LGBTQ - Nonfiction

This list has been created by a Library Assistant at Wake County Public Libraries (WCPL) and encompasses *most* of the LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, plus other identitites such as, intersex, asexual, aromantic, demisexual, demiromantic, nonbinary, genderqueer, and more) titles categorized under "Nonfiction" and "Biography" in the WCPL collection as of March 11, 2025.

Showing 1 - 19 of 19  There are a total of 257 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "Watford forever"
Star rating for Watford forever
Description:
"The story of how one of Britain's biggest stars transformed the fortunes of a struggling football club. Britain in the 1970s was beset by unrest and unemployment. Meanwhile, Watford FC were floundering in 92nd place at the bottom of the entire Football League. Enter Elton John, now the most successful rockstar in the world and a lifelong fan of the club. Watford Forever is the remarkable story of Elton John's ownership of Watford Football Club and...
Book cover for "Farewell yellow brick road"
Star rating for Farewell yellow brick road
Author:
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"In this lavish celebration authored by the icon himself, Elton John shares his fondest memories, most unforgettable moments, and previously untold stories of his record-breaking final tour. Readers will get a behind-the-scenes glimpse into every aspect of this globe-spanning spectacle, including Elton's legendary touring wardrobe by Gucci, official photography, and more. As the tour weaves across the world, Elton reaches back in time to reflect on...
Book cover for "Gays on Broadway"
Star rating for Gays on Broadway
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"This is a chronological review of both the plays and the people that brought the world of homosexuals, bisexuals, transexuals, metrosexuals, and the sexually fluid to the American stage. The plays--which take in a few foreign imports--treat strong gay content (e. g., The Boys in the Band or The Killing of sister George), or minor gay content (Season In the Sun, The Nervous Set), or even a phrase in passing (as in New Faces of 1956's joke about Rome's...
Book cover for "Jan Morris"
Star rating for Jan Morris
Description:
"When Jan Morris passed away in 2020, she was considered one of Britain's best-loved writers. The author of Venice, Pax Britannica, Conundrum, and more than fifty other books, her work was known for its observational genius, lyricism, and humor, and had earned her a passionate readership around the world. Morris's life was no less fascinating than her oeuvre. Born James Humphry Morris in 1926, a childhood spent amidst Oxford's Gothic beauty and military...
Book cover for "The new guys"
Star rating for The new guys
Description:
"The never-before-told story of the barrier-breaking NASA class of 1978, which for the first time consisted of a diverse crew of women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and more, and their triumphs and tragedies working on the newly launched space shuttle program, with the exclusive cooperation of five astronauts"--
Book cover for "Zami"
Star rating for Zami
Author:
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"Lorde, best known for her [poetry] and essays, leaves us with this ... autobiography of her early years as a writer, and as a struggling black lesbian in NYC. Slowly, through gentle inflections of her Grenadian roots and development of the ideas of Caricou society, she stitches together a number of very personal 'mythographies,' ultimately weaving a ... telling of her life"--Review on Amazon.com.
Book cover for "A wild and precious life"
Star rating for A wild and precious life
Description:
"A lively, intimate memoir from an icon of the gay rights movement, describing gay life in 1950s and 60s New York City and her longtime activism which opened the door for marriage equality. Edie Windsor became internationally famous when she sued the US government, seeking federal recognition for her marriage to Thea Spyer, her partner of more than four decades. The Supreme Court ruled in Edie's favor, a landmark victory that set the stage for full...
Book cover for "Black folk could fly"
Star rating for Black folk could fly
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"A personal, social, and intellectual self-portrait of the beloved and enormously influential late Randall Kenan, a master of both fiction and nonfiction. Virtuosic in his use of literary forms, nurtured and unbounded by his identities as a Black man, a gay man, an intellectual, and a Southerner, Randall Kenan was known for his groundbreaking fiction. Less visible were his extraordinary nonfiction essays, published as introductions to anthologies...
Book cover for "Secret city"
Star rating for Secret city
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"For decades, the specter of homosexuality haunted Washington. The mere suggestion that a person might be gay destroyed reputations, ended careers, and ruined lives. At the height of the Cold War, fear of homosexuality became intertwined with the growing threat of international communism, leading to a purge of gays and lesbians from the federal government. ... Utilizing thousands of pages of declassified documents, interviews with more than one hundred...
Book cover for "Fire Island"
Star rating for Fire Island
Description:
A definitive history of New York's Fire Island examines how it has been a vital space in the history of queer America and a key influence on art, literature, culture, and politics.
Book cover for "Logical family"
Star rating for Logical family
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:

""I fell in love with Maupin's effervescent Tales of the City decades ago, and his genius turn at memoir is no less compelling. Logical Family is a must read.""—Mary Karr

In this long-awaited memoir, the beloved author of the bestselling Tales of the City series chronicles his odyssey from the old South to freewheeling San Francisco, and his evolution from curious youth to ground-breaking writer and gay rights pioneer.

Armistead

...
Book cover for "The cancer journals"
Star rating for The cancer journals
Author:
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"First published over forty years ago, The Cancer Journals is a startling, powerful account of Audre Lorde's experience with breast cancer and mastectomy. Long before narratives explored the silences around illness and women's pain, Lorde questioned the rules of conformity for women's body images and supported the need to confront physical loss not hidden by prosthesis. Living as a "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," Lorde heals and re-envisions...
Book cover for "The unpunished vice"
Star rating for The unpunished vice
Average Rating:
4 stars
Book cover for "Paper bullets"
Star rating for Paper bullets
Description:
"The true story of an audacious resistance campaign undertaken by an unlikely pair: two French women--Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe --who drew on their skills as Parisian avant-garde artists to write and distribute wicked insults against Hitler and calls to desert, a PSYOPs tactic known as 'paper bullets,' designed to demoralize Nazi troops occupying their adopted home of Jersey in the British Channel Islands"--
Book cover for "Mouths of rain"
Star rating for Mouths of rain
Description:
"A groundbreaking collection tracing the history of intellectual thought by Black Lesbian writers, in the tradition of The New Press's perennial seller Words of Fire"--
Book cover for "The fifties"
Star rating for The fifties
Average Rating:
1 stars
Description:
"A bold and original argument that upends the myth of the Fifties as a decade of conformity to celebrate the solitary, brave, and stubborn individuals who pioneered the radical gay rights, feminist, civil rights, and environmental movements, from historian James R. Gaines"--
Book cover for "Tinderbox"
Star rating for Tinderbox
Average Rating:
1.5 stars
Description:
"Robert W. Fiesler chronicles the tragic event that claimed the lives of thirty-one men and one woman on June 24, 1973, at a New Orleans bar, the largest mass murder of gays until 2016. Relying on unprecedented access to survivors and archives, Fieseler creates an indelible portrait of a closeted, blue-collar gay world that flourished before an arsonist ignited an inferno that destroyed an entire community. The aftermath was no less traumatic--familes...
Book cover for "A night at the Sweet Gum Head"
Star rating for A night at the Sweet Gum Head
Description:
"An electric and intimate story of 1970s gay Atlanta through its bedazzling drag clubs and burgeoning rights activism. Coursing with a pumped-up beat, gay Atlanta was the South's mecca-a beacon for gays and lesbians growing up in its homophobic towns and cities. There, the Sweet Gum Head was the club for achieving drag stardom. Martin Padgett evokes the fantabulous disco decade by going deep into the lives of two men who shaped and were shaped by...
Book cover for "Gay bar"
Star rating for Gay bar
Description:
"Strobing lights and dark rooms; throbbing house and drag queens on counters; first kisses, last call: the gay bar has long been a place of solidarity and sexual expression--whatever your scene, whoever you're seeking. But in urban centers around the world, they are closing, a cultural demolition that has Jeremy Atherton Lin wondering: What was the gay bar? How have they shaped him? And could this spell the end of gay identity as we know it? In Gay...