Queer Classics For Every Bookshelf (and a few modern ones too)
Hot on the heels of Mardi Gras, we’re celebrating the power, diversity and strength that the LGBTQ+ literary scene has offered us over the years - and is still offering us, as the demand and desire for more inclusive writing only grows stronger.
We’ve put together a list of some of the best queer classics (and a few modern titles too). These books have much to offer in lessons about LGBTQ+ history and struggle, while also depicting sensuous and passionate stories of love and longing. Whether coming out or coming of age, these varied books offer readers a chance to see themselves in their pages.
Orlando, by Virginia Woolf (1928)
Woolf wrote Orlando as a tribute to her friend and lover Vita Sackville-West, and the book is an exquisite study in gender fluidity. Orlando, our protagonist, starts as a dashing young nobleman in Elizabethan England, finding favour with the queen before falling out with her and indulging liberally in sex with various women. Later, Orlando is sent on a diplomatic mission to Constantinople, where he undergoes a gender switch to find he's become a woman. This offers Woolf an opportunity to comment on the limitations that society places on women. The book ends in 1928, with Orlando still a woman, with a husband and children, and a new sense of possibility.
Giovanni's Room, by James Baldwin (1956)
Detailing the fraught relationship between American David and Italian bartender Giovanni, David narrates the tale of their time together over a night that is leading to a morning of terrible events that will tear them apart. This terrible morning, we discover, is the day of Giovanni’s execution. David recounts the tumult of their love affair and sketches a complex portrait of masculinity. It is a vivid and powerful read.
In Another Place, Not Here by Dionne Brand (1996)
This novel captures the brief refuge that two Caribbean women find in each other during the midst of a political uprising. Elizete and Verlia are two very different women: Elizete is from the island, enduring a harsh daily existence, while Verlia is from city, returning home with hopes of revolution. Both have dreams of flight and escape. Brand’s poetic language and Caribbean vernacular add to the fierce sensuality of the novel, described by Adrienne Rich as “a work of great beauty and moral imagination.”
The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (2015)
An instant modern classic, The Argonauts is an experimental memoir that explores the joys and complexities of queer love and queer family making. Nelson chronicles her own pregnancy and relationship with artist Harry Dodge in a spirit of radical, intellectual inquiry, touching on subjects from gender theory to art criticism. It is filled with glorious lines like this: “Just as the Argo’s parts may be replaced over time but the boat is still called the Argo, whenever the lover utters the phrase “I love you,” its meaning must be renewed by each use, as ‘the very task of love and of language is to give to one and the same phrase inflections which will be forever new.’” A mindblowing read.
The Price of Salt, by Patricia Highsmith (1952)
Based on an encounter Highsmith had with a New Jersey socialite while working at a department store, The Price of Salt tells of the love affair between Therese Belivet and Carol Aird. With dizzying, erotically charged prose, we follow Therese, a stage designer trapped in a department-store day job, and Carol, an alluring suburban housewife in the throes of a divorce. They fall in love and set out across the United States, pursued by a private investigator who eventually blackmails Carol into a choice between her daughter and her lover. Originally published under a psyeudym (as Highsmith was concerned with how the book would be received) it is a bold depiction of desire between two women that surprised readers with its hopeful, rather than tragic, ending.
A Single Man, by Christopher Isherwood (1962)
This short novel tracks the experiences of an aging college professor, George, in Los Angeles. Following the loss of his partner in a car accident, George matter-of-factly plots his suicide. But, life gets in the way, and after finding others suffering as much as he is, George has a change of heart. A quietly devastating foray into love, loss and loneliness.
Zami, by Audre Lorde (1982)
It doesn’t get more iconic than this. Queer black poet Audre Lorde’s autobiography is an intersectionality experience, with Lorde classifying it as ‘biomythography’ - a combination of history, biography and myth. The Advocate sums it up perfectly as “a fierce love letter to the strength women have given her throughout her upbringing; the book explores her challenges growing up blind in 1930s Harlem, fighting for dignity in the heat of Jim Crow, and finding a voice in the New York City lesbian bar scene.”
A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara (2015)
Hanya Yanagihara’s story of four college friends — Jude, Malcolm, JB, and Willem — was shortlisted for the Booker and details the evolution of friendship and love between them throughout three decades. Over the years, their relationships deepen and darken, and we witness the waves of trauma and hardship caused by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their most significant challenge is Jude himself, who becomes a talented, if terrifying, litigator and an increasingly broken man. At over 700 pages, this is an epic, important and heartbreaking novel.
Elaine Mead is a freelance writer and book reviewer, currently residing in Hobart, Tasmania. She is passionate about the ways we can use literature to learn from our experiences to become more authentic versions of ourselves and obsessed with showing you photos of her Dachshund puppy. You can find her online under @wordswithelaine.
