Beautiful Music For Ugly Children by Kirstin Cronn-Mills is about a boy named Gabe whose parents think he's gone crazy and the rest of the world is taking their side. Born Elizabeth, there's one thing he knows for sure, and it's that he's been a boy his w (2024)

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We asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us about their favorite queer books! Here are the page turning results:

1. A Queer and Pleasant Danger by Kate Bornstein is a memoir you won't be able to put down until the very last page. Detailing the twelve years she spent in The Church of Scientology, Kate explores relationships she lost once she left the church to explore her true gender identity.

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—Jennifer Tonti

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2. Autoboyagraphy by Christina Lauren centers around a high school senior, Tanner, as he develops a relationship with his older male mentor who is deeply rooted in the Mormon church.

3. History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera is a young adult novel about a 17-year-old boy named Griffin whose true love just lost his life. Now he must find a way to carry on with his own.

4. Carry On by Rainbow Rowell immerses the reader in over five hundred pages of magic school, love stories that'll give you butterflies, and an ending you'll wish never came.

5. Boy Erased by Garrard Conley details his real life experiences as a 19-year-old going through a conversion therapy program that promised to "cure" him.

6. Angels in America by Tony Kushner is a play that takes place in the mid 1980s and will make you think deeply about love, abandonment, forgiveness, and friendship. Each character is more memorable than the last.

7. Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman details the coming-of-age-story of Elio Perlman and his summer romance with Oliver Ulliva, a professor who is seven years older than he is. This original story was eventually adapted into an Oscar-winning screenplay!

8. Two boys Kissing by David Levithan follows Harry and Craig as they set out to break a Guinness World Record by kissing for more than 32 hours.

9. On The Move by Oliver Sacks is a reflection of his life's work as a physician, writer, and most notably, a neurologist. He was a man that studied the brain his whole life, and in this book we get to experience his personal life as a gay man on a journey to figure out his own mind.

10. I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson immerses the reader in unique imagery as it tells the dramatic story of fraternal twins, Noah and Jude as they struggle through puberty and learning to understand and accept each other.

11. Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded by Hannah Hart is a memoir that will leave you thinking about more than just yourself. Hannah opens up with the reader about parts of her life you wouldn't know from watching her on YouTube. She dives deeply into mental health and the role it's played on becoming who she is today.

12. Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371 by MK Czerweic details, in graphic novel form, what it was like treating HIV/AIDS patients in Care Unit 371 back during the height of the crisis in 1994.

13. Would You Rather by Katie Heaney is a memoir in which Katie describes, through funny and touching essays, what it was like to realize she was gay at age twenty-eight.

14. Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan combines the voices of both writers as they each take on their very own Will Grayson. It's about growing up, falling in love, friendship and the ups and downs along the way.

15. I'm Just A Person by Tig Notaro tells the story of the beloved comedian and (personal gay icon) Tig, as she is forced to confront heartbreak, cancer, and her mother's death while still finding a way to laugh through it all.

16. Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit by Jaye Robin Brown weaves a complex drama as Jo tries to fit in as a straight girl per her evangelical father's wishes. That promise becomes impossible to keep when she meets the very charming Mary Carlson.

17. Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith is the reimagining of Ovid’s gender-bending myth of Iphis and Ianthe, as portrayed and experienced by two Scottish sisters.

18. The Foxhole Court by Nora Sakavic packs a lot of drama into 260 pages. Protagonist Neil Josten is brand new to Palmetto State University, and he's also the runaway son of the crime lord known as The Butcher.

19. The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson is a genre-bending memoir that will have you thinking about identity, relationships, and the language we all use in creating our queer families.

20. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin transports the reader back to 1950s Paris. A young American expatriate is caught in a beautifully tragic choice between desire and conventional morality.

21. Annie On My Mind by Nancy Garden is a charming romance for the ages. This book, first published in 1982, centers on two teenage girls whose friendship develops into a deep love for one another. Pressures threaten their relationship, but their connection to each other is louder than any outside voices.

22. The Trials of Apollo: The Hidden Oracle by Rick Riordan immerses the reader in another world full of gods and mortals and a four-thousand-year-old deity who must learn to survive in modern day.

23. Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Charles M. Blow is the story of how Charles escaped a world of abuse and violence to become one of America’s most respected public figures today.

24. The Infinite Loop by Pierrick Colinet unfolds in a sci-fy realm of time paradoxes in which a woman named Teddy is tasked with fixing the time stream but instead meets Ano — and time stands still.

25. Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan takes you inside a town where being gay is celebrated, the school is full of cheerleaders riding Harleys and a guy named Daryl was the homecoming queen and she now prefers to go by Infinite Darlene.

26. Beautiful Music For Ugly Children by Kirstin Cronn-Mills is about a boy named Gabe whose parents think he's gone crazy and the rest of the world is taking their side. Born Elizabeth, there's one thing he knows for sure, and it's that he's been a boy his whole life.

27. The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth takes place in small town Montana. After the sudden death of Cameron's parents, she is forced to move in with a conservative aunt who eventually sends her to a gay conversion therapy center after she gets caught having sex with her friend on prom night.

28. All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens Throughout the Ages by Saundra Mitchell brings together the voices of many queer writers as seventeen young adult authors throughout the community compile a collection of diverse historical fiction for their peers.

29. Major Conflict by Jeffrey McGowan centers around the military's policy of Don't Ask Don't Tell, and its effects on one gay man's life.

30. Forbidden Colors by Yukio Mishima comes from one of Japan's greatest modern writers and is a novel full of sexual conflict and hidden love. It deepens our relationship with desire, hatred and intoxicating romance.

31. Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller is an action-packed thriller love story that will keep you turning the pages until the very end. Get ready to travel back to ancient Greece in the Age of Heroes.

32. More Than This by Patrick Ness leaves us asking questions at every turn. Seth remembers dying, but when he wakes up we're all left wondering, where is he now?

33. Not Your Sidekick by C. B. Lee is chock-full of high school drama, internships, secret queer crushes—oh and they're all superheroes.

34. Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg was published in 1993 and quickly became regarded as a heroic novel, and one of the highest respected accounts ever written of the multitudes that exist within the transgendered existence.

35. Two Boys at Swim by Jamie O'Neill brings the reader back to 1916 Ireland as it tells the tender and heartbreaking story of people caught in the unforgiving tide of time.

36. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara develops strong four main characters that grow into people you will feel you've spent your whole life knowing.

37. Lucky Us by Amy Bloom is a coming of age story about a young lesbian woman who must navigate through 1940s America.

38. Simon vs. the hom*o Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli tells the story of an adorable sixteen-year-old named Simon Spier. When a sensitive email is seen by the wrong people, his tightly held secret is at risk.

Queer books fill my heart with joy because they add representation to yet another medium that remains heteronormative. Queer authors and storylines have the power to change they way you see the world and yourself in it. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

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