20 classic works of gay literature

‘Giovanni’s Room’ by James Baldwin -- a man discovers his sexual identity in Paris’Nightwood’ by Djuna Barnes -- early postmodern fiction of women in Paris in love’Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic’ by Alison Bechdel -- a graphic novel memoir of her troubled gay father and her own coming out’Rubyfruit Jungle’ by Rita Mae Brown -- the 1973 tale of a young woman’s coming of age’Naked Lunch’ by William S. Burroughs -- the focus of a breakthrough obscenity trial, a landmark experimental novel ‘Oscar Wilde’ by Richard Elmann -- bio of the lively writer whose gay relationship got him sent to prison for “gross indecency” ’Maurice’ by E.M. Forster -- a love story written when homosexuality was illegal in England; published posthumously’The Well of Loneliness’ by Radclyffe Hall -- groundbreaking lesbian novel of the 1920s’Invisible Life’ by E. Lynn Harris -- an African American law student’s sexual discovery’Howl’ by Allen Ginsberg -- the poem was subject to an obscenity trial in part because of its explicit gay themes ‘Our Lady of the Flowers’ by Jean Genet -- published in 1944, sexual adventures in Paris’ criminal underground’American Studies’ by Mark Marlis -- an aging man looks back; won the LA Times book prize for first fiction ‘Tales of the City’ by Armistead Maupin -- in San Francisco, the stories about Michael Tolliver continued in five sequels’Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir’ by Paul Monette. A breathtaking yet matter-of-fact, day by day account of the death of his longtime partner from AIDS.’Brokeback Mountain’ by Annie Proulx -- a story of cowboys in love, from the collection ‘Close Range’’City of Night’ by John Rechy -- a novel of gay street hustlers in the 1950s ‘The Complete Poems’ by Sappho -- a woman’s love poetry from the seventh century BC’The Queen Is Dead’ by Hubert Selby Jr. -- a story of a transvestite’s death, from the collection ‘Last Exit to Brooklyn’ ‘The Master’ by Colm Toibin -- an imagining of the life of Henry James’Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit’ by Jeanette Winterson -- a young woman’s sexual awakening that won the Whitbread Prize for first fiction