Lesbrary Links: 50+ Years of LGBTQ Lit, Asian Queer Reads, and Reparative YA Reading

Lesbrary Links cover collage

I follow hundreds of queer book blogs to scout out the best sapphic book news and reviews! Many of them get posted on Tumblr and Twitter as I discover them, but my favourites get saved for these link compilations. Here are some of the posts I’ve found interesting in the last few weeks.

Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
Lady Hotspur cover
The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez
Love After the End edited by Joshua Whitehead

This Pride month, take a look back at 50+ years of LGBTQ lit with picks from every decade from 1970 to now!

Here’s a “short, selective, and incomplete” history of queer publishing, from the last 80s to now.

At Bustle, 21 LGBTQ+ authors (including Kristen Arnett, Casey McQuiston, and Sarah Gailey) talk about the books they wish they’d had as teenagers. On a similar note, The New York Times has an article about the reparative power of reading positive queer YA as an adult. (Sadly, it’s behind a paywall.)

The author of the photography book Queer Love In Color talks representation, love, & Pride month.

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw
Zami by Audre Lorde
Kimiko Does Cancer: A Graphic Memoir by Kimiko Tobimatsu, illustrated by Keet Geniza
The Family Tooth cover
Notes On a Crocodile cover

Your rage read of the day: Hungary has banned teaching about “homosexuality” in schools.

What would your dream queer anthology look like? Laura Sackton at Book Riot discusses the stories she’d select in her own.

Read this essay: How Audre Lorde’s Genre-Blurring Zami Spoke My Truth Into Existence.

Casey discusses 8 books about queer people dealing with cancer over at Autostraddle.

Here are 8 queer books in translation to read now.

She Who Became the Sun cover
Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust
The All-Consuming World cover
The World That Belongs To Us: An Anthology of Queer Poetry from South Asia by Aditi Angiras and Akhil Katyal
Memory of Light cover

Reads Rainbow has been doing some intersectional queer book lists, including East Asian LGBTQ lit, West Asian LGBTQ lit, Southeast Asian LGBTQ list, and South Asian LGBTQ lit. Relatedly, here are some Indian novels to read this Pride!

Do we need queerphobia for a queer identity? (Nah.) But Tor.com discusses whether there is a place for imagining a queer future in literature that still has prejudice. I do think there’s room for both utopian queer SFF/queernorm worlds as well as SFF stories with characters who fight prejudice, but I don’t think we should base our identities on others’ hatred of us.

OurShelves is a diverse, LGBTQ-inclusive children’s book subscription box.

This post has the covers linked to their Amazon pages. If you click through and buy something, I might get a small referral fee. For even more links, check out the Lesbrary’s Twitter! We’re also on FacebookGoodreadsYoutube and Tumblr.

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