Read Harder 2023 Task #12: Read a Nonfiction Book About BIPOC and/or Queer History.

This detailed history digs into the history of transness in the African American community by highlighting some of the Black trans folks who lived between the mid nineteenth century and the present day. It compares the exposure to the names of prominent and tragic white trans people to that of Black trans people living at the same time, and digs into the correlation between anti-Blackness and anti-transness. 

This is not a true history book, but does contain several perspectives on the history of queer Asians in the Americas through analysis, personal essay, poetry, and more. Its predecessor, Q&A: Queer in Asian America, was published by Hom and a different colleague, and was published in 1998.

This volume highlights the past and present of Ballroom culture, recently made famous by shows like Pose and Legendary. Using elements of oral history and archival study, Tucker discusses the connection between queer Black culture and the shifts and swings in house music and culture over several decades. 

This is the book that “decolonizes the history of gender and sexuality in Native North America.” Delving into the precolonial history of how gender and sexuality were expressed in various Indigenous groups, Smithers explores the meaning of holding onto the traditions that were all but erased by settler colonialism, genocide, and erasure. 

Black women were doing a lot at the beginning of the twentieth century. “Free love, common-law and transient marriages, serial partners, cohabitation outside of wedlock, queer relations, and single motherhood were among the sweeping changes that altered the character of everyday life and challenged traditional Victorian beliefs about courtship, love, and marriage.“ Hartman looks into a group of Black women at the turn of the century and how they effected a whole century’s worth of change through their own desires for a better way to live.

First published in 1987, this combination of essays and poetry delves into life on the Mexican border, both in the past and in Anzaldúa’s present. She examines history and the future, and queer life in straight spaces, in language that will breathe the same full life into stories for centuries to come.

This collection of oral histories gathers nearly-lost knowledge of days past. Using oral history and personal essays, 14 queer activists highlight the work done in the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, by themselves and their (often lost) peers. 

This oral history collection looks at the past and present of “racialized sexual minorities” in the American South, through their own words. E. Patrick Johnson has a whole catalog of books exploring the lives past and present of Black queer folks, so this one might just be a jumping off point if you’re interested in a deep dive into Queer Black Studies.