Today is “Stonewall Day” – a national day of awareness to commemorate the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Riots. You can catch “Pride Live” today on Logo’s Facebook and YouTube pages. Celebrities, including Barack Obama and Taylor Swift, will be helping raise funds for those in the LGBTQ+ community affected by COVID-19.
For more information about Stonewall, read about the two Black trans women who are generally credited with starting the riots: Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. You will come to understand that there IS no Pride without Black lives. LGBTQ+ communities have spent this Pride Month making an effort to center queer Black voices and remind us all that Pride marches are, and always have been, a form of protest march.
Did you know that Wayland – and specifically the Wayland Library- was central to the trans community in Massachusetts in the 1970s and ’80s? Read this fascinating article about the evolution of The Tiffany Club – a long-running safehouse and community space for transgender people: My Hometown’s Secret Trans Safe House by Alicia Winokur. Medium.com. Jan 22, 2020
Read more – check out these great booklists for celebrating and learning about LGBTQ+ history and Pride from:
The Massachusetts Library Association
The American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Awards
And finally, a staff recommendation, available as an ebook or audiobook through Hoopla, is The Book of Pride: LGBTQ Heroes who Changed the World by Mason Funk. It includes short glimpses into the lives and stories of LGBT heroes – told largely through their own words.
Thank you to circulation staffer Erica Leblang for this post!