100 books like To Paradise

In 1991, a maintenance worker at a Pennsylvania rest area discovered a man’s head in a trash barrel.

Even though he hadn’t touched blood, people suggested the worker should take an AIDS test. Green’s exceptional book opens with this moment, dropping the reader into early ‘90s AIDS panic and the brutal murders of a string of gay and bisexual men from Manhattan.

Green fleshes out the victims’ lives, showing how homophobia was their constant companion, even in the way the police and media treated their eventual murders. Diligently researched and compassionately written, Green’s book is a page-turner that never dehumanizes its victims or glorifies their killer.

If you’ve ever wondered about where the terms “coming out,” “tea room,” or “fairy” came from, this book has the answers. But more importantly, this book showed me the extent to which my preconceived notions about the relationship between gender and sexuality were simply wrong.

Chauncey’s careful and readable reconstruction of gay communities in early twentieth-century New York illustrates very clearly that ideas of masculinity and deviance and the meanings attached to sex between men are socially constructed and change over time.

His story also showed me how much history can hide in plain sight and how there are still so many stories left to tell.

My personal wish is that Americans start reading a whole lot more books from other countries, especially books that shine a light on the queer experience around the world.

Ours is a global community, and we can’t fall into the trap of thinking diversity only exists in our own country and language. Lucas Rocha’s novel tells the story of three Brazilian teens who are dealing with the impact of HIV in their own unique ways. It’s engrossing, tender, and transporting.

Anyone who loves this should also seek out the work of Vitor Martins, and should demand more books in translation so we can travel through literature.

This luminous novel, written by former professional Joffrey Ballet dancer, Meg Howrey, follows the life of a dancer, beginning in NYC’s West Village in the 1980s.

It is a beautifully written rumination on not only dance but ambition, family, and secrets as well. Meg and I met for the first time when my daughter had just started on her pre-professional path, and her writing about dance is unmatched.

A few years ago we at Gertrude lit journal decided to answer the question that kept coming our way: What are some great books written by queer people with narratives that center on queer people? Before the pandemic made a mess of things, we ran GERTIE, a book club that chose two fabulous queer books every quarter. This was our very first book selection, and—like with many firsts, perhaps—it holds a special place.

The Angel of History takes place during one night in the waiting room of a San Francisco psyche ward when visits by the Devil and 14 Saints reveal the life of Jacob, a Yemen-born poet who was born in an Egyptian whorehouse. Yes, you read that right. 

One of the qualities of mystery fiction that continues to draw me to the genre is the complex interplay between past and present. Nava’s 8th Rios novel utilizes separate narrative lines that resonate and then, like a parallel perspective drawing, converge in a powerful emotional twist. The first line is the story of Bill Ryan, a young gay man who, after being cast out of his home in Illinois, flees to 1970s San Francisco to discover himself and the gay community. The second line is Rios’s recovery from alcoholism and his investigation of Ryan’s suspicious death during the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. Ryan and Rios serve as foils: Ryan is a man losing the war with his self-loathing. Rios, in contrast, is winning his war.

This is a classic of Australian literature, and for very good reason. Set during the AIDS epidemic in Australia in the late 1970s through to the early 90s, this memoir plunges us into the author’s life. We begin during his high school days—when he first notices his attraction to boys and starts sneaking out of the house to find ways to explore his sexuality—and follow him all the way through to his inevitably tragic death. It is a truly heartbreaking story, but incredibly life-affirming. An absolute must-read.

Angels in America was the first place I saw a fuller depiction of life with serious illness, and it blew my mind. Prior, who has AIDS, is arguably the main character. The focus doesn’t cut away from him the second things get very bad. Instead, we stay and see him through. I believe deeply in the power of seeing one’s darkest moments honestly reflected in art. I first discovered Angels through the amazing TV series with Al Pacino and Meryl Streep and it broke my heart into a thousand pieces. When I later read the plays, I was amazed at how funny they are. The joke density is very high. The bleakness and pathos combined with incisive humor are what make these amazing works of art some of my all-time favorites. 

This memoir by the artist David Wojnarowicz deeply impacted me when I was a young queer man just setting off to make his way in the world in the early ‘90s. It’s a look at America during the AIDS crisis, and also delves into the author’s rage and lust and creativity and hope for a better world. The prose is electric, confrontational, and not at all concerned with decorum or coddling delicate sensibilities. It’s a raw and honest deep dive into the heart and soul of an artist living life on the edge of a society actively antagonistic to his existence and is a testament to art as a mechanism of survival. I can only hope to write something this invigorating one day. Bonus points for existing.

Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father is a gorgeous, poetic memoir first published in 2013; it was recently turned into a film produced by Sofia Coppola that will be in theaters in late 2023. 

Alysia is the only child of Steve Abbott, a bisexual writer, activist, and poet who raises her on his own after her mother dies in a car accident when Alysia is just a toddler.

Fairyland tells the story of Steve and Alysia's vibrant, bohemian life in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury in the 1970s and 80s, Alysia's grappling with the challenges of being raised by a queer man when few if any of the kids she knew were, Steve's illness and death from AIDS.

Alysia's clear-eyed depiction of her father as both abundantly loving and somewhat unreliable, exciting and dangerous but also steadfast and loyal, is a model for how to represent a complicated human being with… show more.