Books With Queer Themes

None of the Above's compassionate telling of an intersex individual's story trumps its author's cis privilege

IW Gregorio’s book None of the Above (2015) is a brilliant example of an author writing about a community that she is not a part of. The story is so engrossing that you would not want to put the book down, and follows its protagonist Kristin Lattimer, an intersex person, whose life unfolds in this book for young-adults.

Thom Gunn's The Man with Night Sweats makes space for vulnerability while discussing love, grief ⁠— and loss

The Man with Night Sweats by Thom Gunn is often described as a book about the AIDS epidemic, which is quite reductive; it is about friendship, love, death, loss, grief, memories, and so much more. In his poems, there is no pandering to a vicarious heteronormative gaze, but rather a celebration of of seeing, feeling and devouring each other.

Amrou Al-Kadhi's Unicorn: The Memoir of a Muslim Drag Queen is the searing autobiography the community needs

Amrou Al-Kadhi's Unicorn: The Memoir of a Muslim Drag Queen is about their journey through a traumatic childhood with parents who refused to acknowledge their homosexuality, their valiant attempts to pass off as British by seeking an elite college education, and their discovery of the transformative power of drag while at university.

How Nishit Saran's Lurkings, a posthumous compilation of his writings, offered a new vocabulary for queer experiences

Lurkings is a collection of the articles gay rights activist and filmmaker Nishit Saran wrote for various publications. These were compiled posthumously and published in 2008 by his parents Minna and Raj, who set up the Nishit Saran Foundation after they lost their beloved son, then aged 25, in a car accident.

Clare Croft's Queer Dance: Meanings and Makings is a vital engagement with intersectionality

Every subsequent reading of Queer Dance: Meanings and Makings by dance theorist and curator Clare Croft gives me more than the previous one. | Chintan Girish Modi writes in this week's #QueerBookshelf

Reading Ricky Martin's Me is to know that we are one, despite histories, identities and circumstances that separate us

I approached Ricky Martin's Me not as a fan keen on getting to know their pop idol, but as an avid reader of queer autobiographies | Chintan Girish Modi writes in this week's #QueerBookshelf

Close, Too Close: The Tranquebar Book of Queer Erotica raises questions around consent that we must engage with

Close, Too Close: The Tranquebar Book of Queer Erotica (2012), edited by Meena and Shruti who identify as queer feminists, is a beautiful collection of stories about queer desire and intimacy, in which you will meet queer characters who are in no need of sympathy from people who claim to be allies but are unwilling to question the ways in which they stereotype and stigmatise.

Saikat Majumdar's The Scent of God is 'queer fiction'; but its heteronormative gaze says otherwise

In the narrative universe of The Scent of God by Saikat Majumdar, queer love is allowed to exist only as a longing that must never utter its name

No Outlaws in the Gender Galaxy: Revisiting Zubaan's 2015 book, and what it illuminates of queer identities 

Privilege keeps some of us from seeing how marginalised bodies navigate systems that assume the gender binary to be natural, coherent, and inflexible.