Books like Jay's Gay Agenda — picked by fans

This is a book about many things—guilt, artmaking, and love among them—but when I think of it, I think of a novel that depicts the complexities of making and sustaining a life more deftly than anything else I’ve read. How things like cruelty and beauty, innocence and evil, truth and lies all coexist. How we move forward despite this uneasy balance.

The novel follows Fee, a boy who grows up in Maine and sings in an all-boys choir. The choir director turns out to be an abuser, and his actions haunt Fee and the other boys in the choir into adulthood.

On a prose level alone, Chee’s writing is unparalleled, his sentences sharp enough to cut glass. I don’t see how anyone could read this book and come away unchanged. 

I love Alderman’s writing. This book is dense. It isn’t long but it does take a bit of work to get through it, but it’s worth it.

He does the heavy lifting I’ve always wanted someone to do, looking carefully at the writings of Derrida and pointing out where these ideas bend back unhelpfully on themselves. He brings a Jungian lens to this exploration, battling back the nihilistic implications of deconstruction and finding again the helpful bedrock of meaning. 

When I was growing up, there was zero queer Iranian representation to inspire me or guide me.

I felt quite literally invisible in the world, and my own mission has been to flood the world with queer Iranian stories to fill this void. Thankfully, a number of other authors are now doing the same, including Sara Farizan, Arvin Ahmadi, and Adib Khorram.

I chose the sequel to Adib’s masterful Darius the Great Deserves Better because I love how it leans into intergenerational family dynamics, which are a particular passion of mine (and of most immigrants who must work to unite the disparate parts of our histories).

Nothing brings a classroom alive like an engaged and enthusiastic teacher! The best ones know how to guide their students into the heart of a text to make discoveries and connections on their own. I have done hundreds of school visits (virtual and in-person), and I love watching kids beam with pride as they reveal something they’ve learned from reading my book or come to a revelation through our chat. 

Lesley Roessing’s book is not a work of fiction – but it’s an invaluable tool to help teachers guide young readers through the books on this list. The final section of the book is a sample 9/11 book club using all the books on my list (and many more). Any teacher drawn to this list would be well-served by Lesley’s insightful lesson plans.

When I first read this book (almost 40 years ago), it became the foundation for how I think about culture, creativity, and their connection to revolution.

Hebdige shows how little things like the cut of a pair of trousers or a hairstyle can make important social critiques that are understood and reverberate far beyond the youth subcultures that spawn them. And he provides a theoretical framework for thinking about possibilities for revolution in everyday life. Plus, it’s the most insightful book about punk ever written.

I’ve devoted my life to helping teen girls know their God-given worth, thrive mentally, and live purposefully. When I was 18 and 21, I was hospitalized for depression and suicidal thoughts—something rarely talked about then. Today, one in three teen girls seriously considers suicide.

Social media is fueling this crisis, and I share Jonathan Haidt’s righteous anger. His research confirms what I’ve seen: social media isn’t just correlated with mental health issues—it causes them. His solutions, like restoring a play-based childhood and holding off social media for kids until age sixteen, echo my own.

This book is essential reading for every adult who cares about kids. It will stir you to act. This is a book every parent, educator, mental health professional, and adult should read. It is full of practical tips and suggestions that will protect kids. This should make you so righteously angry you’ll want to do something… show more.

Another vampire one I’m afraid. But trust me this is so worth your time. 

I read this for the first time when I was in college and well into my Goth phase, this book became my aesthetic afterwards. It’s a different take on vampires, explored through a few different groups of vampires. The characters are wonderfully portrayed and unique but what really hooked me into this book was the setting. It's got depth and feels like you could walk through the book and be in Missing Mile. 

This was the book that made me try Chartreuse.

I really like the title of this book because it captures why your brain reacts as it does to fear, anxiety, and stress. Because of the fight-or-flight reaction in response to danger, your brain revs your body up to get ready to fight a tiger or run away. But that reaction doesn’t help when your stress is about taking a test, introducing yourself to someone, or handling a rough situation at home. It’s like your brain is reacting to invisible tigers chasing you. Self-care for “tiger bites” is a fun way to think about ways to reduce the impact of stressful situations.

Ignore the word “youth” in the title, because this is not just a book for kids and teens! Jamie is a young, queer activist who has achieved some impressive activism victories at a young age, but best of all, she combines real activist know-how with a sense of hope and optimism that’s hard to find in older activists. This book is an excellent guide to getting involved and staying involved anywhere from the local level up to a global scale. This is a must-read for people who are fired up to take action but don’t know where to start.

This is a slightly biased choice as a historian of LSD and psychedelics, but to me, this book offers the most staggering illustration of acid-infused idealism by telling the riveting story of a group of California hoodlums turned LSD crusaders.

This dizzying page-turner takes you through the rise of evangelical acid chemists who manufactured millions of doses and had them distributed by the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, who made very little profit and often gifted their acid. A book I would have loved to write!