My Personal Reading Reccommendations for June

In June, we celebrate PRIDE – a march and celebration that honors the Stonewall Riots, also known as the Stonewall Uprising, which occurred on June 28th, 1969. The event ultimately fueled numerous gay rights organizations and activist groups into action that would continue as a yearly tradition. Currently, PRIDE also serves as a hallmark tradition for those who support LGBTQ+ rights, unity, peace, and ongoing activism.

With PRIDE as our stage, it’s natural to find loads and loads of suggestions on how best to celebrate, especially in the literary space. Even now, reading lists dominate my screen as I attempt to write this article. Admittedly, I didn’t know where to start because LGBTQ+ stories are a blind spot for me. There are not many titles in my personal library that showcase these stories and part of that reason is because I failed to look for them. I’ll take ownership of that.

Therefore, I took a look at all the reading lists that have been popping up for me and created a short list for myself – a recommended reading list that personally excited me. I don’t want to read and recommend LGBTQ+ stories only because it’s the June trend. I want to fill my library with titles that, by only glancing at their summaries, make me itch to read them.

So now, without further ado, and in no particular preference order – here are 5 recommended reads for you based off of my personal must read list:

1. Carry On, Rainbow Rowell

I first learned of this book and the amazing hype surrounding it when I was working at my university bookstore in 2016. The book had come out the previous October and though I had not yet read anything by Rainbow Rowell, I was intrigued by the natural weight Rowell held (and still holds) in the young adult literature space. Sequential to Fan Girl, Carry On is intended to be the fictional story created by the fictional character in Fan Girl – talk about world building! It marks itself as both a mystery and magical love story. Folks have described it as a “delightfully gay story that fully embraces the identity and narrative for the characters.” Rowell has several other titles under their belt and, quite frankly, I want to read them all. But I had to call out Carry On because of the magical elements in the story that personally entices me as a reader.

2. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Benjamin Alire

Another YA-recommendation from my university bookstore days, is a story that follows Saenz Aristotle and Dante who meet and develop the kind of relationship I think we all strive for – one that essentially can take on the world! I say this because in researching more about this book, I learned that our two leads will uncover truths about themselves and their world with respect to racial and ethnic identity, family relationships, and of course gender and sexuality. I view this as a potential coming of age story grounded in the real world.

3. The Devourers, Indras Das

So this one is currently sitting on my bookshelf because I was attracted to its themes of Indian folklore. I was surprised to find it on an LGBTQ+ reading list and learned that its other themes focus on a vast representation of cultures, gender issues, and sexualities amongst elements of fantasy. I dug more into it because readers seemed to have mixed reviews about the text. The story follows two leads whose voices are entirely different. The world is filled with monsters and beasts, specifically werewolves. The addressing of gender and sexuality is through an adult lens and handles themes of rape and violence alongside them. I don’t quite know how to best classify this book and perhaps there’s no one category for it. Instead, maybe the book is best thought of as a very niche story that can speak volumes to whichever theme the reader is intent on focusing on. What has been made clear to me by other readers though is that Das’s work handles sexuality in a way that enlightens readers to the very real dangers that still exist today: discrimination, violence, harm, and even death. These are true fears for individuals whose identities may not align with the majority of their community. And this is not just with respect to sexual orientation. This book contains humans, beasts, and half-breeds who lie somewhere in between. There’s a species difference, a gender difference, and other majority vs minority angles we are given to consider.

4. Will Grayson, Will Grayson, John Green and David Levithan

Love story alert! Or at least, that’s what my brain tells me whenever I see John Green. My first John Green book was The Fault in Our Stars so by my personal bias, John Green is automatically on my list. The way I can describe this story is it’s a typical high school story with not-so typical characters in its focus. Two Will Graysons, very opposite in character, lifestyle, and with respect to their inner and outer conflicts. Will Greyson’s story is centered around his action of having defended an old friend that a school board member took issue with because the student was a gay football player. This action is what causes Will’s world to unravel - his place in society starts to shift and his relationships with his friends start to falter. On the other hand, will grayson, intentionally referenced with lower caps in the novel, deals with inner conflict. He’s a gay character, sometimes referenced as “tragically so,” and struggles to come to terms with his own personal identity. When the two meet - that’s it! Their fates are forever intertwined and the love story truly begins amidst their individual challenges of navigating life. Another coming of age story for sure, but I also appreciate the duality in its nature and the way the story promises to handle the inner and outer conflicts for both leads.

5. Meet Cute Diary, Emery Lee

We’re finishing this list with another love story find. Main character Noah Ramirez considers himself the expert on romance and shows it via his very-popular “Meet Cute”. However, the truth is that the stories are absolutely fake as they originate purely from within our main character's heart: the heart of a trans boy still in the closet. This blog then grew into something even greater for other trans readers who love, and in a sense, need the diary. Expose the truth, you risk destroying all those readers’ hopes which is exactly what someone threatens to do by exposing the blog as fiction. In an attempt to save the blog, and something more important, Noah and Drew (our other main lead) fake-date. While I’m not too clear on the “how” of this arrangement – was Noah already out at this point, does Drew know the blog exists, does Drew have his own intentions that he’s hiding in this fake relationship – I am nonetheless hooked. I love fake-relationship stories because, yes, real feelings inevitably become real and I’m rooting for it without having read more than the synopsis. This kind of plot is very expected of straight characters so it’s so wonderful to see this journey for others who identify differently. Everyone, regardless of how they identify, are subject to these kinds of high school entanglements and the high schooler in me loves the drama.

So there it is, my personal list of LGBTQ+ recommended reads. I understand you can simply google search your way through most of the regular recommendations, but these are the stories that speak to me and overlap with other themes that I always look for in books. If you happen to pick up a copy of any of these books, I hope they don’t disappoint!

Article edited by Lola Lujan.