About this resource list
This Pride guide features some of the 2SLGBTQI authors and films featured in our library collections. Most of the books and films featured are available online. The non-digital items are available via Books by Mail, so you can enjoy these works at home.
If you have suggestions for books that are not yet part of our collection, please let us know by emailing your ideas to library@camosun.ca.
2SLGBTQI
We are using 2SLGBTQI because it places Two-spirited peoples first as a reminder that BIPOC folks of all sexualities and gender identities face compounded discrimination in most parts of the world including Canada.
Angry queer Somali boy : a complicated memoir by 
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We Have Always Been Here: a queer Muslim memoir by This link opens in a new window
Visible silence: the unspoken lives of Thai toms, dees and lesbians (DVD) This link opens in a new window
Holly Near: Singing for our Lives (DVD) This link opens in a new windowCheck out previous Pride reading guides for more books, films and links!
This 2021 reading guide highlights two groups, Bisexuals & Intersex folks, who all too often feel erased, ignored or marginalized even in Canada and their own supposed ‘Community.’
Both Bisexuals and Intersex people have much higher rates of negative health outcomes because of fear of ‘outing’ themselves to medical professionals, or avoid health care because of negative experiences. Raising awareness saves lives.
Bisexuals
“Bisexual erasure or bisexual invisibility is a pervasive problem in which the existence or legitimacy of bisexuality (either in general or in regard to an individual) is questioned or denied outright.” (GLAAD.org)
Intersex
“Intersex is an umbrella term for differences in sex traits or reproductive anatomy. People are born with these differences or develop them at a young age. Genitalia, hormones, internal anatomy, or chromosomes can develop in many ways.” (Source: https://interactadvocates.org/)
Intersex people are 0.05 to 1.7% of the general population and always have been. Intersex is not a Gender Identity.
“Intersex and transgender communities share common issues: while transgender people are fighting for the care they need and want, intersex people are often subjected to irreversible medical interventions in childhood. In both cases, others make major decisions about our bodies.” (Source: https://interactadvocates.org/dr-rachel-levine/)
That Inevitable Victorian Thing (YA Fiction) by This link opens in a new windowFrom Left to Right: Intersex - Philadelphia Pride - Bisexual.
The Intersex flag in the banner was created by Morgan Carpenter in 2013 for Intersex Human Rights Australia. It is not the only flag used to represent Intersex folks but it is the most widely used and recognized symbol.
The Philadelphia Pride flag also known as the “More Color, More Pride” flag was created by the Philadelphia Office of LGBT Affairs in 2017 to uplift the voices and experiences of LGBTQ people of color.
The Bisexual Pride flag was designed by Michael Page in 1998 to maximize bisexual pride and visibility.
Short Informative Videos
No group of people is a monolith. People who do not identify as 2SLGBTQI might assume that all 'Queer' folks are atheist liberal extroverts who love Drag.
In reality we are as diverse as every other identifiable group in Canadian society. We are religious and non-religious, extroverts and introverts, and we support political parties of all stripes. Some of us hate the term Queer and some of us embrace it. Social Media is full of debates over who should be included and who feels excluded by the ‘Gay Community.’
These links show just how diverse 2SLGBTQI folks can be:
Stealing Nasreen is a novel about the lives of three very different people, all of whom belong to the same small religious community. Set in Toronto with back story in Mumbai, Nasreen Batawala, an Indo-Canadian lesbian and burnt-out psychologist, becomes enmeshed in the lives of Shaffiq and Salma Paperwala, new immigrants from Mumbai. While working in the same Toronto hospital as Nasreen, Shaffiq develops a persistent and confusing fascination with Nasreen, causing him to bring home and hide things he "finds" in her office. Salma, his wife, discovers some of these hidden treasures and suspects that something is amiss. Unbeknownst to Shaffiq, Nasreen begins attending weekly Gujarati classes taught by Salma, who finds herself inexplicably attracted to her student. An impulsive kiss sets off a surprising course of events.
In Buller Men and Batty Bwoys, Wesley Crichlow focuses primarily on the lives of nineteen Black gay and bisexual men in Toronto and Halifax, seeks to give voice to those who have been displaced, and explores the process of self-definition in the context of racial, ethnic, and sexual conformity. Crichlow's perceptive study brings to the foreground several concepts, including the role of homophobia in Black identity, and the problematics of Black 'heteronormativity,' in relation to Black men who engage in same-sex practices. In his sociological analysis, Crichlow introduces to the discipline Audre Lorde's unique literary genre, "biomythography," which emphasizes the connections between the creation of culture and community (through mythology and story-telling) and the creation of personal identity (through names, labels, and group membership). At the same time, he problematizes and celebrates the multiple differences among the men he interviewed as he aims to broaden the study of Black history, Queer Studies, and culture in a Canadian context by bringing sexuality into the various theories that attempt to generalize experience. Buller Men and Batty Bwoys offers the reader critical insight into the complex lives of Black gay and bisexual men in Canada. Equally important, Crichlow's research makes a substantial and original contribution to the limited body of academic work in this area.
Devin died five years ago. She got an infection, lost her arm, and died. How can Devin be in a picture posted online today? This picture of Devin, alive when she should not be alive, triggers of a journey of grief and discovery as the young woman convinced that she caused Devin's death sets out to discover whether Devin may actually be alive, and whether she can be forgiven. Along the way she steals identities, picking up and discarding the people she may or may not be as she struggles with her guilt, and to come to terms with her own bisexuality. As her sense of self unravels, she meets Calgary hippies, a car thief, and an ice cream loving corpse. Disappearing in Reverse is a mystery, a road novel, and a coming of age story. Blending past and present, the self and the other, it crosses genres and defies categorization to be met and addressed on its own terms. Fearless and vulnerable, unabashed and wounded, this is a story of the liminal places where expectations falter and the unexpected thrives.
Confucius Janeby Katie Lynch is a lush and charming novel that vividly depicts New York City's Chinatown while taking the reader on a touching journey of family, community, and love. On leave from college, Jane Morrow has a new job, helping out in her uncle's fortune cookie factory, and a new roommate--her precocious 11-year-old cousin. Though surrounded by her loving family and their close-knit Chinatown community, Jane feels like a colossal failure. When Jane meets medical student Sutton St. James at her local noodle house sparks fly! Can Sutton and Jane overcome a scandalous secret that threatens to keep them apart?
Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera. Each is unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, when, during the restless summer weeks, unrelenting currents of obsession, fascination, and desire intensify their passion and test the charged ground between them. Recklessly, the two verge toward the one thing both fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy. It is an instant classic and one of the great love stories of our time. Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Fiction A New York Times Notable Book of the Year * A Publishers Weekly and The Washington Post Best Book of the Year * A New York Magazine "Future Canon" Selection * A Chicago Tribune and Seattle Times (Michael Upchurch's) Favorite Favorite Book of the Year
This Is Not For You, perhaps Rule's most self-consciously literary and philosophical novel, tells the story of a young woman in the late 1950s and early 1960s as she negotiates her lesbian sexuality. This epistolary lament -- an unsent letter to a lover who was never quite a lover -- vividly depicts New York and London and a group of friends as they search, sometimes in vain, for a sustaining love in a time of strict societal constraints.
The 2000 case of Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium v. Customs Canada provided Canada's highest court with its first opportunity to consider whether the analysis set out in R. v. Butler -- in which the Supreme Court identified pornography as an issue of sex discrimination -- applies to pornography intended for a lesbian or gay male audience. The Court held that it did, finding that, like heterosexual pornography, same-sex pornography also violates the sex equality interests of all Canadians. Christopher Kendall supports this finding, arguing that gay male pornography reinforces those social attitudes that create systemic inequality on the basis of sex and sexual orientation -- misogyny and homophobia alike -- by sexually conditioning gay men to those attitudes and practices.
Night is falling, and so is the snow. As the blizzard buries the ground, it uncovers the resentments, hopes, and aches of a small town in northeastern Arkansas, where, like in any Southern small town, there are unwanted pregnancies to agonize over, surgeries to be paid for and love to be made. Julie's two daughters have just run off to Hollywood to be famous when she suddenly finds herself, at forty-six, unexpectedly expectant. She's not sure she can bear to be a mother again. And her husband, Charlie, won't come home to talk it over with her. Charlie wants another child more than anything, but he doesn't know how to deal with Julie. His affair with Wilson, his best friend, is over, but heâe(tm)s found a different and unusual kind of intimacy. Wilson works in the Singer factory that keeps the town alive. She wants more than anything to be loved, but she knows that Charlie wasnâe(tm)t the way to get there. She's in love with Dol. Dol is a transsexual, a divorced father of two children, who canâe(tm)t afford the transition that would make his body make sense âe" although the doctors visiting from Atlanta might change that. Their very different voices converge as the blizzard gathers force, their stories violently mapping in the snow the ways that memory, gender, and history carve themselves upon our bodies. The Drifts is dexterously told, a cacophony of four affecting voices melding into one exquisite chord.
Queer People of Color in Higher Education (QPOC) is a comprehensive work discussing the lived experiences of queer people of color on college campuses. This book will create conversations and provide resources to best support students, faculty, and staff of color who are people of color and identify as LGBTQ. The edited volume covers emerging issues that are affecting higher education around the country. Leading researchers and practitioners have remarkable writing that concisely summarizes current literature while also adding new ways to address issues of injustice related to racism, sexism, homophobia, heterosexism, and transphobia. QPOC in Higher Education insightfully combines research with practical implications on services, systems, campus climate and ways to hostility, violence, and unrest on campuses. This book rises out of places of turmoil and pain and brings attention to broken systems on higher education. QPOC in Higher Education is a must-read for anyone who wants to transform their society, campus, or community into places that fully value the complex and beautiful intersections that our diverse communities come from. This book takes diversity to a deeper level and speaks from a social justice philosophy of looking big pictures at our systems and cultures instead of simply at our oppressed groups as the problems.
On Making Sense juxtaposes texts produced by black, Latino, and Asian queer writers and artists to understand how knowledge is acquired and produced in contexts of racial and gender oppression. From James Baldwin's 1960s novel Another Country to Margaret Cho's turn-of-the-century stand-up comedy, these works all exhibit a preoccupation with intelligibility, or the labor of making sense of oneself and of making sense to others. In their efforts to "make sense," these writers and artists argue against merely being accepted by society on society's terms, but articulate a desire to confront epistemic injustice--an injustice that affects people in their capacity as knowers and as communities worthy of being known. The book speaks directly to critical developments in feminist and queer studies, including the growing ambivalence to antirealist theories of identity and knowledge. In so doing, it draws on decolonial and realist theory to offer a new framework to understand queer writers and artists of color as dynamic social theorists.
