"The works chosen below are proof of queer folks' endurance."

June 22, 2023 8:14 AM

The 25 Most Influential Works of Postwar Queer Literature (NYT gift) Writers Roxane Gay, James Ijames, Lisa Kron, Thomas Page McBee, Neel Mukherjee, and Edmund White created the list.
posted by box (26 comments total)

(I might've included Rubyfruit Jungle and Macho Sluts, but I don't really know how influential either of them were.)
posted by box at 9:01 AM on June 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

Here's an ungated version; the gift link required a login (for me at least)
posted by chavenet at 9:23 AM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Interesting list, seems like it has a ton of recency bias, although I haven't read many of the ones from the 2010s or 2020s so I'm glad to have learned about them. I would have definitely included Rubyfruit Jungle, and Cheever's Falconer, but maybe those were just influential on me and not in general. I guess Isherwood's Berlin Stories is not postwar, exactly.
posted by dis_integration at 9:51 AM on June 22, 2023

Cool list, I hadn't heard of maybe 1/2 of these! That does reflect that recency bias but is also cool to learn about these authors (some of whom are more late 20th century than current).

Nominate Mr Benson for super influential.
posted by latkes at 10:39 AM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

I found John Rechy's Numbers to be a fascinating read. Was a bit surprised he's not on this list anywhere; less surprised to see Highsmith.
posted by chavenet at 10:53 AM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

I think “most influential on whom” is a worthwhile question. It’s the NYT, so it skews way too literary, and most of the poetry could be replaced by music, but I guess it’s OK. I mean, as pointed out above, Mr. Benson almost created an entire subculture; isn’t that influential enough? I feel like Fingersmith could be in there, too.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:12 PM on June 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

They certainly got #1 right.
posted by mykescipark at 1:10 PM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

I doubt it’s been around for long enough to be influential, but David Demchuck’s Red X is an engaging horror novel about a thing stalking gay Toronto across decades. Not only does it bring the shivers, but it does so against a backdrop of changing city landscape, police indifference to queer deaths, AIDS, and friendship, family, and community surviving the ravages of time. It’s also grief-stricken over the careless deaths of so many young gay lives.

I also feel Sarah Schulman should be on this list.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:53 PM on June 22, 2023 [4 favorites]

Rubyfruit Jungle seemed to be influential on the lesbians of my generation (late boomer/early Gen X) that I knew, but that's not really my question to answer.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:55 PM on June 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

OK, maybe this is too late, but: what LGBTQ+ literature has been most influential on you?
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:55 PM on June 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

It was influential for a lot of the lesbian/bisexual/pansexual/etc. women I’ve known, too (late-X/old-millennial), but the people I traveled with are probably more book people than the average.
posted by box at 5:25 PM on June 22, 2023

I read Stone Butch Blues, Zami, DTWOF, Mr Benson and Macho Sluts (in that order) at critical identity formation junctures. I think after my mid 20s, books stopped making me as a person, so the queer lit I read after that was judged on its literary merits more than imbibed and metabolized into myself.

The Color Purple is a notable absence. Alice Walker's weird and troubling 3rd act has contributed to her decreasing relevance, but that book was enormously impact full for queers.

Orlando also seems pretty important to the queer canon.
posted by latkes at 10:21 PM on June 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

Orlando isn't postwar, though.
posted by kyrademon at 1:44 AM on June 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

> "OK, maybe this is too late, but: what LGBTQ+ literature has been most influential on you?"

Hm...

Read as a teen in the 80's:
Annie on My Mind
Swordspoint
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit
Tales of the City
The Color Purple
Kiss of the Spider Woman

College and post-college in the 90's:
Slow River
Written on the Body
The Child Garden
A Game of You
The Price of Salt
Stone Butch Blues
Dykes to Watch Out for
Stop Kiss
Angels in America

In the 2000's:
Broken Wings
Fire Logic
Lorimal's Chalice
The Maerlande Chronicles
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Fun Home
Rat Bohemia
Palimpsest

2010's and recent:
How to be Both
Daughter of Mystery
In Other Lands
The Breath of the Sun
Nevada
How to Make a Wish
The Winged Histories
A Memory Called Empire
This is How You Lose the Time War
Gideon the Ninth
In the Dream House
Strange Creatures
The Gracekeepers
Machine
Dreadnought
The Raven Tower

Others I might have also included on the "postwar most influential" list:
Brokeback Mountain
Torch Song Trilogy
The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Desert of the Heart
Homo Sapienne
Cassandra at the Wedding
Something That May Shock and Discredit You
A Queer and Pleasant Danger
Nimona
posted by kyrademon at 2:24 AM on June 23, 2023 [6 favorites]

A Game of You

By noted queer author Neil Gaiman.
posted by pxe2000 at 3:28 AM on June 23, 2023

I don't think Annie Proulx or Diana Son are queer either, so if that's important to your conception of queer lit (and I can see why it can be), feel free to strike out Brokeback Mountain and Stop Kiss, too. There are others on my list whose orientation I don't know -- Anne Leckie, for example.

Mine is just a list of queer stories that were influential on me personally. I didn't go deeper into other considerations than that.
posted by kyrademon at 4:10 AM on June 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

My friend sez this is missing Whipping Girl, the origin of the term transmisogyny.
posted by subdee at 4:15 AM on June 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

I would put Swordspoint, Giddeon the Ninth on a different list (this one specifically says "literary" fiction).
posted by subdee at 4:17 AM on June 23, 2023

Yeah, my literary fiction list would have been shorter. I took queer and influential-on-me-personally as my sole restrictions.

(Although to be honest, if they're going to include Dykes to Watch Out For on a literary fiction list, I feel the definition being used must be a rather loose one anyway.)
posted by kyrademon at 4:28 AM on June 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I feel the literary fiction angle is as stale as the NYT having anything useful to say about the lives of queer people as I know it, so I don’t feel that’s a necessary hurdle for our own list-making. I’d bet that most people’s first encounters with LGBTQ+ characters in fiction, maybe that first contact with the concept that they could be, was in genre and/or borderline pornography. I’m not likely to argue with the literary merits of Giovanni’s Room, but I suspect few people under 60 read it as a “gateway” experience. And that’s really the influence I’m interested in.

I remember reading the fantasy novel The Door into Fire by Diane Duane in high school and having it taken from me by bullies who read “mock sexy” passages at random, missing the modestly graphic male sex scenes (to my relief). That book, which I won’t reread for fear that it can’t live up to my memories, was maybe the first time I saw a story where two men could be together a) explicitly so and b) happily. I suspect that it’s only so-so writing, but it sure was influential. (And, to the best of my knowledge, Duane is straight, so *shrug*.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:58 AM on June 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oh yeah, I was obsessed with Tamora Pierce's Tarma and Kethry books for a bit... Kethry marries a guy and Tarma has taken a vow of chastity... it was still the gayest book I'd read to that point.
posted by subdee at 7:03 AM on June 23, 2023

I'm also surprised there's nothing by Hermann Hesse or the Year 24 Group on here, unless this is a strictly English-original-language list.
posted by subdee at 7:05 AM on June 23, 2023

Or no, because of their "post war" criterium ...
posted by subdee at 7:14 AM on June 23, 2023

The discussion covers the limitation to fiction and poetry and I ended up agreeing with the argument that queer lit in particular should include non-fiction or lightly fictionalized or whatever... Like Whipping Girl is not fiction but yes extremely foundational.. Or The Argonauts.. totally blew my mind and lots of others' minds (though curiously - given how brightly it shone when it came out - I think it's light has faded pretty fast).

They also discuss straight authors and seems like they landed on the fact that yes straight authors have written important queer books, but for the purpose of a short list like this, they decided to skip them.

I thought it was really cool that they included DTWOF.. it's very clearly fiction but given it's massive duration and being a comic strip, definitely not traditional 'fiction'. I read them for years syndicated in queer newspapers so it sort of represents the existence of that whole media world that is gone now.
posted by latkes at 8:32 AM on June 23, 2023

Tamora Pierce's Tarma and Kethry

Mercedes Lackey is the author you're thinking of. Her Vanyel trilogy, set in the same world, was foundational queer lit for some of my Xennial and millennial friends.

I personally think of myself as queer-adjacent rather than queer, but Tarma and Kethry were a foundational feminist model for me precisely because their relationship was about women valuing each other and having a long-term life relationship that equalled, or was even more important to them, than straight marriage and childbearing.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 8:54 AM on June 23, 2023

Yes thank you, the baby is teething and my brain is mush today
posted by subdee at 11:28 AM on June 23, 2023