Books like The Complete Works of Pat Parker — picked by fans

This book is so expansive, Audre Lorde invented a whole new genre for it. She terms it “biomythography,” bringing together autobiography, mythology, fiction, poetry, and other forms of writing to tell her story of queer life.

I fell in love with Zami in college back in the day and have been re-reading it ever since. From her childhood in 1930s and 40s Harlem to her coming out as the self-proclaimed fat black lesbian “warrior poet,” who would come to shape black feminism in the late 20th century and beyond, Zami charts the life, loves, and transformative ideas of one of our most important writers.

Zami is both muse and guide, showing us how the iconic feminist writer came to be, and how pleasure, power, creative expression, and community are indispensable to our own freedom today.  

Justin Torres’s exquisite novel will make you want to beam and bawl and fight in all the best ways.

It tells the story of a clear-eyed, tender-hearted boy navigating a world where true safety is hard to find. As he comes of age in rural New York State in the 1980s, messages about masculinity, race, sexuality, and the expectations of family swirl around him, often violently, punctuating the world of inquisitive play he and his two older brothers create together.

We witness as Torres’s narrator fights for a vision of his own freedom, a complex fight that resists tidy endings, offering echoing truths instead. 

This book blows me away every time I pick it up.

It features the voices of over forty contemporary lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and intersex African writers who reflect on queer life and experience. With work from renowned photographer Zanele Muholi and acclaimed writers like Olumide Popoola, Audrey Mbugua, and Pamella Dlungwana, Queer African Reader explores how queerness, trans identity, disability, feminism, and colonialism intersect on both personal and political levels.

It’s full of stories, poems, and essays that move us beyond a US-centered view of sexuality, rooting us in the complexities of queer life and the possibilities of queer freedom in Africa and beyond.

This is the kind of book you want to savor, line by line. It’s a powerful and necessary exploration of black gay writing and life in the 1980s and 1990s.

Bost transports us to the world of important writers like Essex Hemphill, Joseph Beam, and Melvin Dixon, showing us how their writing, their living, and their loving were all intertwined. With gorgeous, poetic prose, Bost shows how violent structures like racism, classism, homophobia, and AIDS may shape aspects of our lives, but they cannot stop our living.

Evidence of Being explores how these writers used their work to create community, belonging, and survival. My favorite thing about this book is that Bost gives us a vision of what he calls “black/queer optimism,” in which shared experiences and creative expression form a basis for LGBTQ+ life far into the future. 

I first discovered T.S. Eliot Prize Winner Joelle Taylor through a poetry performance online. I was so moved that I immediately bought her poetry book. I found lines in this book that literally took my breath away, made me laugh out loud in recognition, or took me back to people and places dear to me. 

The poems tell stories of butch lesbians in the 1980s and 1990s, stories seldom told, and she tells them brilliantly, with heart, humor, and compassion. Joelle now has a novel out, The Night Alphabet, in which a woman gets all her tattoos connected with one single thread—of blood—connecting her to her past, present, and future—another amazing read.

I had the incredible fortune of seeing Alabi read from Against Heaven about a month ago, and what I most remember is the feeling of calm that came over me as they read. It's the kind of calm you get when you're in the presence of incredible beauty—like a waterfall, a mountain, or a vast crowd of protestors—and you realize that this is what life is for.

These poems are dear to me because of the way Alabi wrestles biblical language into meanings that they, and we, need. I wish I could feel all the time the way I feel reading this book.

This is a book full of enthusiasm and optimism, even when describing the darkest parts of life. Honestly, the pain hurt less after reading this book. 

It was a one-sitting read, and I thought there was a conversation between Courtney Peppernell and me the whole time. 

It felt as if my best friend and I were talking.

This book was chosen because of the deep, profound love that is displayed throughout the book. It speaks to how vulnerable a person makes themselves when they love deeply and how scary that can be. It also speaks to how you can feel so totally lost in loving another person that you forget to love yourself. I could identify with loving so intensely also and having my heart broken. I also identified with the journey of coming to loving oneself again and with that being open to finding someone better. 

Groundbreaking at the time, simply because it featured a happy ending between two women…what a concept! Seems like this should not have been a tall order, yet, in 1952, it was a revolutionary idea that a lesbian love story would not end with tragedy which was the recipe of the day if a writer dared to write about forbidden love. 

If you are addicted to push/pull in romance stories where the stakes are high but the characters are willing to jump higher, you may fall in love with this book. 

The novel was mesmerizing and lovingly translated into film. Hollywood learned that if you want a straight audience to easily imagine how a woman who had been living a straight life previously (though not authentically) could fall for another woman, simply cast Cate Blanchett in the film and, boom, everyone gets it.

I loved this book because it was the ultimate slow-burn romance coupled with an older woman coming out story, which was truly original at the time. As is almost always the case, the novel is better than the movie, but this one brilliantly made the transition to the film renamed Desert Hearts, which was helped by the amazing chemistry between the actresses and a director that did not shy away from sex scenes which were both graphic, yet beautiful. 

Set back in the 1950s, this sizzling & heartwarming matchup is the trifecta of opposites attract: class, age, and attitude towards coming out, this book was a romance with substance, sprinkled with a bit of comedy, my favorite recipe.