100 books like When Brooklyn Was Queer

Gloria Anzaldúa was born and raised in South Texas, growing up along the U.S.-Mexican border. For many years she lived in San Francisco, and then in Santa Cruz, California.

The first 113 pages of the book are stories and essays drawn from her life experiences as a woman of Mexican and Indian heritage, daily experiencing life at the physical border between the United States and Mexico.

She was raised in a strongly Catholic tradition, while also drawn to and inventing her own spirituality rooted in indigenous practices of harmony, balance, and reverence for the earth. She was a lesbian in a straight world that condemned her woman-loving sensibility.

Each of these is a “borderland” to be navigated and negotiated, and each of these borders is rich with insight, life, laughter, tears, violence, and love. The last 100 pages of the book is titled “Un Agitado Viento/ Ehécatl, The Wind.” It… show more.

It’s not a “deep cut” by any means, but I had to start this list with this book. It’s the book that made me fall in love with the graphic novel format and remains perhaps my favorite book of all time.

Bechdel weaves together her coming-of-age as a lesbian, her discovery of her father’s homosexuality, and rich literary allusions, all with beautiful, detailed artwork.

When I read this book for the first time as a closeted teenager, I was captivated not only by the queer representation but by the rich storytelling. The way Bechdel’s words and illustrations work together to create a whole that’s greater than the sum of their parts opened my mind to the magic and power of the comic medium. 

Audre Lorde was known primarily as a poet, but her essays were more engaging for me. She was fearless in confronting male dominance and white supremacy—and every other hierarchy that structures modern life—always with an awareness of the centrality of love and beauty in our lives.

Two of those essays that became classics in feminism—“Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” and “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism”—were particularly influential for me and are as relevant today as when they were published in 1984.

She also died too young (at age 58 in 1992), and I have always wished I could have had a chance to see her speak.

These essays are the ultimate guide to human intimacy. If you believe, as I do, that the best way to find meaning in life is to establish connections with others, you must read this book.

Rich teaches us that we are all clumsy, needy, fearful communicators, and shows us how what we perceive as failings are actually the secret keys to opening up whole invisible worlds of understanding between each other. She understands the art of gentleness as well as anyone who has ever written.

This coming-of-age novel-in-verse beautifully captures the dynamics of survival in tough neighborhoods in a way that honors the humanity and nuance of the community—details that are too often lost in media and forgotten by the people that “make it out.” Through the lens of the Puerto Rican-American protagonist, Sarai, her family, and the neighborhood characters that are all too familiar, I was brought into the heart of pre-gentrified Bushwick, Brooklyn, and Puerto Rican culture to go on Sarai’s journey of self-discovery. We are sitting on the stoop, at the foot of the bed, in the back pew in conversation with Sarai. We see her, we hear her, we love her. And won’t ever forget her. We are left to reflect on what it really means to “make it.”

Before reading this book, I had no idea city-based fantasy novels could draw me in as powerfully as stories with more “traditional” fantasy settings. But Mr. Older’s depiction of Brooklyn as a living, breathing landscape made me a new believer in urban magic. And the main character Sierra’s shadowshaping feels like its own form of beautiful, youthful rebellion. Art can save us, if only we breathe our power into it. I stop and stare at most graffiti murals now, waiting for them to move a little.

Before David Adjmi became an acclaimed playwright, he was contending with his complicated upbringing in Brooklyn, New York, the child of Syrian Jewish parents, being schooled in a Yeshiva, and trying to come to terms with being gay. Adjmi writes with incredible candor about feeling like a perpetual outsider, including—or especially—within his own family. The title borrows its name from a pejorative term for gays that his family would often use to their great amusement and Adjmi’s mortification. Bonus viewing: Marie Antoinette, The Evildoers, Stunning, Stereophonic, or any number of his plays, where you will be able see how and where nonfiction is transmuted into theatre.

I love how Georges and Safer are relatable. Their friendship has ups and downs and tensions that resonate for young readers.

Middle school is challenging! The realism extends to Georges’s family and the challenges he faces at home. But this story is driven by the mystery of Spy Club and Mr. X. Important themes of friendship, empathy, and self discovery are flawlessly woven into the expert storytelling. I read this in one sitting!

Published the same year as John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, di Donato’s Christ in Concrete is another closely drawn portrait of working-class immigrants, this time the Italian-American bricklayers of New York City’s Lower East Side.

On top of its lyricism and spirited narrative pace, what I find most refreshing about di Donato’s tale is its choice of subject matter. So much of what we read and hear about the Italian-American experience tends to focus on the Mafia, perpetuating negative stereotypes that have dogged paisans since the late 19th century.

While I’ll never be the one to turn off Goodfellas, I long for more stories like that of Geremio and his irrepressible son, Paul, “born artists of brick and mortar.”

Corner grocery stores are everywhere in New York City, but most of the time we never really think very hard about them. Ben Ryder Howe on the other hand, drew on his own experience running the family bodega. The store he ran was on the border between a rapidly gentrifying section of Brooklyn and a neighborhood with public housing. The changing customer base meant his store shelves began to gentrify like the neighborhood around him, but as he soon learned, too many changes too quickly are bad for business. Part memoir, part researched journalism, Ryder Howe provides a fascinating look into a New York City staple.