Hispanic Heritage Month continues through October 15 and National Coming Out Day is next week on October 11, so there’s no better time to pick up a book by a Latine LGBTQ+ author. Here are 15 books from our collection to choose from. Read with Pride!
Teen:
Anger is a Gift by Mark Oshiro (2018). Also available as a downloadable audiobook in the Indiana Digital Library.
Rooted in the working-class neighborhoods of Oakland, California, this is a tale of youth of color, diverse in sexuality and gender, organizing to challenge state-sanctioned violence.
Cemetery Boys by Aidan Thomas (2020). Also available as an e-book or downloadable audiobook in the Indiana Digital Library.
Yadriel, a trans boy, summons the angry spirit of his high school’s bad boy, and agrees to help him learn how he died, thereby proving himself a brujo, not a bruja, to his conservative family.
Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun by Jonny Garza Villa (2021).
With the one person who understands him fifteen hundred miles away, Jules must face his fears about coming out alone, which accidentally propels him into the life he’s always dreamed of.
Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera (2019). Also available as an e-book in the Indiana Digital Library.
Nineteen-year-old, newly out Juliet Palante writes a you-changed-my-life letter to her favorite feminist author and is granted a summer internship at the author’s home in Portland, OR.
Lakelore by Anna-Marie McLemore (2022). Also available as an e-book or downloadable audiobook in the Indiana Digital Library.
Bastián and Lore are the only people who know what’s really under the lake—a magical world where Bastián’s alebrijes, or animal sculptures, have actually come to life. The two nonbinary, neurodivergent teens (Bastián has ADHD, and Lore has dyslexia) are quickly pulled into a world that begins to invade their lives above the surface, just as Bastián always feared it might.
They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera (2017). Also available as an e-book or downloadable audiobook in the Indiana Digital Library.
In a near-future New York City where a service alerts people on the day they will die, teenagers Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio meet using the Last Friend app and are faced with the challenge of living a lifetime on their End Day.
We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia (2019). Also available as an e-book or downloadable audiobook in the Indiana Digital Library.
A society wife-in-training has an uncomfortable awakening about her strictly polarized society after being recruited into a band of rebel spies and falling for her biggest rival.
Adult:
Cantoras by Carolina de Robertis (2019).
Enduring the rampant violence against women and the LGBTQ community in the decades of the Uruguayan dictatorship, five women heartbreakingly unite as lovers, friends and family.
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado (2017). Also available as an e-book or downloadable audiobook in the Indiana Digital Library.
Women and their bodies , and the violence done to them, both by themselves and others, occupy the center of Machado’s inventive, sensual, and eerie debut horror collection.
High Risk Homosexual: A Memoir by Edgar Gomez (2022). Also available as an e-book in the Indiana Digital Library.
The Florida-born writer presents a memoir tracing his hard-won path to taking pride in himself as a gay Latinx man despite the culture of machismo surrounding him.
Hola Papi: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons by John Paul Brammer (2021). Also available as a CD audiobook, an e-book or downloadable audiobook in the Indiana Digital Library.
LGBTQ advice columnist Brammer debuts with a frothy, episodic memoir written in the format of answers to such questions as “How do I make peace with the years I lost in the closet?”
The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara (2018). Also available as an e-book in the Indiana Digital Library.
Inspired in part by Jennie Livingston’s celebrated documentary film Paris Is Burning (1991), Cassara’s first novel dramatically re-creates the world of Harlem balls and the houses that revolve around them, focusing on the real-world House of Xtravaganza, the first Latino house in the ball scene.
My Sister: How One Sibling’s Transition Changed Us Both by Selenis Leyva (2020). Also available as an e-book in the Indiana Digital Library.
This memoir, written by two sisters who alternate chapters, describes how the younger sibling struggled with her identity and transitioned to a trans woman and activist with the help of her sister’s unwavering support.
Ordinary Girls: A Memoir by Jaquira Diaz (2019). Also available as an e-book or downloadable audiobook in the Indiana Digital Library.
Traces the author’s upbringing in the housing projects of Puerto Rico, her mother’s battle with schizophrenia, her personal struggles with sexual assault and her efforts to pursue a literary career.
The Town of Babylon by Alejandro Valera (2022). Also available as an e-book in the Indiana Digital Library.
Returning to his hometown to care for his ailing father, Andres, a gay Latinx professor, decides to attend his 20-year high school reunion where he encounters the long-lost characters of his youth and must confront these relationships to better understand his own life.