Skip to Main Content

LGBTQ Support, Research, & Reading

A guide for reading and research on LGBTQ issues and community.

Books on LGBTQ History

A Queer History of the United States

A Queer History of the United States is more than a "who's who" of queer history- it is a book that radically challenges how we understand American history.

Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past

This richly revealing anthology brings together for the first time the vital new scholarly studies now lifting the veil from the gay and lesbian past.

Queer (in)Justice: the Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States

A groundbreaking work that turns a "queer eye" on the criminal legal system, Queer (In)Justice is a searing examination of queer experiences-as "suspects," defendants, prisoners, and survivors of crime.

Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance

This groundbreaking study explores the Harlem Renaissance as a literary phenomenon fundamentally shaped by same-sex-interested men.

Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers : a History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America

In this groundbreaking book, she reclaims the history of lesbian life in twentieth-century America, tracing the evolution of lesbian identity and subcultures from early networks to more recent diverse lifestyles.

Vice Versa: : Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life

Gathering evidence from art, literature, history, pop culture, science, and psychology, Marjorie Garber offers a startling new take on the nature and influence of bisexuality in our culture.

Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women

A lyrical and meticulously researched mapping of the ways in which diverse societies have shaped female same-sex sexuality across time and geography.

Classic Reading - LGBTQ

Our Lady of the Flowers

'Our Lady of the Flowers', which is often considered to be Genet's masterpiece, was written entirely in the solitude of a prison cell.

Early Novels and Stories : Go Tell It on the Mountain ; Giovanni's Room ; Another Country ; Going to Meet the Man

Giovanni's Room (1956) is a searching, and in its day controversial, treatment of the tragic self-delusions of a young American expatriate at war with his own homosexuality. Another Country (1962), a wide-ranging exploration of America's racial and sexual boundaries, depicts the suicide of a gifted jazz musician and its ripple effect on those who knew him.

Tipping the Velvet

Chronicles the adventures of a young girl whose fortunes are forever changed when she falls in love with a cross-dressing music-hall singer.

Middlesex

Spanning eight decades - and one unusually awkward adolescence- Jeffrey Eugenides's long-awaited second novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire.

The Immoralist

First published in 1902 and immediately assailed for its themes of omnisexual abandon and perverse aestheticism, The Immoralist is the novel that launched André Gide's reputation as one of France's most audacious literary stylists.

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

From 1933, Stein's most famous work; one of the richest and most irreverent biographies ever written.

Maurice

Written during 1913 and 1914, Maurice deals with the then unmentionable subject of homosexuality. More unusual, it concerns a relationship that ends happily.

At Swim, Two Boys

Set in Dublin, At Swim, Two Boys follows the year to Easter 1916, the time of Ireland's brave but fractured uprising against British rule.

City of Night

John Rechy wrote City of Night in 1963. This radical and daring work, which launched Rechy's reputation as one of America's most courageous novelists, remains the classic document of the garish neon-lit world of hustlers, drag queens, and men on the make who inhabited the homosexual underground of the early sixties.

Death in Venice

The world-famous masterpiece by Nobel laureate Thomas Mann -- here in a new translation.

Down There on a Visit

Published in 1962, Down There on a Visit is now widely regarded as the most accomplished of Isherwood's novels.

Orlando

First published in 1928, Woolf has created a character liberated from the restraints of time and sex.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The text first appeared as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890. The novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward.

Brideshead Revisited

Through the story of Charles Ryder's entanglement with the Flytes, a great Catholic family, Evelyn Waugh charts the passing of the privileged world he knew in his own youth and vividly recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by wartime austerities.

Biographies & Autobiographies

Margaret Webster: A Life in the Theater

In Margaret Webster, Milly Barranger has found her perfect subject. She brings to vivid life a fascinating and important theater figure whose public and private lives were of equal interest.

Two or Three Things I Know for Sure

In Two or Three Things I Know for Sure, Dorothy Allison takes a probing look at her family's history to give us a lyrical, complex memoir that explores how the gossip of one generation can become legends for the next.

Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America

Conventional wisdom holds that same-sex marriage is a purely modern innovation, a concept born of an overtly modern lifestyle that was unheard of in nineteenth century America. But as Rachel Hope Cleves demonstrates in this eye-opening book, same-sex marriage is hardly new.

James Baldwin

This biography of the great African American novelist/essayist written by a personal friend.

The Zuni Man-Woman

The Zuni Man-Woman focuses on the life of We'wha (1849-96), the Zuni who was perhaps the most famous berdache (an individual who combined the work and traits of both men and women) in American Indian history.

A Boy's Own Story

An instant classic upon its original publication, A Boy's Own Story is the first of Edmund White's highly acclaimed trilogy of autobiographical novels that brilliantly evoke a young man's coming of age and document American gay life through the last forty years.

The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde

Now, for the first time, Neil McKenna focuses on the tormented genius of Wilde's personal life, reproducing remarkable love letters and detailing Wilde's until-now unknown relationships with other men.

The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer

To solve one of the great mathematical problems of his day, Alan Turing proposed an imaginary computer. Then, attempting to break a Nazi code during World War II, he successfully designed and built one, thus ensuring the Allied victory.

Creative Commons License

Unless otherwise noted, the content of these guides by Loras College Library, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Some icons by Yusuke Kamiyamane. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.