackneyLibraries
This year marks 20 years of UK LGBT+ History Month! This year’s theme is Activism and Social Change. Throughout history, LGBT+ people have been activists and helped shape and create social change, advancing society for everyone. We have created a list of books about LGBT+ activists, both historical and present, real and fictional – as a way of celebrating the long history of ordinary LGBT+ people changing the world and their communities.
Alison Bechdel - The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For
Shon Faye - The Transgender Issue
Yara Rodrigues Fowler - There Are More Things
David France - How to Survive a Plague
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy and Toshio Meronek - Miss Major Speaks
Sarah Haggar - The Fights That Make Us
Jake Hall - Shoulder to Shoulder
George M Johnson - All Boys Aren't Blue
Matthew Todd - Straight Jacket
Roz Kaveney - The Great Good Time
Bechdel's brilliantly imagined counter-cultural band of friends – academics, social workers, booksellers – fall in and out of love, negotiate relationships, raise children, switch careers and cope with aging parents.
Alison Bechdel chronicled the lives of a small universe of cartoon characters in Dykes to Watch Out For from 1983 to 2008. It ran in fifty alternative newspapers in the USA and was collected in eleven volumes. This collection gathers the best of those volumes.
Shon Faye reclaims the idea of the 'transgender issue' to uncover the reality of what it means to be trans in a transphobic society. In doing so, she provides a compelling, wide-ranging analysis of trans lives, in contemporary Britain and beyond.
The Transgender Issue is a manifesto for change, and a call for justice and solidarity. Trans liberation, as Faye sees it, goes to the root of what our society is and what it could be; it offers the possibility of a more just, free and joyful world for all of us.
This is a novel about two women - Melissa and Catarina.
Catarina is born to a well-known political family in Brazil. Melissa, a South London native, is brought up by her mum and a crew of rebellious grandmothers. In 2016, they meet for the first time.
Their story takes us across continents and generations. In it we see sisterhood and queerness, and, perhaps, glimpse a better way to live.
The riveting story of the grassroots movement of activists, many of them in a life-or-death struggle, who seized upon scientific research to help develop the drugs that turned HIV into a manageable disease. Ignored by public officials, religious leaders, and society at large, and confronted with shame and hatred, this small group of men and women chose to fight for their right to live by educating themselves and demanding to become full partners in the race for effective treatments. Around the globe, 16 million people are alive today thanks to their efforts.
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy is a veteran of the infamous Stonewall Riots, a former sex worker, and a transgender activist. She has survived Bellevue psychiatric hospital, Attica Prison, the HIV/AIDS crisis and a world that white supremacy has built.
Miss Major Speaks is both document of her brilliant life – told with intimacy, warmth and an undeniable levity – and a road map for the challenges black, brown, queer and trans youth will face on the path to liberation today.
Jesse has recently come out as non-binary, and is struggling to find their place at school, and hidden histories for a school project. While thirty-five years earlier, Jesse's cousin Lisa fell for her best friend, and they had to fight for the world to accept them...
When Jesse stumbles across Lisa's teenage diary, they are fascinated and horrified by her stories of living a secret life and protesting in the streets. Now it's Jesse's turn to find a way to shine a spotlight on a history that mustn't be forgotten.
From the Black Panthers’ coalition with the Gay Liberation Front in the US to the Pride support for miners’ strikes in the UK, Shoulder to Shoulder shows how marginalised activists have always worked together in their pursuit of joint liberation.
A beautiful celebration of our messy human histories and those incredible, ordinary people who pushed for equality no matter the cost, Shoulder to Shoulder is for anyone who is hungry for a fresh perspective on our shared human history.
This powerful YA memoir-manifesto follows George M. Johnson as they explore growing up both black and queer.
From memories of getting their teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to their loving relationship with their grandmother, and to their first sexual experience, the stories wrestle with triumph and tragedy and cover topics such as gender identity, toxic masculinity, brotherhood, family, inequality, consent, and Black joy.
Written by Matthew Todd, editor of Attitude, Straight Jacket is a revolutionary clarion call for gay men, the wider LGBT community, and their friends and family. Part memoir, part ground-breaking polemic, it looks beneath the shiny facade of contemporary gay culture and asks if gay people are as happy as they could be – and if not, why not?
Meticulously researched, courageous and life-affirming, Straight Jacket offers invaluable practical advice on how to overcome a range of difficult issues.
This chapbook is a passionate collection of highly personal poems by trans elder Roz Kaveney. Most of them were written in the white heat of the current moment of marked anti-trans hostility; others to mark Trans Day of Remembrance.
From the foreword: "I noticed a lot of bleakness creeping into trans social media and thought it my job as a community elder to remind young people that things have been, if not worse, at least as bad in different ways.”
Jules Gill-Peterson A Short History of Trans Misogyny
Audre Lorde Sister Outsider
Sarah Schulman Let the record show
Mary Fairhurst Breen Pride and Persistence: Stories of Queer Activism
Joy Michael Ellison Sylvia and Marsha start a revolution
Hannah Dee The red In The Rainbow
Hugh Ryan The Women’s House of Detention
Akwaeke Emezi Bitter
Mary Ann Cherry Morris Kight - Humanist, Liberationist, Fantabulist: A Story of Gay Rights and Gay Wrongs
Rob Sanders, Steven Salerno Pride! The story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow flag
