book recommendations

home Resources and Services Books to Celebrate Pride Month

Books to Celebrate Pride Month

By Taira Meadowcroft   Posted in Resources and Services
Posted on

June is Pride Month and to help celebrate this month of love and acceptance, here are some books available at Mizzou Libraries that tell stories of triumphs and struggles of the LGBTQ community.

These are just a few recommendations, so be sure to search the library catalog to see what else we have.

Have book recommendation? Let us know here.

 

For the Fiction Fans:

Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan 

This is the story of Paul, a sophomore at a high school like no other: The cheerleaders ride Harleys, the homecoming queen used to be a guy named Daryl (she now prefers Infinite Darlene and is also the star quarterback), and the gay-straight alliance was formed to help the straight kids learn how to dance. When Paul meets Noah, he thinks he’s found the one his heart is made for. Until he blows it. The school bookie says the odds are 12-to-1 against him getting Noah back, but Paul’s not giving up without playing his love really loud. His best friend Joni might be drifting away, his other best friend Tony might be dealing with ultra-religious parents, and his ex-boyfriend Kyle might not be going away anytime soon, but sometimes everything needs to fall apart before it can really fit together right. This is a happy-meaningful romantic comedy about finding love, losing love, and doing what it takes to get love back in a crazy-wonderful world.

http://merlin.lib.umsystem.edu/record=b5027477~S1

 

The Book of Salt by Monique Truong 

A novel of Paris in the 1930s from the eyes of the Vietnamese cook employed by Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, by the author of The Sweetest Fruits. Viewing his famous mesdames and their entourage from the kitchen of their rue de Fleurus home, Binh observes their domestic entanglements while seeking his own place in the world. In a mesmerizing tale of yearning and betrayal, Monique Truong explores Paris from the salons of its artists to the dark nightlife of its outsiders and exiles. She takes us back to Binh’s youthful servitude in Saigon under colonial rule, to his life as a galley hand at sea, to his brief, fateful encounters in Paris with Paul Robeson and the young Ho Chi Minh.

http://merlin.lib.umsystem.edu/record=b4930081~S1

 

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

Alison Bechdel’s groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir that charts her fraught relationship with her late father. Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the “Fun Home.” It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve. In her hands, personal history becomes a work of amazing subtlety and power, written with controlled force and enlivened with humor, rich literary allusion, and heartbreaking detail. More recently, this memoir was turned into a Tony award winning musical and you can check out the book and lyrics as well.

http://merlin.lib.umsystem.edu/record=b7753395~S1

 

For the Non-Fiction Fans

Black on Both Sides by C. Riley Snorton 

The story of Christine Jorgensen, America’s first prominent transsexual, famously narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives–ones lived by African Americans such as Lucy Hicks Anderson and James McHarris. Their erasure from trans history masks the profound ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence. Drawing on a deep and varied archive of materials–early sexological texts, fugitive slave narratives, Afro-modernist literature, sensationalist journalism, Hollywood films–Snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable.

http://merlin.lib.umsystem.edu/record=b12124869~S1

 

A Queer History of the United States for Young People by Michael Bronski; Richie Chevat
Queer history didn’t start with Stonewall. This book explores how LGBTQ people have always been a part of our national identity, contributing to the country and culture for over 400 years. It is crucial for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth to know their history. But this history is not easy to find since it’s rarely taught in schools or commemorated in other ways. A Queer History of the United States for Young People corrects this and demonstrates that LGBTQ people have long been vital to shaping our understanding of what America is today. Through engrossing narratives, letters, drawings, poems, and more, the book encourages young readers, of all identities, to feel pride at the accomplishments of the LGBTQ people who came before them and to use history as a guide to the future

 

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature. “[Lorde’s] works will be important to those truly interested in growing up sensitive, intelligent, and aware.”–The New York Times  In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope
TAGS:

Taira Meadowcroft

Taira Meadowcroft is the Public Health and Community Engagement Librarian at the Health Sciences Library at the University of Missouri.

home Ellis Library, Resources and Services Arab American Heritage Month Book Recommendations

Arab American Heritage Month Book Recommendations

By Danielle Gorman   Posted in Ellis Library Resources and Services
Posted on

Did you know that April is National Arab American Heritage Month? This month, we celebrate and recognize Arab American heritage and culture and pay tribute to contributions made by Arab Americans. Join Mizzou Libraries in celebrating this month by supporting Arab American voices and stories with these books!

 

Palace Walk, Naguib Mahfouz

This novel is the first novel in the Cairo Trilogy written by Nobel Prize-winning author Naguib Mahfouz. The Cairo Trilogy follows the family of a tyrannical patriarch, who keeps a strict ruling household while he lives a secret life away from those pressures and expectations. Throughout this novel, we follow the stories of Amina, his oppressed wife, Aisha and Khadija, his sheltered daughters, and his three sons, Fahmy, Yasin, and Kamal. As you turn each page, you begin to see how the family’s own struggles mirror the world around them, as we follow their stories through two world wars and a changing country. 

http://merlin.lib.umsystem.edu:80/record=b2327182~S1

 

The Words of My Father: Love and Pain in Palestine, Yousef Bashir

In this candid memoir, author Yousef Bashir details his life growing up next to an Israeli military base and his childhood in Gaza during the Second Intifada. Bashir expresses his commitment to peace in the wake of devastation and brings insightful stories to the reader that highlight the importance of moving past anger, fear, and prejudices. http://merlin.lib.umsystem.edu:80/record=b13062042~S1

 

 

Amreekiya: A Novel, Lena Mahmoud

This novel follows the story of twenty-one-year-old Isra Shadi, who, after the death of her mother, is forced to move to California with her uncle and aunt. Remaining an outcast in her house, her family strongly encourages Isra to get married and move out. She believes it is hopeless among the multiple suitors she rejects until she finds Yusef, a man she loved from her past, and marries him. Amreekiya switches between the two storylines of Isra’s adolescence and her present-day married life as we watch her struggle between two cultures and how she can define herself. 

http://merlin.lib.umsystem.edu:80/record=b13217031~S1

 

Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, Laila Lalami

In her debut novel, Laila Lalami tells the gripping story of four Moroccans illegally crossing the Strait of Gibraltar in a boat heading to Spain. We follow the characters of Murad, an educated man who has been forced into hustling tourists for money; Halima, a woman fleeing her alcoholic husband; Aziz, a man forced to leave behind his wife to find work in a new country; and Faten, a young, religious student who finds herself at a crossroads between her faith and an influential man who is determined to destroy her future. This novel has the reader on the edge of their seat, as you wonder will they survive this risky journey, and if they do, will it have been worth it?

http://merlin.lib.umsystem.edu:80/record=b5371575~S1

 

Sex and Lies: True Stories of Women’s Intimate Lives in the Arab World, Leila Slimani

In this eye-opening and heartbreaking expose, Slimani documents the lives of Moroccan women and the struggles they face toward sexual liberation. In Morocco, adultery, abortion, homosexuality, and sex outside of marriage are punishable by law, which creates a difficult standard for the women who live there. Women must decide between being a wife or remaining a virgin. Sex and Lies shines a light on the best-kept secrets of women’s sexual lives in Morocco and makes a strong case for a sexual revolution in the Arab world. This book isn’t yet available to check out from MU Libraries, but you can request it here: http://merlin.lib.umsystem.edu:80/record=b13695020~S1

 

Danielle Gorman / English Intern / Spring 2021