Pride Month, which honors members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, is celebrated in June. The choice of June is in reference to the Stonewall Riots, which occured in June 1969.
In 2000, Bill Clinton made the first presidential proclamation of June as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. in 2009, Barack Obama proclaimed June to be Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. In 2022, Joe Biden proclaimed June to be Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex (LGBTQI+) Pride Month.
Check out Pride 2024: Making History Now, a pop-up exhibit near the Chicano/a Collection that has online content as well.
Many people have made reading lists with suggestions of great books to read during Pride Month and throughout the year. These include books both by LGBTQ+ authors and/or about topics relating to a wide range of LGBTQ+ experiences.
Queer author Kristen Arnett has a list of 15 LGBTQ+ books. This includes seminal titles such as Dorothy Allison's Bastard out of Carolina, works of poetry such as Tommy Pico's Feed, and Sarah Schulman's Let the record show: a political history of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993.
Last year, Lesley Kennedy from CNN compiled a list of essential titles. Standouts are Sarah McBride's Tomorrow will be different: love, loss, and the fight for trans equality; Garrard Conley's Boy Erased: a memoir of identity, faith, and family (we also have a DVD of the 2019 movie starring Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe), and James Baldwin's classic novel Giovanni's Room.
Grey Putnam at Candid has recommendations for books about Pride Month. NYPL's The Stonewall Reader is a great anthology, Transgender inclusion: all the things you want to ask your transgender coworker (but shouldn't) is a useful guide, and Queer (in)justice : the criminalization of LGBT people in the United States is a frank discussion of inequalities.
