Reading List: LGBTQIA+ History Month

As part of our calendar celebrating national heritage months and observances, explore these selected works that speak to LGBTQIA+ history.

Fiction

Ben Shattuck’s Pushcart Prize-winning story “The History of Sound” (Issue 16) tells of the love between two young musicians in early twentieth century New England.
In Emma Copley Eisenberg’s Issue 15 story “Forty-Four Thousand Pounds,” a young Appalachian woman remembers a home—and a love—she left behind.

Essays

In “Fragments of Shame and Pride” Raed Rafei explores queerness and chronicles the recent history of the LGBTQIA+ movement in Lebanon through personal reflections.
David Weinstein’s “Linnahall” recounts a day tour of Tallinn, Estonia that spurs reflections on loneliness and wandering, companionship and Grindr.
In “Not a Word Among Us,” David Meischen traces the lineage of silence within his family, both around his grandfather’s suicide and his own gay identity.

Poetry

“Twenty Minutes at the Clam Shack” by Cassie Pruyn viscerally captures young lust and love.
Alison Prine’s “Loss and Its Antonym” reflects on cherished memories of queer community.
“Dive” by Jennifer Perrine discusses hidden queer spaces and the joys and challenges of saying goodbye to such places.
“We Two Women Can Father A Child” by Linda Ashok brings to life tender moments of a relationship as two women consider parenthood.
Peter Laberge’s “Berlin (Eulogy 1)” grieves for the queer boys who have died as a result of prejudice and for the queerness that dies when identity must be repressed in exchange for safety.
“The Rower of the Maré” by Eliane Marques is a protest poem honoring Marielle Franco, city councillor, sociologist, and activist in Brazil’s Black and LGBTQIA+ movements, who was assassinated in 2018.

Photo by Flickr user yosoynuts.