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Heritage Months and Celebrations

Pride Month

White background with rainbow ribbon reads Pride Month 2023

 

Welcome to the McNichols Campus Library's National Pride Month Research Guide in support of the University of Detroit Mercy Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion's Heritage Months and Celebrations. Pride Month is celebrated each June to commemorate the six day Stonewall uprising of 1969. During that time, LGBTQ protestors clashed with New York city police to protest a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. The Stonewall uprising is generally considered the start of the modern LGBTQ rights movement. If you have questions about LGBTQ+-related resources, please contact a librarian

LGBTQ+ Books in Print and On the Shelves

Let the Record Show

Twenty years in the making, Sarah Schulman's Let the Record Show is the most comprehensive political history ever assembled of ACT UP and American AIDS activism In just six years, ACT UP, New York, a broad and unlikely coalition of activists from all races, genders, sexualities, and backgrounds, changed the world. Armed with rancor, desperation, intelligence, and creativity, it took on the AIDS crisis with an indefatigable, ingenious, and multifaceted attack on the corporations, institutions, governments, and individuals who stood in the way of AIDS treatment for all. 

Sarahland

In Sarahland, Sam Cohen brilliantly and often hilariously explores the ways in which traditional stories have failed us, both demanding and thrillingly providing for its cast of Sarahs new origin stories, new ways to love the planet and those inhabiting it, and new possibilities for life itself.

The Stonewall Reader

For the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, an anthology chronicling the tumultuous fight for LGBTQ rights in the 1960s and the activists who spearheaded it, with a foreword by Edmund White.

Filthy Animals

In the series of linked stories at the heart of Filthy Animals, set among young creatives in the American Midwest, a young man treads delicate emotional waters as he navigates a series of sexually fraught encounters with two dancers in an open relationship, forcing him to weigh his vulnerabilities against his loneliness. In other stories, a young woman battles with the cancers draining her body and her family; menacing undercurrents among a group of teenagers explode in violence on a winter night; a little girl tears through a house like a tornado, driving her babysitter to the brink; and couples feel out the jagged edges of connection, comfort, and cruelty.

Queer: a Graphic History

Meg-John Barker and cartoonist Jules Scheele illuminate the histories of queer thought and LGBTQ+ action in this groundbreaking non-fiction graphic novel. From identity politics and gender roles to privilege and exclusion, Queer explores how we came to view sex, gender and sexuality in the ways that we do; how these ideas get tangled up with our culture and our understanding of biology, psychology and sexology; and how these views have been disputed and challenged.

Punks

The many voices that emerge in these poems--from historic Black personalities, both familial and famous, to the poet's friends and lovers in gay bars and bedrooms--form a cast of characters capable of addressing desire, oppression, AIDS, and grief through sorrowful songs that "we sing as hard as we live."

Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks

Beginning with her junior year at Barnard in 1941, Highsmith ritualistically kept a diary and notebook--the former to catalog her day, the latter to brainstorm stories and hone her craft. This volume weaves diary and notebook simultaneously, exhibiting precisely how Highsmith's personal affairs seeped into her fiction--and the sheer darkness of her own imagination.

Stone Fruit

At turns joyful and heartbreaking, Stone Fruit reveals through intimately naturalistic dialog and blue-hued watercolor how painful it can be to truly become vulnerable to your loved ones -- and how fulfilling it is to be finally understood for who you are. Lee Lai is one of the most exciting new voices to break into the comics medium and she has created one of the truly sophisticated graphic novel debuts in recent memory.

Queer spaces : An Atlas of LGBTQIA+ places and stories

An independent bookshop in Glasgow. An ice cream parlour in Havana, where strawberry is the queerest choice. A cathedral in ruins in Managua, occupied by the underground LGBTQIA+ community. Queer people have always found ways to exist and be together, and there will always be a need for queer spaces. ... With historic, contemporary and speculative examples from around the world, 'Queer Spaces' recognises LGBTQIA+ life past and present as strong, vibrant, vigorous, and worthy of its own place in history. Looking forward, it suggests visions of what form these spaces may take in the future to continue uplifting queer lives.

Young Mungo

Growing up in a housing estate in Glasgow, Mungo and James are born under different stars--Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic--and they should be sworn enemies if they're to be seen as men at all. Yet against all odds, they become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds. As they fall in love, they dream of finding somewhere they belong, while Mungo works hard to hide his true self from all those around him, especially from his big brother Hamish, a local gang leader with a brutal reputation to uphold. 

LGBTQ+ Books Available Electronically

Pride Parades

With vivid imagery, and showcasing the voices of these participants, Pride Parades tells the story of Pride from its beginning in 1970 to 2010. Though often dismissed as frivolous spectacles, the author builds a convincing case for the importance of Pride parades as cultural protests at the heart of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Weaving together interviews, archival reports, quantitative data, and ethnographic observations at six diverse contemporary parades in New York City, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Burlington, Fargo, and Atlanta, Bruce describes how Pride parades are a venue for participants to challenge the everyday cultural stigma of being queer in America, all with a flair and sense of fun absent from typical protests. Unlike these political protests that aim to change government laws and policies, Pride parades are coordinated, concerted attempts to improve the standing of LGBT people in American culture.

Mouths of rain : an anthology of Black lesbian thought

"... collection tracing the history of intellectual thought by Black Lesbian writers..."

LGBTQ Social Movements

LGBTQ Social Movements provides an accessible introduction to mainstream LGBTQ movements in the US, illustrating the many forms that LGBTQ activism has taken since the mid-twentieth century.  Covering a range of topics, including the Stonewall uprising and gay liberation, AIDS politics, queer activism, marriage equality fights, youth action, and bisexual and transgender justice, Lisa M. Stulberg explores how marginalized people and communities have used a wide range of political and cultural tools to demand and create change. The five key themes that guide the book are assimilationism and liberationism as complex strategies for equality, the limits and possibilities of legal change, the role of art and popular culture in social change, the interconnectedness of social movements, and the role of privilege in movement organizing. 

Another Appalachia

When Neema Avashia tells people where she's from, their response is nearly always a disbelieving "There are Indian people in West Virginia?" A queer Asian American teacher and writer, Avashia fits few Appalachian stereotypes. But the lessons she learned in childhood about race and class, gender and sexuality continue to inform the way she moves through the world today: how she loves, how she teaches, how she advocates, how she struggles. Another Appalachia examines both the roots and the resonance of Avashia's identity as a queer desi Appalachian woman, while encouraging readers to envision more complex versions of both Appalachia and the nation as a whole.

LGBTQ Americans in the U. S. Political System: an Encyclopedia of Activists, Voters, Candidates, and Officeholders [2 Volumes]

This work provides a broad and authoritative survey of the ways in which gay Americans are influencing the tenor and trajectory of U.S. politics at the local, state, and national levels. An encyclopedic section offers thorough coverage of all of the individuals, organizations, cultural forces, political issues, and legal decisions that have combined to elevate the role of LGBTQ people at the ballot box, on the campaign trail, in Washington, and in mayors' offices, city councils, and school boards across the country.

The Stonewall Riots A Documentary History

Drawing from sources that include mainstream, alternative, and LGBTQ media, gay-bar guide listings, state court decisions, political fliers, first-person accounts, song lyrics, and photographs, Stein paints an indelible portrait of this pivotal moment in the LGBT movement.

Queering Law and Order: LGBTQ Communities and the Criminal Justice System

Kevin Leo Yabut Nadal examines the state of LGBTQ people within the criminal justice system, through legal cases, academic research, and popular media. This book serves as both an academic resource and a call to action for scholars, researchers, and students interested in advocating for LGBTQ rights.

LGBTQ Life in America: Examining the Facts

This book provides readers with a clear and unbiased understanding of what it means to be LGBTQ in the United States in the 2020s. Beginning with the origins of LGBTQ identity and history, the book addresses the current status of the LGBTQ community; gender expectations and performance in American culture; transgender and non-binary identity; behaviors and outcomes associated with LGBTQ people; and, finally, diversity within the LGBTQ community.

For More Information

Please visit our LGBTQ+ Research Guide for more resources related to books, articles, media and reference sources; university, local, and national resources; and links to websites and podcasts. 

Metro Detroit 2023 Pride Events