HOW QUEER BOOKSHOPS CHANGED THE WORLD, worthy thesis defended with passion

HOW QUEER BOOKSHOPS CHANGED THE WORLD
A.J. WEST
Oneworld Publications (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Non-Fiction For the week ending June 30, 2026

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: For over a century, LGBTQ+ bookshops have been the unsung heroes of queer liberation

Home not only to books but chaotic community noticeboards, vicious rescue cats and countless meet cutes, queer bookshops have always been more than just bookshops, offering friendship, solidarity and sanctuary.

Traveling the world—Shakespeare and Company in Paris, Gay’s the Word in London, the Oscar Wilde Bookshop in New York—A. J. West explores the remarkable history of these bookstores. Tracing their evolution from under-the-counter operations to beloved out-and-proud institutions, West reveals how the queer bookshop stood at the vanguard of LGBTQ+ rights, offering support and vital information through the AIDS crisis and bringing the fight to Section 28 and book bans.

A powerful testament not only to bookshops but to the courage of queer booksellers, from Sylvia Beach hiding books from the Nazis in laundry baskets to Craig Rodwell facing off against the police at the Stonewall riots, A. J. West celebrates the shops and booksellers that brought queer literature and lives into the mainstream.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'd give it a perfect rating if I hadn't felt so put-upon with the opening chapters speed-lining queer history.

It was my emotional reaction. I'm not wrong; I literally cannot be wrong about my feelings.

It's necessary to put not-queer, or new to their history queer, readers in the picture of what these trailblazing heroically brave people did and what they risked for us all to have access to queer stories. It is breathtaking, and eye-opening, and quite honestly shaming for those of us not willing or able to stand up against Authority for the good of all.

It is more clear to me than ever before that the urgent project of the authoritarians trying to ban queer books, the tech scum trying to make all knowledge available only on their say-so and the seeker's ability to pay any vig "They" choose to demand, and the ruling class's desire to keep you as stupid as possible intertwine like snakes on Medusa's head. The underknown prophet of this future we now live in, Sinclair Lewis, wrote: "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying the cross."

Look around you...that was prophecy, not fiction.

Author AJ writes about the past in this book. It could, one day soon, feel like an elegy for les jadis if you and I are not very careful and very intentional in our actions in November 2026. It's fragile, this thing called Liberty, and it's always been very, very unpopular with with the ruling class. We-the-people have already seen how much control "They" want after women's bodily autonomy was stripped away from them in the US. Revoltingly it was enabled by a quisling woman. All of these struggles, legal battles, and societal shifts are under long-term and well-funded attack. How I wish more people had listened when Hilary Clinton spoke that truth.

Author AJ details the harms this determined regressive minority causes with seeming impunity in his chapters on the role of AIDS amelioration and drag-queen story hour bannings. Restraining the flow of often life-saving information to those in desperate need of it, and excluding people "They" don't like such as gender-nonconforming people, are terrible actions on their face. The true evil doesn't announce itself. It unfolds as Author AJ shows us consequences.


The best kind of non-fiction writing tells you a story that evokes emotional responses from the reader. I've seldom been more emotional in my response to a true story that does not involve a murder. Author AJ deserves all the kudos there are for bringing a storyteller's constructive attention to this crisis in our body politic.

QUEER (IN)JUSTICE, dated, but very very trenchant examination of queer social inequality

QUEER (IN)JUSTICE
JOEY MOGUL·ANDREA RITCHIE·KAY WHITLOCK
Beacon Press
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The first comprehensive work to turn a “queer eye” on the criminal justice system, providing an eye-opening study of LGBTQ+ rights and equality.

Drawing on years of research, activism, and legal advocacy, Queer (In)Justice is a searing examination of queer experiences as “suspects,” defendants, prisoners, and survivors of crime. The authors unpack queer criminal archetypes—from “gleeful gay killers” and “lethal lesbians” to “disease spreaders” and “deceptive gender benders”—to illustrate the punishment of queer expression, regardless of whether a crime was ever committed. Tracing stories from the streets to the bench to behind prison bars, the authors prove that the policing of sex and gender both bolsters and reinforces racial and gender inequalities.

An eye-opening study of LGBTQ rights and equality, Queer (In)Justice illuminates and challenges the many ways in which queer lives are criminalized, policed, and punished.

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK FROM THE GOODREADS M/M GIFT EXCHANGE. THANKS!

My Review: Back in the innocent days of 2020, when I received it, this was a mind-blowing read. In 2025, a mere five years later, its infelicities are brought into sharp relief by the spotlight the current US regime is shining on issues of social justice by trampling on, trying to bury, and (where possible) expunge progress made.

I have trans friends and family members. I'm guessing that was either not the case for the authors, or they simply did not delve deeply into those folks' experience. Importantly, though it might seem trivial to some, referring to trans women as "trans" and cisgender women as "women" just perpetuates their othering. The terms "gender non-conforming" and "genderqueer" are not synonyms for "transgender." "Genderqueer" is a different thing, its own category of queerness. I grant you that, when I first saw it codified in the 1990s, it did not have the sense of meaning it does now. "Gender non-conforming" includes anyone, cisgender or even heterosexual, whose manner of self-presentation falls on the edges or outside of a specific culture'e gender norms.

It is a case of the times being unkind to a solidly researched and competently argued (and footnoted!) work of scholarship.

That lacuna, addressable if Beacon Press brings out a second edition of this thirteen-year-old work, aside, I have the greatest respect for this genuinely informative scholarly examination of why decriminalization of same-sex sexual acts is only one small step for humankind. It is a project worth examining in the current horrifying recrudescence of the intolerant ignorance of our never-distant past. When frightened by change, humans routinely find scapegoats and the cynical, power-hungry would-be tyrants feed that base, appallingly cruel need in our ape-brained characters.

An admirable facet of this treatment of the legal system's weaponization of power is that it never isolates the causes of victimization. Race, biological sex however expressed, and socioeconomic class are all very explicitly brought into the conversation. The extent of violence against transfem and gender non-conforming queer men around the world...I'm specifically thinking of the violence committed on the US-Mexico border, though it is by no means the only place this occurs...is often exacerbated by socioeconomic pressures leading these vulnerable people into prostitution. No such threats of violence appertain to their clients. Why would that be, if it is the act of having sex with another man that is being scapegoated here?

I'll leave that thought to marinate with y'all.

In many ways it is the abolitionist movement's intersection with queer-rights groups that powerfully reinforce each other's main thrust: Reform. The system is, as the looneys on the political right constantly complain, rigged. They do not see that it's been rigged for a purpose, and that purpose is also served by impoverishing and immiserating them. Reform for selectively applied to benefit some and exclude others is the antithesis of fairness, justice, equitable distribution...all those things everyone likes until the language they're couched in gets politicized.