Recommit to Action All Year Long With This Essential Pride Reading List

Darnell Moore is a seer. In moments of deep hatred and violence, he saw a future for himself as a queer, Black, and whole person. In his advocacy, he envisioned a world where all Black Lives Matter. And now as a creative executive, podcast host, and author, he builds spaces for queer Black people to see themselves as beautiful. No Ashes In The Fire shares this journey of “coming of age Black and free.”

A controversial aspect of the queer experience is the concept of “labels,” and even the acronym LGBTQIA+ relies on labels that leave many in the community feeling silenced and ignored. This all stems from the gender binary, and in this pocket-sized book, Vaid-Menon breaks down why gender isn’t black or white.

Just based on modern media and publishing, one might think that queerness didn’t exist before the late 20th century, and certainly not for Black people. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. In The Prophets, Jones takes readers back to a time in history when being Black and queer was unspeakable, and those who dared to love and be loved were true activists. In this poetic novel, you’ll meet Isaiah and Samuel, two enslaved men in the antebellum South fighting for autonomy and each other.

Janet Mock has been sharing authentic stories for years through the hit TV show Pose and her career as a bestselling author. But before that, she was a young woman trying to make it in an industry, and a country, that wants any marginalized person to stay quiet. In Redefining Realness, Mock, a transgender Black and Hawaiian woman, takes us on her journey before she entered the spotlight.

In this collection of essays, Lester, a singer-songwriter, composer, and activist, explores the transgender experience and expertly breaks down how we collectively relate to our own gender and one another. As cisgender elected officials continue to make sweeping decisions about the lives of transgender people, read this book to learn about the community’s most pressing issues from the perspective of those directly impacted.

So often, Black queer women are erased from the narratives around racial justice work. What we now know to be the Black Lives Matter movement all began as a digital love letter Alicia Garza posted on Facebook after the murder of Trayvon Martin. Her words would become the hashtag tweeted around the world and a rallying cry for a generation. In this book, Garza shares the lessons she’s gleaned about organizing and mobilizing people for change.

To know where we’re going, we have to examine the movements we’ve come from, and in Unapologetic, Carruthers does just that. As the founding national director of the Black Youth Project 100, Carruthers has mastered what few can—building safe activist spaces for queer Black youth—and here, she brings her perspective to a book that can act as a guide for any organizer.

Andrea Mosqueda is a queer Chicana writer, born and raised in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley. Her debut young adult novel takes place in her hometown and is all about passion: for family, for art, for romance. The protagonist, Maggie, is on a mission to find an escort for her little sister’s quinceañera, which brings up a flood of emotions about her own love life. True to the title’s name, queer readers will connect to Maggie’s clumsy journey toward finding herself and her truth in this coming-of-age saga.

Alice Walker is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and activist whose novels and poetry have touched every corner of this world. (Maybe you’ve heard of The Color Purple?) For those new to her work, this compilation of journal entries is the perfect introduction to the woman behind the classics. Coining the term “womanist” to describe a more intersectional approach to feminism, Walker’s work explores race, gender, and sexuality as a reflection of her experiences as a Black, queer woman from the U.S. South.

A common refrain activists reiterate each June is that Pride began as a riot against police violence. While 21st century parades and commercialized observances may lose sight of that, Queer (In)justice is a sobering reminder of all the ways LGBTQ+ people have been historically policed and punished. It’s a harrowing exploration into what it will take to truly dismantle homophobia and transphobia in the U.S.—and the consequences if we don’t.

Picking up where her debut book Redefining Realness left off, Surpassing Certainty finds Mock over the hurdle of teen angst and attempting to take over the New York magazine scene. Toeing the line between authenticity and self-preservation, Mock takes us through her dating woes, roommate drama, and the glitz of being a rising star.