As a retired family therapist, I find that writing and reading stories about emotional journeys no matter our sexual identity, ethnicity, or class has the potential to transform us. A protagonist under threat of persecution who finds healing in the power of love, of family, of community can help us fix ourselves where we are broken. I believe stories can help us sever unhealthy ties to the patterns of past generations. My mother was a closeted lesbian with no family who died when I was nine. Writing how I wished her life could have been helped me heal from childhood trauma. Our ancestors passed the talking stick. We have books.
The Winter Loon is a courageous love story of a woman’s secrets and choices.
Coming of age in the 1930s and 40s, Ruth Thompson joins a rodeo circuit to earn her college tuition. At college she falls in love with free-spirited Gisela. From Minnesota to the California coast, Ruth embarks on a journey of self-discovery. As WWII escalates, she must finally find the courage to defy dangerous social repercussions or lose the woman she loves. This LGBTQ-themed novel honors the strength and spirit of all who struggle with social persecution and how they define family, whether it is flesh and blood kinfolk or those nearest and dearest to their heart.
I love that this book takes a hard look at the perils, reality, and consequences of embracing truth.
It doesn’t sugar-coat the different attitudes and reactions of family members when Annie, with 3 adult children and 27 years of marriage, falls in love with Vivica. The aftermath of the seismic family upheaval reveals dark secrets about legacy, abuse, racial discrimination, revenge, class, and forgiveness.
For me reading this book was cutting edge because it was published not long after same-sex marriage was first made legal in the U.S., in Connecticut.
A bonus is that despite the family’s legacy of trauma the story ends on a note of love and hope.
From New York Times bestselling author Wally Lamb, a disquieting and ultimately uplifting novel about a marriage, a family, and human resilience in the face of tragedy.
As Annie Oh's wedding day approaches, she finds herself at the mercy of hopes and fears about the momentous change ahead. She has just emerged from a twenty-five year marriage to Orion Oh, which produced three children, but is about to marry a woman named Viveca, a successful art dealer, who specializes in outsider art.
Trying to reach her ex-husband, she keeps assuring everyone that he is fine. Except she has no idea…
I love this novel because it is beautifully written and dips into darkness without losing the depth of the human spirit.
The story follows Russian lesbians, Gutke and Chava along with the women they love. It is a story of women’s struggle to survive a hard scrabble daily life, a revolution in the pale, and a Russian pogrom before immigrating to New York City. These are intelligent, aware women who dare to defy the norm at their own peril.
They still live in my heart because of their love and kindness, courage, and resilience to embrace hope in the face of hardship and tragedy.
Winner of the Lambda Literary Award: "A page-turner that brings to life turn-of-the-century New York's Lower East Side." -Library Journal Born in a Russian-Jewish settlement, Gutke Gurvich is a midwife who immigrates to New York's Lower East Side with her partner, a woman passing as a man. Their story crosses with that of Chava Meyer, a girl who was attended by Gutke at her birth and was later orphaned during the Kishinev pogrom of 1903. Chava has come to America with the family of her cousin Rose, and the two girls begin working at fourteen. As they live through the…
This is my all-time favorite book for the use of language.
A history of Viet Nam and the aftermath of war unravels along with a story of Little Dog navigating poverty and survival, and wrestling with sexuality and opioid addiction. The prose can break your heart—FAG is written in red letters on mother and son’s door at Christmas: “What’s it mean Little Dog?” “It says Merry Christmas from the neighbors ma.” The subject matter can sting and bruise but rewards the pain with the beauty of the words.
Some say this is both novel and memoir—and so it must be. Who, unless they have walked the path, can empty the contents of their heart with such raw emotion.
Longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction, the Carnegie Medal in Fiction, the 2019 Aspen Words Literacy Prize, and the PEN/Hemingway Debut Novel Award
Shortlisted for the 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
Winner of the 2019 New England Book Award for Fiction!
Named one of the most anticipated books of 2019 by Vulture, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Oprah.com, Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, Nylon, The Week, The Rumpus, The Millions, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and more.
"A lyrical work of self-discovery that's shockingly intimate and insistently…
I chose this book for its honest look at the fragility of love when the push and pull of church doctrine clashes in a family with twins.
One twin at 17 knows she is lesbian, and the other is a member of BOCK (Brides of Christ’s Kingdom). The story weaves lessons about the effects of homophobia and heartbreak with loss and love, forgiveness and acceptance in a small bible-belt town in Minnesota. It’s a serious subject told with wit, humor, and honesty.
A baby born helps to heal family rifts, but it’s the pull of loss and the power of love from everyone that brings a homophobic mother to acceptance that allows a young woman to follow her heart.
Lorraine Tyler is the only queer person in Bend, Minnesota. Or at least that’s what it feels like when the local church preaches so sternly against homosexuality. Which is why she’s fighting so hard to win the McGerber scholarship—her ticket out of Bend—even though her biggest competition is her twin sister, Becky. And even though she’s got no real hope—not with the scholarship’s morality clause and that one time she kissed the preacher’s daughter.
Everything changes when a new girl comes to town. Charity is mysterious, passionate, and—to Lorraine’s delighted surprise—queer too. Now Lorraine may have a chance at freedom…
There’s a lot to absorb here, especially for a white, straight ally of the LGBTQ+ community who doesn’t cut her own grass. It's a novel about the effects of discrimination against race, class, and sexual identity. It’s the authentic experience of a 22-year-old Hispanic man who, against all odds, tries to make an honest living and figure out his place in 21st-century America.
On the banned books list, this novel seems to assault the sensibility of censors who want to protect the young and vulnerable against truth. It must be the language, graphic and raw at times, but in the end, it’s not possible to ban reality. The love of his broken family and cobbled-together community has his back as he embraces his sexuality.
For Mike Munoz, a young Chicano living in Washington State, life has been a whole lot of waiting for something to happen. Not too many years out of high school and still doing menial work - and just fired from his latest gig as a lawn boy on a landscaping crew - he knows that he's got to be the one to shake things up if he's ever going to change his life. But how?
In this funny, angry, touching, and ultimately deeply inspiring novel, bestselling author Jonathan Evison takes the reader into the heart and mind of a young…
My life and work have been profoundly affected by the central circumstance of my existence: I was born into a very large military Catholic family in the United States of America. As a child surrounded by many others in the 60s, I wrote, performed, and directed family plays with my numerous brothers and sisters. Although I fell in love with a Canadian and moved to Canada, my family of origin still exerts considerable personal influence. My central struggle, coming from that place of chaos, order, and conformity, is to have the courage to live an authentic life based on my own experience of connectedness and individuality, to speak and be heard.
Trapped in her enormous, devout Catholic family in 1963, Annie creates a hilarious campaign of lies when the pope dies and their family friend, Cardinal Stefanucci, is unexpectedly on the shortlist to be elected the first American pope.
Driven to elevate her family to the holiest of holy rollers in the parish, Annie is tortured by her own dishonesty. But when “The Hands” visits her in her bed and when her sister finds herself facing a scandal, Annie discovers her parents will do almost anything to uphold their reputation and keep their secrets safe.
Questioning all she has believed and torn between her own gut instinct and years of Catholic guilt, Annie takes courageous risks to wrest salvation from the tragic sequence of events set in motion by her parents’ betrayal.
