The Sodomite Invasion: VPL Book List
The Sodomite Invasion exhibition is open on Saturdays until August 29th. VPL has a wide range of books that help contextualize the exhibition, both historically and contemporarily.
This list was compiled thanks to a list by Dahlia Adler on LGBTQ Reads, Goodreads, Book Riot, and VPL. All descriptions are from VPL’s website.
https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/6159163038
Unapologetic: A Black, Queer and Feminist Mandate for Our Movement by Charlene A. Carruthers
A manifesto from one of America's most influential activists which disrupts political, economic, and social norms by reimagining the Black Radical Tradition.
https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/4378969038
Black Girl Dangerous: On Race, Queerness, Class and Gender by Mia McKenzie
Mia McKenzie, creator of the enormously popular website Black Girl Dangerous, writes about race, queerness, class and gender in a concise, compelling voice filled at different times with humor, grief, rage, and joy.
https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/3633748038
Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock
A young woman recounts her coming-of-age as a transgender teen--a deeply personal and empowering portrait of self-revelation, adversity, and heroism.
https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/6566340038
How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones
Jones's memoir tells the story of a young, Black, gay man from the South as he fights to carve out a place for himself, within his family, within his country, within his own hopes, desires, and fears.
https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/5488970038
Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith
Smith's unflinching poetry addresses race, class, sexuality, faith, social justice, mortality, and the challenges of living HIV positive at the intersection of Black and queer identity.
https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/757941038
The Cornel West Reader by Cornel West
The Cornel West Reader traces the development of West's extraordinary career as academic, public intellectual, and activist.
Marlon Riggs and Cornel West, Black Popular Culture conference, New York, captured by Lyle Ashton Harris, 1991, Chromogenic print, Courtesy of the Artist and Salon 94, New York. Shown here as part of The Sodomite Invasion at Griffin Art Projects, on view until August 29th, 2020.
https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/6152862038
I Can’t Date Jesus: Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I’ve Put My Faith in Beyoncé by Michael Arceneaux
Presents a collection of essays about what it is like to grow up as a creative, sensitive Black man in a world that constantly tries to deride and diminish your humanity.
https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/5537731038
No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies edited by E. Patrick Johnson
Brings together nineteen essays from the next generation of scholars, activists, and community leaders doing work on Black gender and sexuality.
https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/128758038
And The Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts
Shilts tells the heroic stories of individuals in science and politics, public health and the gay community, who struggled to alert the nation to the enormity of the danger it faced.
https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/5268316038
How to Survive A Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France
Shortly after David France arrived in New York in 1978, the newspaper articles announcing a new cancer specific to gay men seemed more a jab at his new community than a genuine warning. Just three years later, he was reporting on the first signs of what would become an epidemic.
Four years before the publication of this book, David France released a documentary film, also titled How to Survive A Plague, which was featured earlier this year as part of “The Rage to Live: Queer Film Legacies and the Work of David Wojnarowicz and Marlon Riggs,” a film and lecture series organized collaboratively by Griffin Art Projects, The Cinematheque and the Helen Belkin Art Gallery.
https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/3452180038
Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival by Sean O’Brien Strub
Sean Strub, founder of the groundbreaking POZ magazine, producer of the hit play The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, and the first openly HIV-positive candidate for U.S. Congress, charts his remarkable life.
https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/3712440038
Hold Tight Gently: Michael Callen, Essex Hemphill, and the Battlefield of AIDS by Martin B. Duberman
A memorial to those lost to AIDS and to two of the great unsung heroes of the early years of the epidemic.
