Tag / queer

by booksoverlookedblog

June 2025 Book Recs: Read with Pride

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Before we begin, just a couple updates for summer. I’m trying to get back to two posts a month, but I’ve been really busy this spring. July is Flash Fiction Month, so I’ll be posting some short fiction here every day (hopefully). Summer is the busiest time of the year for me, so August is going to be a rest month. 

June is Pride Month! Pride celebrates LGBTQIA+ history, culture, and. well…pride! Pride began with the Stonewall riots in June and July of 1969, and June was officially recognized as “Gay and Lesbian Pride Month” in 1999. LGBTQIA+ rights have come a long way, but there’s still a lot of progress to be made, especially as the trans community is increasingly under attack. PFLAG has a really useful Executive Order Explainer that tracks anti-LGBTQIA+, anti-DEI, anti-immigration, anti-reproductive health, and anti-voting rights executive orders. It also includes links to resources like the Trans Legal Survival Guide from Advocates for Trans Equality, along with resources for mental health, advocacy, and legal help. 

LGBTQIA+ covers a huge range of identities, and two books can’t cover all of them. May was also an incredibly busy month for me, so I wasn’t able to do as much reading as I would like. I still hope this small selection of books enhances your Pride month!

Non-fiction

Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin

Six teens and young adults – two trans girls, two trans boys, two nonbinary individuals (one of whom is intersex) – share their stories. With honesty and courage, these young people tell their stories about their early lives, their families, discovering their gender identities, and eventual transitions. They come from a range of backgrounds and experiences, like Luke who has a supportive family and realized he was trans with the help of his queer theatre group, or Mariah, who lived in poverty and has experienced violence due to her gender identity. (Note: Mariah’s chapter includes disturbing content, including sexual abuse.) She began to transition openly during her senior year at an all-boy Catholic school, in the face of bullying, an unsupportive mother, and punishments from the school. Many teens talk about the spectrum of gender and gender as a social construct. Most importantly, each chapter shows the subjects as whole, complex individuals, who are more than just their gender identity. 

Trans issues are a hot topic right now, and there is a lot of discourse and misinformation about gender identity, sexuality, and youth. It’s important for young trans and nonbinary people to have a seat at the table and tell their own stories. 

Fiction

The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzie Lee

There is only one thing that Henry “Monty” Montague is looking forward to, probably for the rest of his life: his Tour of the European Continent. The Tour is something of a rite of passage for wealthy noblemen in the eighteenth century: a year of gambling, drinking, and debauchery before he returns to England to work alongside his father.  What he’s most interested in, however, is spending a year with his best friend, Percy. Monty has been secretly in love with Percy for years, and the Tour might be the last chance Monty has for something to happen with him. At the end of the Tour, Percy will be attending law school in Amsterdam, leaving Monty alone. Traveling with them is Monty’s intelligent but taciturn younger sister, Felicity, who struggles to understand Monty’s bisexuality. After a visit to Versailles ends in disaster worthy of being disinherited over, Monty, Percy, and Felicity find themselves being hunted down by bandits, catching rides on pirate ships, and – most terrifying of all – growing as people. This novel is a fun romp around Europe, full of adventure, romance, a bit of magic, and a few steamy scenes. The Montague siblings’ adventures continue in two sequels. 

by booksoverlookedblog

June Book Recs: Read with Pride

A little blog update: I am still dealing with personal issues which has impacted my writing. I’ll be posting (hopefully) posting Flash Fiction Month stories here daily throughout July, and then will be taking a break from the blog until September. My brain needs it.

June is Pride Month! Pride celebrates LGBTQIA+ history, culture, and. well…pride! Pride began with the Stonewall riots in June and July of 1969, and June was officially recognized as “Gay and Lesbian Pride Month” in 1999. LGBTQIA+ rights have come a long way, but there’s still a lot of progress to be made, especially as the trans community is increasingly under attack.

LGBTQIA+ covers a huge range of identities, and two books certainly can’t cover all of them. The two books I have here were stand-out options for Pride.

Nonfiction

Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States by Samantha Allen

Samantha Allen, a trans woman, loves the places that queer people are supposed to fear. She and her friend Billy, a trans man, embark on a road trip across red states in the United States, to tell the stories of queer people who live, or have chosen to stay, in places that are often thought to be unwelcoming or even unsafe for queer individuals. They start in Provo, Utah, where Samantha had attended Brigham Young University pre-transition, and finds a sanctuary that she would have thought would never exist. Texas is outrageously fun despite the state’s anti-trans laws, then it’s on to Indiana, where Samantha met her wife. They stop in Tennessee, Mississippi, and finally, return to Samantha’s home with her wife in Florida. Samantha and Billy’s journey is one of surprising compassion as they find queer spaces and people who welcome them unquestionably, and bright spots of love and acceptance in whatever state they’re in. The author also includes her personal history, and reflects on anti-trans policies in the era of the Trump administration. Most of all, this is a story about connecting that reminds the readers the queer Americans are everywhere, carving out loving spaces for themselves, and road-trippers who happen to come their way.

On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden

On a Sunbeam is a space opera graphic novel that follows a young woman in two different times of her life. Mia isn’t the best student at her high-end boarding school, Cleary’s School for Girls. Her only real interest is the school sport Lux, her passion for which gets her in trouble. While waiting outside the principal’s office, Mia meets Grace. Grace seems to have a secret – and magic powers? – but the two girls soon fall for one another. Five years later, newly graduated, Mia gets a job on aboard the spaceship Aktis. The crew consists of Char, her wife Alma, Alma’s niece Jules, and Elliot, who is non-binary and non-verbal. Mia joins the crew in restoring old buildings in space, and chronicles the things they discover. Char, Alma, and Elliot all have histories they’d rather Mia not know, and Mia has some unfinished business of her own. I don’t want to say too much about the plot without giving it away, but this is an epic and imaginative story of queer love, found family, forgiveness, and of course, space.