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 221 - 240 of 267  There are a total of 267 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "Are you coming?"
Star rating for Are you coming?
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"A guide to achieving a better sex life, with friendly advice on everything from anatomy to solo and partnered pleasure"--
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 "The queens' English"
Star rating for The queens' English
Description:
"The Queen's English is a comprehensive guide to modern gay slang, queer theory terms, and playful colloquialisms that define and celebrate LGBTQIA+ culture."--Provided by publisher.
Book cover for "Resistencia"
Star rating for Resistencia
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"With a powerful and poignant introduction from Julia Alvarez, Resistencia: Poems of Protest and Revolution is an extraordinary collection, rooted in a strong tradition of protest poetry and voiced by icons of the movement and by some of the most exciting voices today. The poets of Resistencia explore feminist, queer, indigenous, urban, and ecological themes alongside historically prominent protests against imperialism, dictatorships, and economic...
Book cover for "Things I have withheld"
Star rating for Things I have withheld
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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...
Book cover for "Not that bad"
Star rating for Not that bad
Author:
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"In this valuable and revealing anthology, cultural critic and bestselling author Roxane Gay collects original and previously published pieces that address what it means to live in a world where women have to measure the harassment, violence, and aggression they face, and where they are 'routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied' for speaking out."--
Book cover for "The natural mother of the child"
Star rating for The natural mother of the child
Description:
"Essentially this book is a heavily visual memoir-in-essays that explores how the experience of gestational parenthood-conceiving, birthing, and breastfeeding my son Samson-eventually clarified my gender identity and allowed me to project a different more masculine self. Ruminating on how the experiences contained under the umbrella of "motherhood" don't fully describe my experience amplifies the outsiderness the speaker, who is almost always addressing...
Book cover for "Care work"
Star rating for Care work
Description:
"Leah Piepzna-Samarasinha is a poet and essayist whose most recent book, the memoir Dirty River, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and the Publishing Triangle's Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction. She is also a long-time member of the disability justice movement, which advocates for the rights of the disabled. In her latest book of essays, Leah writes passionately and personally about disability justice, on subjects such as the creation...
Book cover for "Yoke"
Star rating for Yoke
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"Remember Jessamyn Stanley? How could you not? She's the proudly fat, Black, queer yoga teacher and charismatic author of Every Body Yoga, who drops a lot more f-bombs than namastes and refuses to pray at the church of Lululemon. Now she's back, here to take us even further on a personal and provocative journey into what it means to "practice yoga." Where Every Body Yoga, with 59,000 copies in print, taught us how to do yoga, Yoke tells us why. In...
Book cover for "The other mothers"
Star rating for The other mothers
Description:
"When Jenn Berney and her wife decided they wanted to have children, they took the next logical step: they went to a fertility clinic. Intrauterine insemination is a simple medical procedure that has been available since the 1950s, but doctors were baffled by Jenn's situation. With no man factoring into her relationship, she was disparaged by doctors, given an inaccurate diagnosis, and her medical needs were overlooked. Berney decided to step outside...
Book cover for "Black girl, call home"
Star rating for Black girl, call home
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"A literary coming-of-age poetry collection, an ode to the places we call home, and a piercingly intimate deconstruction of daughterhood, Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing. As a competitive spoken-word poet who draws large crowds of people, Jasmine Mans's collection is divided into six sections, each with a corresponding active telephone...
Book cover for "Leaving isn't the hardest thing"
Star rating for Leaving isn't the hardest thing
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"As an adult, Lauren Hough has had many identities: an airman in the U.S. Air Force, a cable guy, a bouncer at a gay club. As a child, however, she had none. Growing up as a member of the infamous cult The Children of God, Hough had her own self robbed from her. The cult took her all over the globe-to Germany, Japan, Texas, Chile-but it wasn't until she finally left for good that Lauren understood she could have a life beyond "The Family." Along the...
Book cover for "Socialist realism"
Star rating for Socialist realism
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Description:
"As she recovers from a breakup with a lover who had meant everything to her, Trisha Low grapples with the meaning of everything, in memoir rich with theory and digression, but also in stark, gorgeous imagery and memorable, epigrammatic insight. Low, a young queer woman from a Singaporean family, must travel between the American coasts and experience debasement both routine -- in the form of sexist, racist world around her -- and extraordinary --...
Book cover for "What's your pronoun?"
Star rating for What's your pronoun?
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"The story of how we got from he and she to zie and hir and singular they. Like trigger warnings and gender-neutral bathrooms, pronouns are suddenly sparking debate, prompting new policies in schools, workplaces, even prisons, about what pronouns to use. Colleges ask students to declare their pronouns; corporate conferences print nametags with space for people to add their pronouns; email signatures sport pronouns along with names and titles. Far...
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...
Book cover for "Finding Latinx"
Star rating for Finding Latinx
Author:
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Young Latinos across the United States are redefining their identities, pushing boundaries, and awakening politically in powerful and surprising ways. Many of them--Afrolatino, indigenous, Muslim, queer and undocumented, living in large cities and small towns--are voices who have been chronically overlooked in how the diverse population of almost sixty million Latinos in the U.S. has been represented. No longer. In this empowering cross-country travelogue,...
Book cover for "Girls can kiss now"
Star rating for Girls can kiss now
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
A "collection of personal essays exploring the intersection of queerness, relationships, pop culture, the Internet, and identity, introducing one of the most undeniably original new voices today. Jill Gutowitz's life--for better and worse--has always been on a collision course with pop culture, [including] ... the pivotal day when Orange Is the New Black hit the airwaves and broke down the door to Jill's own sexuality. In these honest examinations...
Book cover for "How to cure a ghost"
Star rating for How to cure a ghost
Description:
"Fariha Róisín's debut collection of poetry fearlessly illuminates her experiences as a young, queer, Muslim femme navigating the vibrant, intimate joys and paralyzing obstacles of her intersectionality. She writes fearlessly about the pain and strength required to reach the ever-elusive idea of self-acceptance."-- Back cover.
Book cover for "You better be lightning"
Star rating for You better be lightning
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
A queer, political, and feminist collection guided by self-reflection. The poems range from close examination of the deeply personal to the vastness of the world, exploring the expansiveness of the human experience from love to illness, from space to climate change, and so much more in between. One of the most celebrated poets and performers of the last two decades, Andrea Gibson's trademark honesty and vulnerability are on full display in You Better...
Book cover for "The selected works of Audre Lorde"
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Description:
"A definitive selection of prose and poetry from the self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," for a new generation of readers. Audre Lorde is an unforgettable voice in twentieth-century literature, one of the first to center the experiences of black, queer women. Her incisive essays and passionate poetry-alive with sensuality, vulnerability, and rage-remain indelible contributions to intersectional feminism, queer theory, and critical...