21 Books Every Gay Man Needs To Read Right Now | Thought Catalog

Contents:

• GAY 80S BOOKS
• CLASSIC GAY MALE LERATURE
• GAY 80S
• 13 VERY GAY AND VERY GOOD BOOKS YOU SHOULD READ THIS PRI MONTH
• 80S 90S GAY FICTN BOOKS
• HOW THE EARLY ’80S CHANGED GAY WRG FOREVER
• 21 BOOKS EVERY GAY MAN NEEDS TO READ RIGHT NOW
• ‘CIRC OF BOOKS’ DIRECTOR RACHEL MASON ON DOCUMENTG HER PARENTS’ SECRET LIFE AS ’80S GAY PORN MERCHANTS: “PEOPLE IN THE SEX INDTRY ARE NOT CRAZY OUTLAWS”
• CALIFORNIA STILL HAS AN ANTI-GAY MARRIAGE LAW ON THE BOOKS. VOTERS ULD REMOVE NEXT YEAR
• WILL WE SURVIVE THE 1980S? A SNAPSHOT OF A GAY CULTURAL MILI

GAY 80S BOOKS

It’s rare to fd queer fictn like this om the early 2000s — there is almost no queer sufferg or homophobia, and Ricky and G-man’s relatnship is steadfast and lovg, wh only a few angsty scen.

CLASSIC GAY MALE LERATURE

The ma character, Dari, don’t e the word, but ’s obv that he knows he’s gay and he’s simply not ready to talk about .

"There was an urgency, a novelty to the whole thg, " said the gay thor, who won the Man Booker Prize for The Le of Bety.

SJ Sdu, thor of Marriage of a Thoand Li, lled , "One of the first Anglophone works to challenge the trope of the sad/suicidal gays who die at the end, this book gave a blueprt of what queer fictn uld look like.

GAY 80S

Forster (A Passage to India, A Room Wh a View, Howards End) wrote the benchmark gay novel Mrice cir 1913, was published posthumoly a lh tale of manners, posn, and sire, the tular character meets and falls for his classmate Clive while at Oxford. The pair embark on a two-year affair until Clive leav Mrice to marry a woman and live out his proscribed life as part of the land gentry, leavg Mrice shambl and seekg to cure his Forster's novel do not end gay tragedy. Alan Hollghurst famoly qutned the future of the gay novel this year, which is strikg sce he's often viewed as helpg make queer books accsible to a mastream dience.

Hollghurst set his pen on the sexual hypocrisi of homophobic policians, many of whom had their own discretns behd closed doors. The queer g-of-age novel about Jim Willard and his search for love was the first novel om a rpected wrer (Gore Vidal) to speak directly and sympathetilly about the gay experience an era when homosexualy was still very much taboo.

The book is remembered today for this legacy as well as for var them -- Hollywood's glass closet, beg gay the ary, the poisono effects of homophobia on society -- that still reverberate today. The only novel by the great Osr Wil may not be overtly gay, but there's plenty of gay subtext there for the reful rear - about as much gay subtext as a popular thor uld get away wh 's iends Basil Hallward and Lord Henry Wotton exprs tense admiratn for his bety, and passag that show Basil's feelgs for Dorian as more clearly homoerotic were excised by an edor, acrdg to Nicholas Frankel, who eded an edn prentg Wil's origal text the text as origally published has referenc to Dorian's rptn of not only young women but young men: "There was that wretched boy the Guards who mted suici.

13 VERY GAY AND VERY GOOD BOOKS YOU SHOULD READ THIS PRI MONTH

Cy of Night, a 1963 novel by John Rechy, is a semal piece of fictn that follows the life of a gay htler New York Cy, Los Angel, New Orleans, and San Francis. "This epic chronicle of gay culture the Amerin sixti is as far-reachg as is important, givg a glimpse to inty and motive, " affirmed SJ Sdu, the thor of Marriage of a Thoand Li.

Gay lerature was forever changed the day Mary Ann Sgleton first met her transgenr landlady, Anna Madrigal, when she moved to San Francis's 28 Barbary Lane. The 1982 book by Edmund Whe, which begs wh the first sexual enunter of a 15-year-old boy, is based on his own experienc g to terms wh his gay inty as a youth the Midwtern Uned Stat. Whe would later wre two addnal novels, The Betiful Room Is Empty (1988) and The Farewell Symphony (1997), which follow his gay protagonist to young adulthood.

80S 90S GAY FICTN BOOKS

Integral to the lbian non (spe s beg nsired somewhat problematic) Brish wrer Radclyffe Hall's 1928 novel foc on Stephen Gordon, an upper-class lbian who dons men's clothg and be a novelist who eventually be a part of a lerary salon Paris at a time when there were no overt laws exprsly barrg homosexualy. Hall's novel was groundbreakg her troductn of the views of "sexologists" Richard von Krafft-Ebg and Havelock Ellis, who posed that homosexualy was an born, unalterable tra that was nsired a ngenal sexual versn that simply meant a "difference" and not a fect. Wonrful book, " gay refugee activist and lumnist Danny Ramadan rav about the global-md book unpacks the emotnal life of a young girl displaced by the Nigerian civil war who begs a gut-wrenchg affair wh a fellow refugee.

"A great rellectn of everythg anyone would say Nigeria agast homosexualy g the fense of relign, " explas David Nnanna Ikpo, the Nigerian thor of Fimisile Forever. Dalloway, a novel to which Cunngham pays homage; mid-20th-century Los Angel, hoewife Lra Brown, disntented wh her life, nonts her attractn to women; and 1990s New York Cy, Clarissa Vghan, who is lbian, plans a party for her bt iend, wrer Richard Brown, a gay man dyg of AIDS. In 2015, when the novel was published, reviewer and thor Garth Greenwell clared The Atlantic, "A Ltle Life: The Great Gay Novel Might Be Here.

HOW THE EARLY ’80S CHANGED GAY WRG FOREVER

The book featur a st of dozens of gay men, who varly engage bathhoe i, e a slew of party dgs, and vort clubs wh nam like The Toilet Bowl and Fire Island. I read my sophomore or junr year high school and ma me feel a sense of fort, as knowg what I was feelg was OK to feel.

"It tght me 's OK to be gay and be a fuckg nerd and believe there uld be a higher power out there that jt wants everyone to be happy. And while you n always zy up on the uch and prs play on a movie about queer love, the LGBTQ books will take thgs one step of the classics, bt-sellers and new releas on this list put gay characters at the heart of the story — or at the very least, are wrten by thors who intify as LGBTQ+. "How We Fight for Our Liv" by Saeed JonPoet Saeed Jon’ g-of-age memoir is a rehgly hont look at the realy of beg a Black gay man the south.

When Garrard Conley is outed by his parents, they make him attend a 12-step nversn therapy program to “cure” him of his homosexualy. You won’t fd a buttoned-up gay love story the pag: Purnell unearths the dysfunctn of Black, broke and queer men fallg and out of love (or, well, lt). In this royal rom-, the prce of England and heir to the throne is gay, and longs for the son of the first woman print of the U.

21 BOOKS EVERY GAY MAN NEEDS TO READ RIGHT NOW

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT‘Dancer From the Dance, ’ ‘Angels Ameri’ — and the that brought queer lerature to the GoldANDREW HOLLERAN’S 1978 novel, “Dancer From the Dance, ” was not the first gay novel I read. It was, however, the first gay novel everybody any rate, was the first gay novel every gay man I knew seemed to have read. Although “Dancer From the Dance” centers on two gay men named Malone and Sutherland, ’s as much a story about New York Cy’s gay life the 1970s as is the story of Malone’s and Sutherland’s own liv.

‘CIRC OF BOOKS’ DIRECTOR RACHEL MASON ON DOCUMENTG HER PARENTS’ SECRET LIFE AS ’80S GAY PORN MERCHANTS: “PEOPLE IN THE SEX INDTRY ARE NOT CRAZY OUTLAWS”

Spoiler alert:Both Malone and Sutherland e to bad (if ambiguo) ends, the general tradn of the time, whereby gay characters were allowed onto the b of narrative as long as they were thrown off aga before the b reached s said, Malone and Sutherland float away as much as they expire — their partur are more like that of Ophelia “Hamlet” than they are like that of Tennsee Williams’s Sebastian Venable, hacked to ath and eaten by village children.

No one, however, argued about the book’s fily to the reckls, rto life lived certa (whe, well-favored) circl on Pla Gay. Three years later, 1981, the first report of Gay-Related Immune Deficiency AIDS epimic didn’t mean the end of dancg, or sex, or dgs.

Gay people and traveno dg ers — those most at risk at the time — had been emed dilemma of the self-hatg homo lookg for love all the wrong plac paled — paled for some of — the face of a plague about which no one power seemed to give a damn. It paled as nights spent hospals replaced nights spent on the dis mordant (if all too te) tale of gay men enjoyg themselv to ath ma way for the (all too te) AIDS-era tale of gay men fgered randomly by ATTEMPT TO name the noteworthy narrativ about gay life sce 1981 would volve too many omissns.

CALIFORNIA STILL HAS AN ANTI-GAY MARRIAGE LAW ON THE BOOKS. VOTERS ULD REMOVE NEXT YEAR

Let’s nfe ourselv to a play that wasn’t the first gay AIDS play I saw, but was the first gay AIDS play almost everybody saw: Tony Khner’s 1991 “Angels Ameri. Fire Island might as well be on another pla protagonists “Angels Ameri” are nonted not only by homophobia and self-stctn but also by their own natur, by love’s power and love’s failure, by censor religns and llo policians, by racism and classism. Ironilly enough, “Dancer” ends wh the mise of s primary characters, whereas “Angels” ends wh liv ntug we open this segment of the ongog gay story, then, 1978, wh an amb tale of gay self-stctn, we wriggle through the wormhole of 1981 and emerge 1991, wh an epic about gay men who refe to be stroyed.

The novels, short stori, graphic novels, and nonfictn llectns feature protagonists who are POC — which means while they're navigatg their evolvg sexuali and genr inti, they're also disverg what means to be gay and black, bisexual and Mlim, Mexin-Amerin and queer. Her bt iend, Art, has a csh on Judy's new boyiend, Reza, who's jt begng to accept that, spe of what his Iranian fay might thk about the gay muny, he's not straight. This book is so important bee was one of the first to really show the plited ways which gay men had to manage their inty, self and place a world that didn’t want them do exist.

While not one of Vidal’s “bt” works (to me, he’s an sayist first and a novelist send), The Pillar and the Cy is a mt-read bee of s place the queer non as one of the first regnized and reviewed gay novels. The fact that A Separate Peace ntually gets tght high school English urs baffl the bt possible way, as Knowl’ bt-known work is one of the most homoerotic bildungsromans ever wrten.

WILL WE SURVIVE THE 1980S? A SNAPSHOT OF A GAY CULTURAL MILI

The one character many gay men fd themselve nnectg wh is bisexual Pl Denton, who is love wh Sean Bateman, the dg aler of the story. Their relatnship is pretty ambiguo the whole story and Ellis leav open to one’s own terpretatn, but I thk that is what has so many gay rears lovg Pl. Many gay men nnect wh Charlie wh his sense of isolatn the story and other experienc that you will have to read to fd out.