Out and proud! If you want to learn more about the history of the LGBT rights movement, we've discovered some great recently published books, and unearthed some classics to remind you about. 

The Stonewall Reader

This collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers documents both the years leading up to, and the years following, the Stonewall riots of 1969. It presents a broad spectrum of the people who observed and built the modern LGBT rights movement.

Love and Resistance: Out of the Closet Into the Stonewall Era

A selection of photographs curated from the NYPL collections that highlights LGBT life in the 60s and 70s.

We Are Everywhere

Pushing beyond one-dimensional stories of gays and lesbians who are "just like everybody else," Riemer and Brown show us the radicals, the bisexuals, the gender warriors, the women, the people of color, and the militants who have always led the fight for liberation.

The Book of Pride

Presents interviews and short biographies of folks who influenced the gay rights movement from the 1960s to the present. 

Marriage Equality Supreme Court Decision

Full text of the historic 2015 Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage.

​When Brooklyn Was Queer

The never-before-told story of Brooklyn's vibrant and forgotten queer history, from the mid-1850s (including Walt Whitman!) up to the present day.

Zami

Audre Lorde is known as a black lesbian feminist poet, and Zami is her fast-moving chronicle. From the author's vivid childhood memories in Harlem to her coming of age in the late 1950s, this book especially relates the linkage of women who have shaped her.

If fiction is more your style, we don't want you to feel left out! We've decided to focus on classics and novels that depict our beloved city of New York, long a gay haven whether in the shadows or the streetlights. 

The Price of Salt

Published under a pseudonym in the early 1950s, this is a complicated love story featuring a young ingenue and a bored and alluring suburban housewife. Vintage Patricia Highsmith, with some truly stunning descriptions of New York City.  

Dancer From the Dance

The story of a gay man looking for love in post-Stonewall New York City, and finding it rather unexpectedly with a campy, quintessential queen named Sutherland. 

Tales of the City

​Now a Netflix series, Tales of the City is both a sparkling comedy of manners and an indelible portrait of an era—1970s San Francisco—that forever changed the way we live.

Julian is a Mermaid

Julian is riding the train with his abuela and sees three extravagantly dressed mermaids on their way to Coney Island. He daydreams about them, and his grandma encourages him to express himself.

What Was Stonewall?

How did a spontaneous protest outside of a New York City bar 50 years ago spark a social movement across America? Find out in this nonfiction book aimed at 8-11 year olds. 
 

Some of these books are available through our website, and all are available on-site in the Library Shop.