It is so easy to look back at the history of queer literature and see only what was lacking. It’s easy to imagine myself as a teenager in the 1970s instead of the 2000s, wandering the aisles of my local bookshop, searching for books about queer women that didn’t yet exist. Maybe you were that teenager. What’s harder — or, at least, what we’re less inclined to do — is to look back at the past 50 years of queer books and see abundance. There is abundance in our past. Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room came out in 1956. One of my favorite reads of this year so far, The Tree and the Vine by Dola de Jong, was published in 1954. Have you read Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet (1943) or Nightwood by Djuna Barnes (1936)? I mention these books because the list below doesn’t start until 1970. Queer people have been telling our own stories since the beginning of stories. So let’s celebrate that, while also celebrating how much more queer lit exists today. I have to admit that I struggled, putting this list together. I wanted it to reflect the astounding diversity of the past 50 years of queer lit. But that’s an impossible task; there are just too many books. What I ended up with is something organic and eclectic. I didn’t use a scientific method. This isn’t a list of the most popular queer books by decade, or the most influential. It’s a mix of classics and lesser-known titles. It includes books that were pivotal in some way, that shook up publishing, books that were firsts. It also includes books that are meaningful to me, personally. To simplify, I limited myself to books published in the U.S., UK, and Canada. I picked five books for each decade, a mix of fiction, nonfiction, sci-fi and fantasy, and poetry. There are books here by queer authors of many genders, races, and sexualities, but it’s not a representative of every queer identity: again, impossible. For me, this list is a living history. These books remind me that it’s okay — even necessary — to hold onto some stories from the past, even as we charge into the future. Those stories can still teach and inspire us, move and delight us, challenge us to keep shouting and singing and reading and protesting — just like our queer forebears during that first Pride 50 years ago.
1970–1979
Further Reading: On Lit Hub, Sandra Gail Lambert rounded up 10 Great Reads From the Feminist Lesbian Sci-Fi Boom of the 1970s.
1980–1989
Further Reading: The 1980s saw an explosion of science fiction and fantasy featuring queer characters.
1990–1999
Further Reading: Rioter Rachel Rosenberg wrote about some of the lesbian books she remembers from the 1990s. You might also want to check out these ’90s lesbian book covers.
2000–2009
Further Reading: Honestly, there are so many queer books from this decade! You’ll find quite a few perusing our LGBTQ+ archives.
2010–2019
Further Reading: Check out this list of 80 of the best queer, lesbian and bisexual books of the decade from Autostraddle.
3 Must-Read Queer Books From 2020
Further Reading: I mean, where do I even start? You could spend the next two years reading through these three lists of the best queer books from 2020.
My 3 Favorite Queer Books of 2021 (So Far)
The Future of Queer Lit
Queer lit has a long, rich history. I am immeasurably grateful for the queer writers of the past, who were often writing at a time when publishing queer books was not as easy as it is today (though it’s certainly not always easy today, especially for queer authors with other marginalized identities). I will keep on reading queer books from decades past for as long as I live. Those queer writers made the gorgeousness of today’s queer lit possible. And friends, it is truly gorgeous. 2021 marks the beginning of a new decade, and queer lit is careening into the future with bells on and rainbow flags flying. I recently made a list of 20 must-read queer books coming out in June, and I didn’t even include every queer book publishing this month. And that’s only June. There are so many more coming out throughout the rest of the year. And that’s only 2021. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the decade brings.
