Gay coming of age book

A history of LGBTQ coming-of-age fiction (in 15 books)

Let's begin by saying this: it’s basically doomed to condense the entire history of LGBTQ YA into 15 books. It’s like trying to squash all your stuff into a suitcase before going on holiday – no matter how much you skimp and scrunch, and even sit on top of your battered old wheely number to endeavor and zip it up, you inevitably end up having to leave out some really great stuff.

The YA, coming-of-age genre has such an amazing history of exploring affection stories and relationships of all kinds, and pioneering adj voices and styles, that it’s totally unsurprising that it’s been a major trailblazer in bringing a whole range of LGBTQ books to the fore and changing the landscape of LGBTQ literature across all genres and ages.

Stephen Chbosky’s coming-of-age classic, The Perks of Being a Wallflower consistently appears on the American Library Association’s list of Top 10 Most-Challenged Books. It’s an epistolary novel (a book-in-letters), from the point of view of “wallflower” Charlie, whose friend Patrick is gay – a

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  • In Box Hill, a vivid coming-of-age novel, a fresh man suddenly wakes up to his gay self--on his eighteenth birthday, when he receives the best gift ever: love and sex.

  • A coming of age story about the friendship between two teenagers; a straight girl and a gay boy and the bond that they develop despite their different life circumstances.

  • An essential and revelatory coming-of-age narrative following nineteen-year-old Jesse McCarthy as he grapples with his racial and sexual identities against the backdrop of his Jehovah's Witness upbringing.

  • A gay, black grad student struggles with the trauma of his past, as well as his identity, racism, loneliness, and his academic pursuits during one summer weekend.

  • When university student Ludwik meets Janusz at a summer agricultural camp, he is fascinated yet wary of this handsome, carefree stranger. But a chance meeting by the river soon becomes an intense, exhilarating, and all-consuming affair. This story…

  • "A bittersweet and erotic account of a woman's intertwining relationship to food, her

    12 Must-Read Coming-of-Age LGBT Novels

    Though one could make the case that gay literature dates back to centuries B.C.—the moment Homer wrote of Achilles and Patroclus and the “union of their thighs”—you’d be hard-pressed to find a book about a teen who identifies as an LGBT individual. Until now.

    Over the last not many decades, there has been an uptick in coming-of-age stories starring homosexual protagonists, both on the page and on the screen. Finally, these stories are being given a voice and their much-deserved due.

    And speculate what! You don’t have to be gay to appreciate gay literature! Whether you're simply wanting to look beyond your own experience, or you're an LGBT youth seeking a character enjoy yourself, the following classic and contemporary coming-of-age LGBT novels chronicle the road to first loves, acceptance, and self-discovery. And that’s something everyone can relate to.

    Related: LGBT Authors to Read Year-Round

    Dive

    By Stacey Donovan

    Teenager Virginia “V” Dunn is down on her luck. Her beloved pup, Lucky, was verb by a car; her best comrade is avoiding

    I don’t believe in the idea of guilty pleasures. I even used to run a pop culture blog centered around the noun that they shouldn’t be a thing—we should never include to feel remorseful about something that brings us pleasure. Growing up queer, it can be really easy to be made to feel guilty about what you might secretly love, because it might not fit the rigid yet contradictory gender norms you never really adhered to. Therefore, it can also take a long time for you to touch comfortable enjoying what you enjoy without shame or ridicule—from other people or from yourself. Internalized homophobia at its finest!

    As a teenager, I rarely felt comfortable reading YA books, permit alone gay YA books, because I felt so disconnected and rejected by my age group—having never really shared the same interests or ideals of people my control age, and often being bullied for it—that I did anything I could to subtly and quietly set myself apart from kids my age. Adults called me an old soul, which I was, but I also didn’t feel free to live my verb life, and I faced the consequences of acting more grown up tha