Staff Picks
The 2024 Stonewall Book Honorees for Adult Books
- Adele C.
- Friday, March 01
Collection
The 2024 Stonewall Book Honorees for Adult Books
The Stonewall Book Awards, sponsored by the American Library Association’s Rainbow Round Table, have been a beacon of recognition for LGBTQIA+ literature. Each year, these prestigious awards honor outstanding English-language works that amplify queer voices, stories, and experiences, inviting readers to explore the diverse tapestry of queer experiences. For more information, visit the Stonewall Book Award website.
Below are the 2024 honorees. The winner of the Barbara Gittings Literature Award is Freedom House by KB Brookins and the winner of the Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award is Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir by Lamya H.
Gay Poems for Red States
Published in 2023
No one will protect you. Months after being named the 2022 Kentucky Teacher of the Year, Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr. announced his decision to leave the public school system. His career as a high school English teacher had spanned more than a decade but ended abruptly—another casualty of the cruel and dangerous anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination that is creeping back into the halls of government and the homes of Americans. At the beginning of Carver's career, an administrator warned him about discussing his otherwise openly gay identity at work: "No one will protect you, including me." A new administration allowed for more freedom, but the initial warning eventually rang true. School officials failed repeatedly to address harassment of students and of Carver himself, until he could no longer endure such a purposeful deterioration of human rights. While Carver's testimony before the House of Representatives brought much-needed attention to the need for protections for LGBTQ+ people in schools, the damage was done. In Gay Poems for Red States , Carver counters the injustice of a persistent anti-LGBTQ+ movement by asserting that a life full of beauty and pride is possible for everyone. More than a collection of poetry, Carver's earnest and heartfelt verses are for those wishing to discover and understand the vastness of Appalachia, and for the LGBTQ+ Appalachians who long for a future—for a home—in an often unwelcoming place.
Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant
A Memoir
Published in 2023
"Nineteen eighties Detroit was a volatile place to live, but above the fray stood a safe haven: Chung's Cantonese Cuisine, where anyone--from the city's first Black mayor to the local drag queens, from a big-time Hollywood star to elderly Jewish couples--could sit down for a warm, home-cooked meal. Here was where, beneath a bright-red awning and surrounded by his multigenerational family, filmmaker and activist Curtis Chin came of age; where he learned to embrace his identity as a gay ABC, or American-born Chinese; where he navigated the city's spiraling misfortunes; and where--between helpings of almond boneless chicken, sweet-and-sour pork, and some of his own, less-savory culinary concoctions--he realized just how much he had to offer to the world, to his beloved family, and to himself. Served up by the cofounder of the Asian American Writers' Workshop and structured around the very menu that graced the tables of Chung's, Everything I learned, I learned in a Chinese restaurant is both a memoir and an invitation: to step inside one boy's childhood oasis, scoot into a vinyl booth, and grow up with him--and perhaps even share something off the secret menu"--Provided by publisher.
The Skin and Its Girl
A Novel
Published in 2023
"A young, queer Palestinian American woman pieces together her great aunt's secrets in this sweeping debut, a family saga confronting questions of sexual identity, exile, and lineage. In a Pacific Northwest hospital far from the Rummani family's ancestral home in Palestine, the heart of a stillborn baby begins to beat and her skin turns a vibrant, permanent cobalt blue. On the same day, the Rummanis' centuries-old soap factory in Nablus is destroyed in an air strike. The family matriarch and keeper of all Rummani lore, Aunt Nuha, believes that the blue girl embodies their sacred history, harkening to a time when the Rummanis were among the wealthiest soap-makers and their blue soap was a symbol of a legendary love. Decades later, Betty returns to her Aunt Nuha's gravestone, faced with a difficult decision: Should she stay in the only country she's every known or should she follow her heart for the woman she loves, perpetuating her family's cycle of exile? Betty finds her answer in partially translated notebooks that reveal her aunt's complex life and struggle with her own sexuality, which Nuha hid to help the family emigrate to the U.S. But as Betty soon discovers, her aunt hid much more than that. The Skin and Its Girl is a searing, poetic tale about desire and identity and a provocative exploration of how we let stories divide, unite, and define us-and even wield the power to restore a broken family. Sarah Cypher is that rare debut novelist who writes with the mastery and flair of a seasoned storyteller"-- Provided by publisher.
Glitter and Concrete
A Cultural History of Drag in New York City
Published in 2023
From the lush feather boas that adorned early female impersonators to the sequined lip syncs of barroom queens to the drag kings that have us laughing in stitches, drag has played a vital role in the creative life of New York City. But the evolution of drag in the city, as an art form, a community and a mode of liberation, has never before been fully chronicled. Now, for the first time, journalist and drag historian Elyssa Maxx Goodman unearths the dramatic, provocative untold story of drag in New York City in all its glistening glory. Goodman ducks beneath the velvet ropes of Harlem Renaissance balls, examines drag's crucial role in the Stonewall Uprising, traces drag's influence on disco and punk rock as well as its unifying power during the AIDS crisis and 9/11, and culminates in the era of RuPaul's Drag Race. A significant contribution to queer history and an essential listen for anyone curious about the story that echoes beneath the heels.
Hijab Butch Blues
A Memoir
Published in 2023
"Fourteen years old and growing up in the Middle East, Lamya is an overachiever and a class clown, qualities that help her hide in plain sight when she realizes she has a crush on her teacher--her female teacher. She's also fourteen when she reads a passage in Quran class about Maryam, known as the Virgin Mary in the Christian Bible, that changes everything. Lamya learns that Maryam was untempted by an angelically handsome man, and later, when told she is pregnant, insists no man has touched her. Could Maryam be... like Lamya? Spanning childhood to an elite college in the US and early adult life in New York City, each essay places Lamya's struggles and triumphs in the context of some of the most famous stories in the Quran. She juxtaposes her coming out with Musa liberating his people from the Pharoah; asks if Allah, who is neither male nor female, might instead be nonbinary; and, drawing strength from the faith and hope of Nuh building his ark, begins to build a life of her own--all the while discovering that her identity as a queer, immigrant devout Muslim is, in fact, the answer to her quest for safety and belonging"-- Provided by publisher.
Miss Major Speaks
Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary
Published in 2023
"The future of Black, queer, and trans liberation explored by a legendary transgender elder and activist. Miss Major Griffin-Gracy is a veteran of the infamous Stonewall Riots, a former sex worker, and a transgender elder and activist who survived Bellevue psychiatric hospital, New York's jail system, and the HIV/AIDS crisis. For over fifty years, she has been on the front lines of struggles for queer liberation. In this brilliant and moving conversation with Toshio Meronek, she presents a remarkable life -- told with intimacy, warmth, and an irresistable levity -- and a road map for those navigating the challenges Black, brown, queer and trans youth face."--back cover
Ghost :
Seeds
Published in 2023
"Set on a remote island on the Maine coast, GHOST :: SEEDS incorporates elements of magical realism and myth to explore and trouble conceptions of gender and identity. The central tension of this book-length poem is a dialogue between a trans speaker and his "ghost," the "girl-ghost" of the self that he left behind to become the man he is today. Putting a queer spin on the myth of Persephone, the girl-ghost speaks from underworld lit by glowworms, cut through by dark rivers, and connected to the world above through a sea cave. Alternating between prose-like elements and lyric meditations, the book's expansive form makes full use of the page from margin to margin, creating space and breathing room for complicated investigations of memory, gender, and grief"-- Provided by publisher.
More Sure
Poems and Interruptions
Published in 2023
"A book of poems and interruptions, recording instances of love, self-realization, and recovery in non-binary, queer, and autistic lives. In their stunning debut collection, A. Light Zachary draws power from a vision of life - especially queer and neurodivergent life - as a journey of continuous self-realization. These poems record the experience of locating oneself over and over again, within gender, language, family, labour, sexuality, fear, and love. Reaching back to claim queer space in the oldest Western canon, Zachary interrupts famous quotations from ancient Greek and Roman thinkers, asking: what advice might Juvenal or Seneca have handed down to non-binary citizens? Elsewhere, in concise and fluid verses that draw from punk rock and quantum physics, they ground the work firmly in the present. Come: invade with the alien. Evade with the coyote. These poems propose a certain supremacy: in these unending journeys of discovery and alienation, "we become more sure of who we are than you.""-- Provided by publisher.