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 - 20 of 24  There are a total of 257 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "Alligator tears"
Star rating for Alligator tears
Description:
"A darkly comic memoir-in-essays about the scam of the American Dream, healing through community, and doing whatever it takes to survive in the Sunshine State-from the award-winning author of High-Risk Homosexual"--
Book cover for "Pure innocent fun"
Star rating for Pure innocent fun
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"In this inviting and joyfully raucous collection of sixteen original essays, written with a rare combination of humor and sharpness, Ira Madison III combines memoir and cultural criticism to offer an updated pop-culture manifesto. Alternately irreverent and emotionally resonant, Pure Innocent Fun will leave you laughing and inspired."--
Book cover for "Creep"
Star rating for Creep
Description:
"A ruthless and razor-sharp essay collection that tackles the pervasive, creeping oppression and toxicity that has wormed its way into society, in our books, schools, and homes, as well as the systems that perpetuate them, from the acclaimed author of Mean, and one of our fiercest, foremost explorers of intersectional Latinx identity"--
Book cover for "Dinner on monster island"
Star rating for Dinner on monster island
Description:
"In this unusual, engaging, and intimate collection of personal essays, Lamba Literary Award finalist Tania De Rozario recalls growing up as a queer, brown, fat girl in Singapore, blending memoir with elements of history, pop culture, horror films, and current events to explore the nature of monsters and what it means to be different"--
Book cover for "Inverse cowgirl"
Star rating for Inverse cowgirl
Description:
"From a celebrated activist on the forefront of fighting for intersex representation and rights-and a subject of the forthcoming documentary Every Body, from the filmmakers behind RBG-a funny, thought-provoking collection of essays about owning your identity and living your truth"--
Book cover for "Congratulations, the best is over!"
Star rating for Congratulations, the best is over!
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"The beloved bestselling author of Here for It presents a collection of heartening, thoughtful, and laugh-out-loud funny essays about the lifelong search for community and returning home. After going viral "reading" the chaotic political news, having one-too-many awkward social encounters, and coming to terms with his intersecting identities, R. Eric Thomas is ready to live his best life. Or, if not, at least his best-ish life. Now, in this collection...
Book cover for "Making love with the land"
Star rating for Making love with the land
Description:
"In prose that is evocative and sensual, unabashedly queer and visceral, raw and autobiographical, Joshua Whitehead writes of an Indigenous body in pain, coping with trauma. Intellectually audacious and emotionally compelling, Whitehead shares his devotion to the world in which we live and brilliantly-even joyfully-maps his experience on the land that has shaped stories, histories, and bodies from time immemorial"--
Book cover for "Uncle of the year"
Star rating for Uncle of the year
Description:
Candid, hilarious essays from the star of The Book of Mormon, Girls, and Big Mouth on anxiety, ambition, and the uncertain path to adulthood, which ask, how will we know when we get there? In Uncle of the Year, Andrew Rannells wonders: If he, now in his early forties, has everything he's supposed to need to be a true adult--a career, property, a well-tailored suit--why does he still feel like an anxious twenty-year-old climbing his way toward security?...
Book cover for "Black on black"
Star rating for Black on black
Description:
"... in his debut essay collection, Black gives voice to the experiences of those who often find themselves on the margins. Tackling topics ranging from police brutality to the AIDS crisis to the role of HBCUs to queer representation in the black church, Black on Black celebrates the resilience, fortitude, and survival of black people in a land where their body is always on display."--Provided by publisher.
Book cover for "Is it hot in here (or am I suffering for all eternity for the sins I committed on earth)?"
Star rating for Is it hot in here (or am I suffering for all eternity for the sins I committed on earth)?
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"Hell hath no fury like an ex-Bible-Belter-turned-New-Yorker. To see the world through comedian and writer Zach Zimmerman's eyes is to be reminded of the many ways in which love, religion, family, sex, money-or often lack thereof-lay bare our most elemental and embarrassing humanness. From meditations on heartbreak to not-so-helpful how-tos, this laugh-and-cry-out-loud essay collection documents one man's navigation through queerness, climbing the...
Book cover for "Quietly hostile"
Star rating for Quietly hostile
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
"Beloved writer Samantha Irby has returned to the printed page for her much-anticipated, sidesplitting fourth book following her 2020 breakout, Wow, no thank you, a Vintage Books Original. The success of Irby's career has taken her to new heights. She fields calls with job offers from Hollywood and walks the red carpet with the iconic ladies of Sex and the City. Finally, she has made it. But, behind all that new-found glam, Irby is just trying to...
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 "It came from the closet"
Star rating for It came from the closet
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
"Twenty-five narrative essays by contemporary LGBTQ writers reflecting on queerness in horror film, from Hitchcock to HALLOWEEN"--
Book cover for "Brown neon"
Star rating for Brown neon
Description:
"Part butch memoir, part ekphrastic travel diary, part queer family tree, Raquel Gutiérrez's debut essay collection ... gleans insight from the sediment of land and relationships. For Gutiérrez, terrain is essential to understanding that no story, no matter how personal, is separate from the space where it unfolds. Whether contemplating the value of adobe as both vernacular architecture and commodified art object, highlighting areas of transphobia...
Book cover for "I'll show myself out"
Star rating for I'll show myself out
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
The best-selling author and Emmy Award-winning writer and producer hilariously destroys the cultural myths and impossible expectations of modern-day motherhood and explores the humiliations, poignancies, and possibilities of midlife.
Book cover for "Wow, no thank you"
Star rating for Wow, no thank you
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Book cover for "How y'all doing?"
Star rating for How y'all doing?
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
"Viral sensation and Emmy Award winner Leslie Jordan regales fans with entertaining stories about the odd, funny, and unforgettable events in his life in this unmissable essay collection."--Dust jacket flap.
Book cover for "The disordered cosmos"
Star rating for The disordered cosmos
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is one of the leading physicists of her generation, at work on the origins of spacetime at the intersection of particle physics and astrophysics. She is also one of the fewer than one hundred Black women to earn a PhD in physics. In [this book], Prescod-Weinstein shares with readers her love for physics, from the Standard Model of Particle Physics and what lies beyond it, to the physics of melanin in skin, to the latest...
Book cover for "Like a boy but not a boy"
Star rating for Like a boy but not a boy
Description:
"A revelatory book about gender, mental illness, parenting, mortality, bike mechanics, work, class, and the task of living in a body. Inquisitive and expansive, Like a Boy but Not a Boy explores author andrea bennett's experiences with gender expectations, being a non-binary parent, and the sometimes funny and sometimes difficult task of living in a body. The book's fourteen essays also delve incisively into the interconnected themes of mental illness,...
Book cover for "Things I have withheld"
Star rating for Things I have withheld
Author:
Description:
"In this moving, critical, and lyrical collection of essays, by the acclaimed Forward Prize winner, Kei Miller explores the silences in which so many important things are kept. Miller examines the experience of discrimination through this silence and what it means to breach it-to risk words, to risk truth; and through the body and the histories those bodies inherit-the crimes that haunt them, and how the meanings of our bodies can shift as we move...