LGBT Required Reading List

Author: Edit Team

June 15, 2011

What books should be required reading for the budding LGBT bibliophile? In honor of gay pride month, writer Benoit Denizet-Lewis, writing for the website The Good Men Project, surveyed some of the country’s top LGBT authors to get the answer.

Denizet-Lewis writes:

I wish someone had given me a list of required gay reading when I was coming out. Gay men gave me a lot of things back then (porn, theater tickets, crabs), but no one gave me book titles. As a young gay man, I could have used a literary roadmap to help me put my experiences—and my feelings—in some historical and sociological context. As a young writer, I could have used being better read. Why didn’t anyone tell me that I needed to know who Paul Monette was?

Denizet-Lewis’s article offers a much needed “reading list” corrective. He asked an assortment of literary stars–Randall Kenan, Kate Bornstein, Edmund White and many others–to suggest five queer-themed books that every LGBT person such read. The authors’ choices are illuminating, fascinating, and yes, required. To read the article in its entirety click here.

Which books are on your list?