LGBTQ Literature

... Read The Chosen and the Beautiful Summary

... Read The City We Became Summary

The Color Purple is an epistolary novel—a novel told in letter form—in which Alice Walker traces the gradual liberation of Celie, a poor, Black woman who must overcome abuse and separation from her beloved sister Nettie. Set in the South and an unnamed African country during the 1930 to 1940s, the novel is a study in the ways in which Black women use their faith, relationships, and creativity to survive racial and sexual oppression. Several... Read The Color Purple Summary

... Read The Coming Plague Summary

... Read The Confessions of Frannie Langton Summary

... Read The Dark Prophecy Summary

... Read The Death of Vivek Oji Summary

... Read The Deep Summary

... Read The Family Upstairs Summary

The Fifth Season is the first installment of author N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy—a “science fantasy” series that blends scientific explanation with the magical or supernatural elements of the fantasy genre. After its publication in 2015, the novel received the 2016 Hugo Award recognizing excellence in science fiction or fantasy writing. Jemisin was the first black woman to win the prize, and went on to break another record when her sequels to The Fifth... Read The Fifth Season Summary

James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time (1963) comprises two autobiographical essays in which the author confronts the racial issues and tensions that he believes corrupt and deform American life and the American dream. Baldwin’s essays exemplify and precursor many of the elements and arguments central to the Civil Rights movement. Please note: Throughout the text, Baldwin uses the racial labels/language common at the time he was writing. This study guide, which uses the Vintage Reissue... Read The Fire Next Time Summary

... Read The First to Die at the End Summary

... Read The Five Wounds Summary

... Read The Fragile Threads of Power Summary

... Read The Future Summary

The Garden of Eden is a novel by American author Ernest Hemingway, who is regarded as one of the most important writers of the 20th century. Hemingway had worked on the novel for 15 years at the time of his death in 1961. It was published posthumously in 1986. Though controversial, the novel has been heralded as an important example of Hemingway’s work and was adapted into a film of the same name in 2008... Read The Garden of Eden Summary

The novel follows the adventures of an immortal vampire named Gilda over eight chapters, each set in a different location and year in the United States. Spanning the 200 years between 1850 and 2050, the novel charts African American history from the period of enslavement through abolition, segregation, the Black Power movement, and into an imagined dystopian future of economic and environmental collapse. Told by an omniscient narrator, the stories in each chapter have their... Read The Gilda Stories Summary

Tennessee Williams, who wrote The Glass Menagerie in 1944, refers to the work as a “memory play” (750). Now recognized as one of the greatest American playwrights in history, The Glass Menagerie launched Williams’s career. The play is heavily influenced by Williams’s own life. The character of Laura is based on Williams’s older sister, Rose (alluded to by Laura’s nickname, Blue Roses), who was subjected to a botched lobotomy that rendered her mentally disabled and... Read The Glass Menagerie Summary

The Great Believers (2018) is the fourth novel by Chicago-based writer Rebecca Makkai. The novel alternates between the stories of a group of friends—most of them gay men diagnosed with AIDS—in Chicago during the mid-80s to the early 90s—and the story of a woman searching for her estranged daughter in Paris, 30 years later. The Great Believers won several awards, including the ALA Carnegie Medal, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, ALA Stonewall Award, and the... Read The Great Believers Summary

... Read The Guncle Summary