Seeking recs for queer media

[kaberett]

Novels. How-tos. Autobiographies. Histories. Films. Poetry. Plays. Any and all of the above! Anything else you can think of! If you were stocking an LGBT+ lending library from scratch, what would you include? (Let's say top ten - or maybe top three - items. I am working with a limited budget here.)

Already on my list is Whipping Girl and most things by Kate Bornstein (for all I have an uneasy relationship with her work).

Thank you for crowdsource - this is a project I am trying to get off the ground & am currently a bit low on brain to do the research myself!

Comments

[khalinche]

Hmm, *scans bookshelf*. I don't know about top ten, but here are some things I like.

Novels:
Alice Walker, The Color Purple
Most things Sarah Waters has written

Not really novels
Patrick Califia, Speaking Sex to Power
Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues (and later, Drag King Dreams, which is very good, but SBB is the clasic).
J. Halberstam, Female Masculinity

Films:
Beautiful Thing
Better than Chocolate

That's a start, I suppose :-)

[liv]

Virginia Woolf: Orlando - it's a classic, and also pretty good and readable in my opinion.

Hanne Blank: Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality - I haven't read it yet, it's only just coming out this month. But Blank is a really good popular historian of sexuality, and I think it's going to be a really game-changing book.

Ali Smith: Girl meets boy - More of a novella, really, but it's really sweet and poetic, and a Queer retelling of the legend of Iphis and Ianthe.

[such_heights]

Some of my personal favourites:

Films: Imagine Me & You, Saving Face
Novel: The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula Le Guin

[noldo]

Film: I second 'Saving Face' without reservations. 'Fire' is something of a classic. Sancharram/'The Journey' is also highly recommended despite warning for unhappy ending (which I actually do think is important to point out in this instance?). Others thought very highly of 'My Beautiful Laundrette' -- I have not seen it yet myself, but it is probably worth including.

books etc. am insufficient brain for. Will remark later.

[rmc28]

Ethan of Athos & A Civil Campaign by Bujold
The Left Hand of Darkness by Le Guin
Most of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover books
Sarah Monette's Doctrine of Labyrinths series
Elizabeth Bear: Carnival, the Promethean Age books, Companion To Wolves (with Sarah Monette)

[I could be persuaded to donate some of these because they are books I like giving to people - tell me more of this library]

[askygoneonfire]

Films;
Beautiful Thing
Breakfast on Pluto
Priscilla Queen of the Desert
Connie and Carla
Gia
Tomboy (2011)
Wilde (1997)
Aimee and Jaguar (2001)
XXY (2007)

Books:
Hallucinating Foucault - Patricia Dunker
The Well of Loneliness - Radclyffe Hall
The Passion of New Eve - Angela Carter

Graphic Novels:
A Fun Home - Alison Bechdel
Dykes to Watch Out For - Alison Bechdel


I could go on all day but those are the ones most explicitly *about* queer people rather than just *queer* works.

[kaberett]

AAAH HOW DID I FORGET BECHDEL

Cheers! <3

[kaberett]

Thank you!

[kaberett]

Thank you!

[kaberett]

Thankyouface <3

[kaberett]

Have sent an e-mail to the address in your profile re your question - I don't want to go into more detail in public just yet. Thank you lots for the recs, and for the potential for donation. :-)

[automaticdoor]

But I'm a Cheerleader, which is a cheesy satire movie, but it's also one of the only cheesy lesbian rom-coms I know of! I watched it and actually cried. It's so sweet and funny, though slightly heavy-handed. A+ if you like that kind of thing.

TransGeneration, a documentary series about four college students transitioning. True story: this is what inspired me to come out as bi! (I now just generally identify as queer, but that's a different story.) But we were watching this documentary in class and I was thinking, "You know, I'm attracted to these men and women, but I'm attracted to them both pre- and post-transition. And for that matter, uh, you know, I didn't really make out with my bestest best friend when I was sixteen but we didn't date anyone else during that whole school year either, and we slept curled up together the whole time and saw each other naked a lot, and I just thought it was *normal* to lust after your closest friends... hmmmmmm..."

Aaaand my favorite anthology, Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity. Awesome, awesome stuff. Truly intersectional work.

[mustela_nivalis]

So, while I did complain about it, Weekend is actually a good film. I am annoyed about drug use, although straight people use substances, too. My only other caveat is that you have to suspend disbelief about <cut text="spoilers> the presence of gay people in Portland, Oregon. There are probably gay people there. It is the Pacific Northwest of the US.</cut> I also cannot describe how much I love <i> My Beautiful Laundrette</i>. Also, Samuel R. Delany is always good for LGBT-friendly SF? I am still in the process of reading Dhalgren. There is an engineer. He is also a leatherman. Um. Also nonwhite, bicurious main character. Also surrealism.

[kaberett]

Thank you! :-)

[kaberett]

Thank you! Special love for providing me with links :-)

[kaberett]

Thankyouface!

[carthaginians]

Birthday of the World - Ursula leGuin? Is short story collection but quitebit about queer relationships. Um have nothing else as am hopelessly underread.

[automaticdoor]

You're welcome! I just wanted to give some ideas on stuff that hit on a few things that I think always go underrepresented in this sort of thing:

a) fun stuff! QUILTBAG media consumption doesn't always have to be all about eating your veggies.
b) trans* stuff/documentaries, especially things featuring younger people
c) intersectionality

[atreic]

Seconding the Well of Loneliness. And it's very hard to find other things by Radcliffe Hall, so although they're not so explicitly queer it might be worth including them?

[atreic]

Octavia Butler does interesting things with relationships - the vampires in Fledgeling have relationships with their symbionts which are sort of poly and bi and queer.

The Pan Horizons books were the first queer media I found, and I still remember them fondly - Just Be Gorgeous, by Barbara Wersba, Dance on My Grave, by Aidan Chambers, and most of all Happy Endings Are All Alike by Sandra Scoppettone. But now I am older and wiser I have no idea if they are actually _good_

[kaberett]

Hrmm, fair point!

[atreic]

Oh, Flying Under Bridges, by Sandi Toksvig. I love this, I don't know how I forgot it.