LGBT History Month 2019

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To Celebrate LGBT History month 2019,  we have a dazzling selection of books and magazines for your reading pleasure.
These books feature LGBT+ characters, address LGBT+ issues or were written by LGBT authors. Hear tales of a Jamaican gunman with boyfriend troubles, a preacher's son with problems, Paul O'Gradys memoirs, a novel about a lady and her gardener that was banned multiple times, and a Kosovoan Finn who meets a talking cat in gay bar.

The link to the digital copy can be found below the description and most of these can be found in our book catalogue or in branches.
To find more recommendations, please have a look at  this BAME LGBT author and Book recommendations kindly provided by Lewisham LGBT Forum

Books

 
Trans like me: a journey for all of us
By C. N Lester, 2018.

In Trans Like Me, CN Lester takes listeners on a measured, thoughtful, intelligent yet approachable tour through the most important and high-profile narratives around the trans community, turning them inside out and examining where we really are in terms of progress. From the impact of the media's wording in covering trans people and issues, to the way parenting gender variant children is portrayed, Lester brings their charged personal narrative to every topic and expertly lays out the work left to be done. Trans Like Me explores the ways that we are all defined by ideas of gender--whether we live as he, she, or they--and how we can strive for authenticity in a world that forces limiting labels.
 
Call Me by Your Name
by Andre Aciman, 2011.

 Now a Major Motion Picture from Director Luca Guadagnino, Starring Armie Hammer and Timothe Chalamet, and Written by James Ivory WINNER BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY ACADEMY AWARD Nominated for Four Oscars A New York Times Bestseller A USA Today Bestseller A Los Angeles Times Bestseller A Vulture Book Club Pick An Instant Classic and One of the Great Love Stories of Our Time Andre Aciman's Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera.
Each is unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, when, during the restless summer weeks, unrelenting currents of obsession, fascination, and desire intensify their passion and test the charged ground between them. Recklessly, the two verge toward the one thing both fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy. It is an instant classic and one of the great love stories of our time.
Copies 
 
Mr Loverman 
Bernardine Evaristo, 2014. 
 
[Mr Loverman is] Brokeback Mountain with ackee and saltfish and old people' Dawn French WINNER OF THE JERWOOD FICTION UNCOVERED PRIZE 2014 and FERRO GRUMLEY AWARD FOR LGBT FICTION 2015 Barrington Jedidiah Walker is seventy-four and leads a double life. Born and bred in Antigua, he's lived in Hackney since the sixties. A flamboyant, wise-cracking local character with a dapper taste in retro suits and a fondness for quoting Shakespeare, Barrington is a husband, father and grandfather - but he is also secretly homosexual, lovers with his great childhood friend, Morris. His deeply religious and disappointed wife, Carmel, thinks he sleeps with other women. When their marriage goes into meltdown, Barrington wants to divorce Carmel and live with Morris, but after a lifetime of fear and deception, will he manage to break away? Mr Loverman is a ground-breaking exploration of Britain's older Caribbean community, which explodes cultural myths and fallacies and shows the extent of what can happen when people fear the consequences of being true to themselves. Bernardine Evaristo is the author of seven books including three critically acclaimed verse novels, Lara, The Emperor's Babe and Soul Tourists.

Mr Loverman is her second prose novel, after 2008's Blonde Roots, which was longlisted for the Orange Prize and won the Orange Prize Youth Panel Award. Evaristo's other awards include the EMMA Best Book, Arts Council Award and the Big Red Read Award. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded an MBE in 2009. She lives in London.
 
 
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit  
by Jeanette Winterson, 2009.

This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God's elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts. At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family, for the young woman she loves. Innovative, punchy and tender.
 
The Mathematics of Change
by Amanda Kabak, 2017.

The Mathematics of Change breaks open and breaks down the equation of midlife, proving balance is imaginary and change the only possible solution. The aching and terrible excitement of Carol's affair with her graduate school professor has settled, fifteen years later, into the frustrated complacency of faculty wife responsibilities and motherhood. Carol wants more, but can't have more. She can't have as much, surely, as her best friend, the painfully enigmatic Mitch, who keeps their long-ago erotic relationship irritatingly compartmentalized and spends too much time in her secret lair of an engineering lab. She can't have what the gorgeous new faculty member Abby has - a publishing career, slinky dresses, and a way of prying out vulnerable and damaging confessions from even casual acquaintances. Mitch knows Carol wants more, but she also knows it can't come from her. She's grappling with the terror that comes from knowing she could have everything. Her lab is on the verge of a breakthrough, and then there's Reginald: warm, funny, British, impossibly long-distance, compelling. Except, she's not really talking to Reginald, unless she can't help it. Meanwhile, Carol is talking to her too much and desperately yanking their past out of the mothballs, and Abby's primary scholarship seems to be predatory and tempting advances.Mitch could have more than she ever thought possible, but she can't work out the math. A darkly witty debut novel from the recipient of the 2017Al-Simak Award for Fiction from Arcturus and The Chicago Review of Books.
 
 
Grief Map  The Hellum and Neal in LGBTQIA+ Literature
by Sarah Hahn Campbell, 2017.

Maybe my map will help a little. If only to comfort, to say: someone else visited this place; someone else survived to make this map." When Sarah Hahn Campbell learned of the sudden and inexplicable death of her partner, Lia, she was thousands of miles away from the Alaska town where they made a life together. Lia's mental deterioration had forced her to flee to protect her daughter's safety and her own emotional well-being -- but she never stopped loving Lia, never believed their relationship over.

The unexpected news of Lia's death plunged her into terrible grief, guilt, and self-doubt, raising painful questions she couldn't find the answers to. Grief Map is a beautiful and unflinchingly honest record of the aftermath, a lyrical guide to her journey in the landscape of love through loss and beyond, to the rediscovery of hope and the possibility of happiness. With passion and fearless dedication, Campbell explores the history of her relationship, her discovery of lesbian identity, and the innumerable gifts and hardships of love to offer an account that is part memoir, part poetry, part elegy -- a map that is universal, and will speak to anyone who has loved.
Copies
ISBN: 9781942083504 
Overdrive: Grief Map
 
 
The House on Half Moon Street by Alex Reeve, 2018. 'Enthralling, exciting, extraordinary and utterly convincing. Everything a great book should be' Sarah Hilary 'Wonderfully atmospheric, each page carries the whiff of sulphur and gaslight' Red Everyone has a secret... Only some lead to murder. Introducing Leo Stanhope: a Victorian transgender coroner's assistant who must uncover a killer without risking his own future. When the body of a young woman is wheeled into the hospital where Leo Stanhope works, his life is thrown into chaos. Maria, the woman he loves, has been murdered and it is not long before the finger of suspicion is turned on him, threatening to expose his lifelong secret. For Leo Stanhope was born Charlotte, the daughter of a respectable reverend. Knowing he was meant to be a man - despite the evidence of his body - and unable to cope with living a lie any longer, he fled his family home at just fifteen and has been living as Leo ever since: his secret known to only a few trusted people. Desperate to find Maria's killer and thrown into gaol, he stands to lose not just his freedom, but ultimately his life.
 
 
Boy Erased
By Garrard Conley, 2018.

The son of a Baptist pastor and deeply embedded in church life in small town Arkansas, as a young man Garrard Conley was terrified and conflicted about his sexuality. When Garrard was a nineteen-year-old college student, he was outed to his parents, and was forced to make a life-changing decision: either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy program that promised to "cure" him of homosexuality; or risk losing family, friends, and the God he had prayed to every day of his life.

Through an institutionalised Twelve-Step Program heavy on Bible study, he was supposed to emerge heterosexual, ex-gay, cleansed of impure urges and stronger in his faith in God for his brush with sin. Instead, even when faced with a harrowing and brutal journey, Garrard found the strength and understanding to break out in search of his true self and forgiveness. By confronting his buried past and the burden of a life lived in shadow, Garrard traces the complex relationships among family, faith, and community. At times heartbreaking, at times triumphant, this memoir is a testament to love that survives despite all odds.
 
 
The Life and Loves of a He-Devil
By Graham Norton, 2015.
Graham Norton has been entertaining audiences and having fun with some of the world's biggest stars for nearly 20 years.
He is loved across the nation for his delight in the peculiar and for his ability to find humour and a common ground in all that life brings. 'The Life and Loves of a He Devil' is Graham's funny and honest memoir on the theme of love, telling his story from his Irish childhood to the present day, describing just what and who he loved - and sometimes lost - as a young boy, and his new loves and obsessions - big and small - as he's grown older .
 
 
Lady Chatterley's Lover
by D. H. Lawrence, 2012.

Connie was aware, however, of a growing restlessness...It thrilled inside her body, in her womb, somewhere, till she felt she must jump into water and swim to get away from it; a mad restlessness. It made her heart beat violently for no reason...' Lady Constance Chatterley is trapped in a loveless marriage to a man who is impotent. Oppressed by her dreary life, she is drawn to Mellors the gamekeeper.
Breaking out against the constraints of society she yields to her instinctive desire for him and discovers the transforming power of physical love which leads them both towards fulfilment. Banned for many years for its frank depiction of sex, Lady Chatterley's Lover was first published by Penguin in 1960 and was at the centre of a sensational obscenity trial at the Old Bailey. D. H. Lawrence himself called it 'the most improper novel in the world'.
 
 
Sons and Lovers
by D. H. Lawrence, 2012.

Paul Morel is the focus of his disappointed and fiercely protective mother's life. Their tender, devoted and intense bond comes under strain when Paul falls in love with Miriam Leivers, a local girl his mother disapproves of. The arrival of the provocatively modern Clara Dawes causes further tension and Paul is torn between his individual desires and family allegiances. Set in a Nottinghamshire mining town at the turn of the twentieth century, this is a powerful portrayal of family and love in all its forms.
 
 
At My Mother's Knee...And Other Low Joints
by Paul O'Grady, 2008.

Paul O'Grady is one of Britain's very best loved entertainers. He is known and adored by millions, whether as the creator of the acid-tongued Blonde Bombsite, Lily Savage, the presenter of the fantastically successful, award-winning Paul O'Grady Show on Channel 4 or the massive hit ITV show, For the Love of Dogs. Now, in his own unique voice, Paul O'Grady tells story of his early life in Irish Catholic Birkenhead that started him on the long and winding road from mischievous altar boy to national treasure. It is a brilliantly evoked, hilarious and often moving tale of gossip in the back yard, bragging in the corner shop and slanging matches on the front doorstep, populated by larger-than-life characters with hearts of gold and tongues as sharp as razors.

At My Mother's Knee features an unforgettable cast of rogues, rascals, lovers, fighters, saints and sinners - and one iconic bus conductress. It's a book which really does have something for everyone and which reminds us that, when all's said and done, there's a bit of savage in all of us...
 
 
Under the Udala Trees
by Chinelo Okparanta, 2015.
 
Under the Udala Trees is a deeply searching, powerful debut about living and loving openly. Ijeoma comes of age as her nation does; born before independence, she is eleven when civil war breaks out in the young republic of Nigeria. Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child, and the star-crossed pair fall in love. They are from different ethnic communities. They are also both girls. When their love is discovered, Ijeoma learns that she will have to hide this part of herself. But there is a cost to living inside a lie.As Edwidge Danticat has made personal the legacy of Haiti's political coming-of-age, Okparanta's Under the Udala Trees uses one woman's lifetime to examine the ways in which Nigerians continue to struggle toward selfhood. 
Even as their nation contends with and recovers from the effects of war and division, Nigerian lives are wrecked and lost from taboo and prejudice. But this story offers a glimmer of hope-a future where a woman might just be able to shape her life around truth and love
 
 
Time on Two Crosses:The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin
by Devon Carbado, 2014.

 In 1956 Bayard Rustin taught Martin Luther King Jr. strategies of nonviolence during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, thereby launching the civil rights movement. Widely acclaimed as a founding father of modern black protest, Rustin reached international notoriety in 1963 as the openly gay organizer of the March on Washington. Long before the March on Washington, Rustin's leadership placed him at the vanguard of social protest.
His gay identity, however, became a point of contention with the movement, with the controversy embroiling even King himself. Time on Two Crosses offers an insider's view of many of the defining political moments of our time. From Gandhi's impact on African Americans, white supremacists in Congress, and the assassination of Malcolm X to Rustin's never-before-published essays on Louis Farrakhan, affirmative action, and the call for gay rights, Time on Two Crosses chronicles five decades of Rustin's commitment to justice and equality.
 
 
Go Tell it on the Mountain
by James Baldwin, 2001.

 'I had to deal with what hurt me most. I had to deal with my father.' Drawing on James Baldwin's own boyhood in a religious community in 1930s Harlem, his first novel tells the story of young Johnny Grimes. Johnny is destined to become a preacher like his father, Gabriel, at the Temple of the Fire Baptized, where the church swells with song and it is as if 'the Holy Ghost were riding on the air'. But he feels only scalding hatred for Gabriel, whose fear and fanaticism lead him to abuse his family. Johnny vows that, for him, things will be different.
This blazing tale is full of passion and guilt, of secret sinners and prayers singing on the wind. 'His prose hit me, almost winding me with its intensity. I'd never read a novel that described loneliness and desire with such burning eloquence' Douglas Field, Guardian
 
 
Notes of a Native Son
 by James Baldwin, 2012.

 #26 on The Guardian's list of 100 best nonfiction books of all time, the essays explore what it means to be Black in America In an age of Black Lives Matter, James Baldwin's essays on life in Harlem, the protest novel, movies, and African Americans abroad are as powerful today as when they were first written. With films like I Am Not Your Negro and the forthcoming If Beale Street Could Talk bringing renewed interest to Baldwin's life and work, Notes of a Native Son serves as a valuable introduction. Written during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his twenties, the essays collected in Notes of a Native Son capture a view of black life and black thought at the dawn of the civil rights movement and as the movement slowly gained strength through the words of one of the most captivating essayists and foremost intellectuals of that era.

Writing as an artist, activist, and social critic, Baldwin probes the complex condition of being black in America. With a keen eye, he examines everything from the significance of the protest novel to the motives and circumstances of the many black expatriates of the time, from his home in "The Harlem Ghetto" to a sobering "Journey to Atlanta." Notes of a Native Son inaugurated Baldwin as one of the leading interpreters of the dramatic social changes erupting in the United States in the twentieth century, and many of his observations have proven almost prophetic. His criticism on topics such as the paternalism of white progressives or on his own friend Richard Wright's work is pointed and unabashed. He was also one of the few writing on race at the time who addressed the issue with a powerful mixture of outrage at the gross physical and political violence against black citizens and measured understanding of their oppressors, which helped awaken a white audience to the injustices under their noses. Naturally, this combination of brazen criticism and unconventional empathy for white readers won Baldwin as much condemnation as praise.  Notes is the book that established Baldwin's voice as a social critic, and it remains one of his most admired works. The essays collected here create a cohesive sketch of black America and reveal an intimate portrait of Baldwin's own search for identity as an artist, as a black man, and as an American.
 
 
Mislaid
by Nell Zink, 2015.

'Nell Zink is a writer of extraordinary talent and range. Her work insistently raises the possibility that the world is larger and stranger than the world you think you know.' Jonathan Franzen Virginia, 1966. The motionless deeps of the lake outside Stillwater College are being ruffled. Lee, a blue-blooded poet and professor, is determinedly fondling Peggy, an ingénue freshman with literary pretensions, in his canoe. So begins a long affair but the two are mismatched from the start. The story that follows rocks the boat in every sense. Nell Zink's hugely entertaining, totally unique Mislaid explodes the nuclear family and topples every foundation of identity - black and white, gay and straight, "normal" and very, very strange.
 
The Argonauts
by Maggie Nelson, 2016.
 
A genre-bending memoir that offers fierce and fresh reflections on motherhood, desire, identity and feminism. At the centre is a love-story, between Nelson and the artist Harry Dodge, who is undergoing gender reassignment, while Nelson undergoes the transformations of pregnancy.
Personal, honest and wide-ranging, Nelson explores the challenges and complexities that make up a modern family.
 
 
A Brief History of Seven Killings
by Marlon James, 2014.

In A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James combines masterful storytelling with his unrivaled skill at characterization and his meticulous eye for detail to forge a novel of dazzling ambition and scope. On December 3, 1976, just before the Jamaican general election and two days before Bob Marley was to play the Smile Jamaica Concert to ease political tensions in Kingston, seven unnamed gunmen stormed the singer's house, machine guns blazing. The attack wounded Marley, his wife, and his manager, and injured several others. Little was officially released about the gunmen, but rumors abounded regarding the assassins' fates. A Brief History of Seven Killings is James's fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time in Jamaica's history and beyond.

Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters-assassins, drug dealers, journalists, and even ghosts-James brings to life the people who walked the streets of 1970s Kingston, who dominated the crack houses of 1980s New York, and who reemerged into a radically altered Jamaica of the 1990s. Brilliantly inventive, A Brief History of Seven Killings is an "exhilarating" (The New York Times) epic that's been called "a tour de force" (The Wall Street Journal).
 
 
The Well of Loneliness
by Radclyffe Hall, 2014.
 
'As a man loved a woman, that was how I loved.It was good, good, good.' Stephen is an ideal child of aristocratic parents - a fencer, a horse rider and a keen scholar. Stephen grows to be a war hero, a bestselling writer and a loyal, protective lover. But Stephen is a woman, and her lovers are women. As her ambitions drive her, and society confines her, Stephen is forced into desperate actions. The Well of Loneliness was banned for obscenity when published in 1928. It became an international bestseller, and for decades was the single most famous lesbian novel. It has influenced how love between women is understood, for the twentieth century and beyond.
 
 
Orlando
by Virginia Woolf, 2014.

Orlando, a young nobleman and one of Queen Elizabeth I's court favourites, is the object of many ladies' attentions, but after suffering heartbreak he prefers literary pursuits to entertaining any thoughts of marriage.

Having obtained an ambassadorial post in Constantinople, Orlando falls into a long sleep and wakes up suddenly transformed into a woman. Also blessed with the gift of never ageing, she embarks on adventurous travels throughout Europe and the following centuries, observing what it is like to be female. A "fantastical biography" inspired by the life of the flamboyant writer Vita Sackville-West, Orlando is an amusing and eccentric jeu d'esprit, as well as a groundbreaking exploration of gender issues.
 
 
My Cat Yugoslavia
By Pajtim Statovci, 2018.

An internationally acclaimed debut novel about war, family, love and belonging - and a talking cat. Yugoslavia, 1980s: a 16-year-old Muslim girl named Emine is married off to a man she hardly knows. But what was meant to be a happy match soon goes terribly wrong. Her country is torn apart by war and she flees with her family. Decades later Emine's son, Bekim, has grown up a social outcast in Finland; both an immigrant in a country suspicious of foreigners, and a gay man in an unaccepting society. Aside from casual hookups, his only friend is a boa constrictor whom he lets roam his apartment - even though he is terrified of snakes.

But one night in a gay bar, Bekim meets a talking cat who moves in with him and his snake. This witty, charming, manipulative creature starts Bekim on a journey back to Kosovo to confront his demons and make sense of the remarkable, cruel history of his family. It is a journey that will eventually lead him to love. Pajtim Statovci was born in 1990 and moved from Kosovo to Finland with his family when he was two years old. Published in Finland in 2014, his debut novel, My Cat Yugoslavia, received widespread acclaim among critics and readers alike, and won the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize in the category Best Debut. The novel has so far been translated into eleven languages. At present, Pajtim Statovci is undertaking master's degrees in comparative literature at the University of Helsinki and in screenwriting at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture.
 

Magazines

We have over 660 magazines titles and their back issues too through RB Digital. Find inspiration, gossip, history and learn something new with our wide selection of magazines. Browse your library's collection of popular magazine titles with no holds, no checkout periods, and no limit to the number of magazines you can download. This service is available through a computer as well as through an app you can download to your phone or tablet. To use this service, you will need you library card and to create a username and password. 

 

 

DIVA

Launched in March 1994 and now celebrating 15 years in 2009, DIVA is the leading lesbian magazine in Europe if not the world. To celebrate our 15th Birthday we have just introduced a new design and look with fresh new content from a lesbian perspective and now offer the magazine online to down load as a single issue or subscription. This means anyone in the world can now buy Diva for digital delivery to your desktop for the same cost to buy it in the shops in the UK.
Copies
Copy: RB Digital: Diva
Attitude Magazine

The World’s Best Gay Magazine. We pride ourselves on exclusive content and we are the premier destination for film, music, sports and pop stars plus LGBT heroes and allies that want to speak directly to gay men. Each issue has a balance of features on a diverse range of subjects, with block busting A-list celebrity exclusives and in-depth analysis of news and issues affecting the LGBT community. No other gay magazine can come anywhere near Attitude’s star pulling power, with celebrities such as James Franco, Tom Hardy, Elton John, Sacha Baron Cohen, Ian McKellen, Liam Payne, Take That, Matthew Lewis and countless more giving exclusive gay press interviews to us. Plus we have the likes of Paris Lees, Matt Lucas, David Furnish, not only appearing in the magazine but also writing for it.
OUT

Out is America's premiere general interest and style magazine for gay men. Sexy, smart, and sophisticated, it inspires readers with captivating feature stories, striking fashion layouts, and lively entertainment reviews. Out. Discover what's in. Filled with interviews, fashion, travel, celebrities and more for gay life today.
 

Film

Find Independent film from all around the word right on your phone. There is LGBT+, Action & Adventure, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Documentaries, Dramas, Series, Sports, Cult Classics, Animation, Comedies and more. To access these services, sign into your RB Digital account, then click on IndieFlix You will then get a pass for 7 days which you can renew as often as you want.
 

Stingray Qello

 Watch the world's largest collection of on-demand, full-length performances, concert films, and music documentaries. New releases added weekly. To access this service, sign into your RB Digital account then click Stingray Qello. You will then get a pass for seven days which you can renew as often as you like.


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Location: London Borough of Lewisham, UK

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