Books like Banned from California — picked by fans

A thinly fictionalized account of a young male prostitute based on the life of the writer. This was written years before Stonewall, yet presents an unflinching portrayal of the range of male sexual desire that would be cutting edge even today. No excuse is given for sexual activity that most would see as peculiar because the author makes clear that, in his estimation, none is required. He never says as much, but it can be inferred from every line on every page.

I especially love how he can describe men who are utterly insensitive and emotionally shut down, and what you take away from it is how sensitive and emotionally boiling they are.

I became obsessed with the writing in this book when it was first published in 1991, and I was far from the only one. News of his death, one year after the publication of this book, triggered a spontaneous march of angry mourners through his NYC neighborhood.

He wrote with the urgency of an artist running out of time. David captured the anger of the first generation of gay men to confront AIDS like no one else. Other writers expressed the grief, the despair, and the moral dilemmas. David had fire breathing out of his pen. I am proud to have one of my favorite of his paintings on the cover of my new book.

My favorite gay autobiography. Humorous, explicit, and thought-provoking. Like my story, his is far from a neatly packaged “coming out” story of self-acceptance. He describes some way-out-of-bounds-for-most-people sexual adventures in detail but with no intention to shock or titillate. He is just telling stories he finds interesting, and he is a great storyteller. Not surprising, since he is a celebrated science fiction author.

Always surprising in a quirky way. Example: in the 1950s, he is at an outdoor gay cruising area at night when there is a police raid. It is only as the men flee that he grasps how many were there: hundreds. It is his first sense of being in a large gay male community, and it is empowering.

If you are picking up on the fact that I am pretty much over the 2-just-married-white-guys-in-a-convertible gay love story, you will not be surprised that I loved this book. The true story of a 17-year-old Irish kid working at a brothel in Victorian London.

An underworld of teenage prostitutes is vividly portrayed: runaways, post office boys, shoeblacks, newspaper sellers, grooms, servants, and most of all, telegraph boys. As the star witness in the trial that was THE sexual scandal of Victorian London, Jack defiantly testified against a wealthy gay British man, at least in part out of his sympathy for the cause of his Irish homeland. Jack goes on to die penniless at age 46 of tuberculosis. Take that!

So, I know I promised you a list of books that offer tips for allies, and this one isn’t that. But before you get annoyed with me, let me explain. I’ve worked in the field of LGBTQ+ inclusion and allyship for over 20 years, and I rarely read books on the topic that wow me anymore. This one did.

Kenji Yoshino is brilliant. He brings an entirely new perspective to civil rights and what being your true self at work actually means, whether you’re part of the LGBTQ+ community, someone with a disability, a person living with chronic pain, or a straight, white, cisgender dude. Yoshino helped me understand that covering some part of ourselves that is different or considered less desirable by our society is a universal experience.

Interest in the German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld and his Institute for Sexual Science (active 1919–1933 in Berlin) has grown since the television program Transparent included him in its second season in 2015.

Laurie Marhoefer’s new book challenges his status as a queer history hero, highlighting how his views on sexual emancipation, cross-dressing (as drag was then known), and transgenderism were embedded in racism and colonialism. Marhoefer also tells the lesser-known history of Hirschfeld’s companion in later life, Li Shiu Tong, who after Hirschfeld’s death in May 1935 continued his own research on human sexuality. 

Li’s previously unknown manuscript and notes—rescued serendipitously from a waste bin soon after his death in Vancouver in 1993—is a stark reminder of how many histories of sexuality are at risk of being (almost) similarly lost.

Before reading Buying Gay, I couldn’t imagine how physique photography—nude and semi-nude pictures of buff models that appeared in bodybuilding magazines and were available by mail-order—qualified for a place in gay history. In discussions of gay libido, of course, but history? Naw! Johnson showed me the light, revealing how important desire coupled with American capitalism was in the development of gay identity and community. Through the efforts (and talent and chutzpah) of men like photographer Bob Mizer and publisher H. Lynn Womack, gays won the right to express desire more openly than ever before after decades of battles against obscenity laws. In short, Johnson enabled me to see more deeply into the private lives of some of the men I’ve written about.

I first read this book some years ago in one sitting, and have returned to it time and again. I love how it gets right inside the protagonist’s mind, telling the story of erotomania from within his disturbed mind. A chance encounter between two men following a fatal ballooning accident leads to an obsession by Jed, that destroys the life of the man he stalks. I found McKewan’s intricate exploration of obsessive fixation, known as De Cleremabault’s Syndrome both chilling and immersive, like erotomania itself.

I loved this book from page one because I instantly wanted to be the main character, Max Moody’s, friend. He’s incredibly relatable and has impeccable taste in music.

His love interest, Chasten, was charming and sweet, and the combination of their personalities made them easy to root for. Plus, I laughed out loud and smiled all the way through their love story. 

As an aerospace engineer, I have a soft spot for aviation-related tales. The idea of a pilot crashing a commercial flight (with some cryptic final words caught on the flight recorder) terrified and intrigued me. The investigator for this one is the heartbroken fiance of the pilot who has to navigate the mystery while processing his own grief.

This intriguing queer story is the type I love where one mystery solved begets a bunch more, and the author expertly unfolds answers when the time is right. This isn’t an action-packed thriller; it’s a quiet, perfectly paced story about guilt, grief, and finding the courage to seek the truth.