Pride Month: Culture and Leisure Reading

In 2009 Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill became a top global news story. Two years later Hillary Clinton declared "Gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights," but still today there is little consensus on how to advance those rights beyond the U.S. and Europe. The fact is that international LGBT activism and allies have created winners and losers. In Africa those who easily identify with the identities of the global movement find support, funding and care. Those whose sexualities don't align so neatly don't.

A transgender reporter's "powerful, profoundly moving" narrative tour through the surprisingly vibrant queer communities sprouting up in red states (New York Times Book Review), offering a vision of a stronger, more humane America.

Written especially for LGBT teens, Queer takes you on an awesome and enlightening journey through the sometimes scary, sometimes silly, and always fabulous world that is queer life. Queer includes advice on: *Coming out to friends and family *Navigating your social and dating life *Dealing with queerphobia *Standing up for your rights *Learning about safe sex And more!

Charlie Lamonte is thirteen years old, queer, black, and questioning what was once a firm belief in God. So naturally, she's spending a week of her summer vacation stuck at an all-white Christian youth backpacking camp. As the journey wears on and the rhetoric wears thin, she can't help but poke holes in the pious obliviousness of this storied sanctuary with little regard for people like herself . . . or her fellow camper, Sydney.

The comic book industry comes together to honor those killed in the Pulse nightclub shooting, which took place on June 12, 2016, in Orlando, Florida.

From one of Japan's most notable manga artists- a heartbreaking and redemptive tale of mourning and acceptance that compares and contrasts the contemporary nature of gay tolerance in the East and the West. When a cuddly Canadian comes to call, Yaichi-a single Japanese dad-is forced to confront his painful past.

Activist-academic Meg John Barker and cartoonist Julia Scheele illuminate the histories of queer thought and LGBTQ+ action in this groundbreaking non-fiction graphic novel. From identity politics and gender roles to privilege and exclusion, Queer explores how we came to view sex, gender and sexuality in the ways that we do; how these ideas get tangled up with our culture and our understanding of biology, psychology and sexology; and how these views have been disputed and challenged. Along the way we look at key landmarks which shift our perspective of what's 'normal'--Alfred Kinsey's view of sexuality as a spectrum, Judith Butler's view of gendered behaviour as a performance, the play Wicked, or moments in Casino Royale when we're invited to view James Bond with the kind of desiring gaze usually directed at female bodies in mainstream media.

A 2019 New York Public LibraryBest Books for Kids A 2020 Tayshas Reading List Selection A 2020 Maverick Graphic Novel Reading List Selection Mads is pretty happy with her life. She goes to church with her family, and minor league baseball games with her dad. She goofs off with her best friend Cat, and has thus far managed to avoid getting kissed by Adam, the boy next door. It's everything she hoped high school would be... until all of a sudden, it's not. Her dad is hiding something big--so big it could tear her family apart. And that's just the beginning of her problems: Mads is starting to figure out that she doesn't want to kiss Adam... because the only person she wants to kiss is Cat. Kiss Number 8, a graphic novel from writer Colleen AF Venable and illustrator Ellen T. Crenshaw, is a layered, funny, sharp-edged story of teen sexuality and family secrets.