Black History is Queer History

Flamboyants

The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I'd Known

By: George M. Johnson
Narrated by: George M. Johnson
Length: 2 hours 23 minutes

““Change ain’t over night but is damn sure necessary.” George M. Johnson brings to life the stories of Black, queer icons of the Harlem Renaissance, shedding light on the deep intersections of race, sexuality, and identity. Through powerful reflections on racism and homophobia in spaces meant for refuge, this book speaks vital truths. A... Read more

Freedom is a Constant Struggle

Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement

By: Angela Y. Davis
Narrated by: Angela Y. Davis & Coleen Marlo
Length: 5 hours 47 minutes

“A must read on the interconnection of all liberation struggles that has only become more relevant since its publication in 2016. Angela Davis is one of the most steadfast voices of our time, and her background as a public speaker makes for excellent narration. Read more

Dear Bi Men

A Black Man's Perspective on Power, Consent, Breaking Down Binaries, and Combating Erasure

By: J.R. Yussuf
Narrated by: J.R. Yussuf
Length: 13 hours 36 minutes

An unapologetic guide for readers who are Black, masc, and bi—unlearning biphobia, coming out, combatting erasure, and embodying your whole self

Through cutting social analysis, personal stories, and need-to-know advice, Dear Bi Men reclaims bi+ visibility in a culture of erasure—and unapologetically centers Blackness in a practical and deeply... Read more

How We Fight For Our Lives

By: Saeed Jones
Narrated by: Saeed Jones
Length: 5 hours 34 minutes

“This memoir by black and gay poet Saeed Jones is a visceral coming of age and coming out story. Growing up as an only child to his single mother in Texas and spending summers with his evangelical grandmother in Memphis, Jones struggles to come to terms with his sexuality, to come out of the closet, and to love himself. He wrestles with his... Read more

Belly of the Beast

The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness

By: Da'Shaun L. Harrison
Narrated by: Da'Shaun L. Harrison
Length: 3 hours 29 minutes

**The 2022 Lammy Award Winner in Transgender Nonfiction**
Exploring the intersections of Blackness, gender, fatness, health, and the violence of policing.

To live in a body both fat and Black is to exist at the margins of a society that creates the conditions for anti-fatness as anti-Blackness. Hyper-policed by state and society, passed over for... Read more

Here for It

Or, How to Save Your Soul in America; Essays

By: R. Eric Thomas
Narrated by: R. Eric Thomas
Length: 7 hours 34 minutes

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Read with Jenna Book Club Pick as Featured on Today • From the creator of Elle’s “Eric Reads the News,” a heartfelt and hilarious memoir-in-essays about growing up seeing the world differently, finding unexpected hope, and experiencing every awkward, extraordinary stumble along the way.

“Pop culture–obsessed, Sedaris-level... Read more

Fat Off, Fat On

A Big Bitch Manifesto

By: Clarkisha Kent
Narrated by: Clarkisha Kent
Length: 8 hours 53 minutes

In this disarming and candid memoir, cultural critic Clarkisha Kent unpacks the kind of compounded problems you face when you’re a fat, Black, queer woman in a society obsessed with heteronormativity.
There was no easy way for Kent to navigate personal discovery and self-love. As a dark-skinned, first-generation American facing a myriad of mental... Read more

Surpassing Certainty

What My Twenties Taught Me

By: Janet Mock
Narrated by: Janet Mock
Length: 7 hours 51 minutes

“A defining chronicle of strength and spirit” (Kirkus Reviews), Surpassing Certainty is a portrait of a young woman searching for her purpose and place in the world—without a road map to guide her. This memoir “should be required reading for your 20s” (Cosmopolitan).

A few months before her twentieth birthday, Janet Mock is adjusting to her days... Read more

The Fire Next Time

By: James Baldwin
Narrated by: Jesse Martin
Length: 2 hours 25 minutes

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - The book that galvanized the nation, gave voice to the emerging civil rights movement in the 1960s—and still lights the way to understanding race in America today. - “The finest essay I’ve ever read.” —Ta-Nehisi CoatesAt once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin’s early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the... Read more

Notes of a Native Son

By: James Baldwin
Narrated by: Ron Butler
Length: 5 hours 3 minutes

At last, a new audio edition of the book many have called James Baldwin's most influential work!Written during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his twenties, the essays collected in Notes of a Native Son capture a view of black life and black thought at the dawn of the civil rights movement and as the movement slowly gained... Read more

Redefining Realness

My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More

By: Janet Mock
Narrated by: Janet Mock
Length: 8 hours 14 minutes

With unflinching honesty and moving prose, Janet Mock relays her experiences of growing up young, multiracial, poor, and trans in America, offering readers accessible language while imparting vital insight about the unique challenges and vulnerabilities of a marginalized and misunderstood population. Though undoubtedly an account of one woman’s... Read more

Abolition. Feminism. Now.

The Abolitionist Papers

By: Gina Dent, Beth Richie, Erica Meiners & Angela Y. Davis
Narrated by: Gina Dent
Length: 5 hours 3 minutes

As a politic and a practice, abolition increasingly shapes our political moment—halting the construction of new jails and propelling movements to divest from policing. Yet erased from this landscape are not only the central histories of feminist—usually queer, anticapitalist, grassroots, and women of color—organizing that continue to cultivate... Read more

Looking for Lorraine

The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry

By: Imani Perry
Narrated by: LisaGay Hamilton
Length: 8 hours 26 minutes

Winner of the 2019 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction

Winner of the Shilts-Grahn Triangle Award for Lesbian Nonfiction

Winner of the 2019 Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award

A New York Times Notable Book of 2018

A revealing portrait of one of the most gifted and charismatic, yet... Read more

Black Trans Feminism

By: Marquis Bey
Narrated by: Marquis Bey
Length: 10 hours 20 minutes

In Black Trans Feminism Marquis Bey offers a meditation on blackness and gender nonnormativity in ways that recalibrate traditional understandings of each. Theorizing black trans feminism from the vantages of abolition and gender radicality, Bey articulates blackness as a mutiny against racializing categorizations; transness as a... Read more

Sister Outsider

Essays and Speeches

Crossing Press Feminist

By: Audre Lorde
Narrated by: Robin Eller
Length: 7 hours 31 minutes

Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature. In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action... Read more

And the Category Is.

Inside New York's Vogue, House, and Ballroom Community

By: Ricky Tucker
Narrated by: Ricky Tucker
Length: 8 hours 48 minutes

A 2023 Lambda Literary Award Finalist in Nonfiction

An Electric Literature “Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Book of 2022” Selection

A love letter to the legendary Black and Latinx LGBTQ underground subculture, uncovering its abundant legacy and influence in popular culture.

What is Ballroom? Not a song, a documentary, a catchphrase, a TV show, or an... Read more

Unapologetic

A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements

By: Charlene Carruthers
Narrated by: Charlene Carruthers
Length: 5 hours 49 minutes

A manifesto from one of America's most influential activists which disrupts political, economic, and social norms by reimagining the Black Radical Tradition.

Drawing on Black intellectual and grassroots organizing traditions, including the Haitian Revolution, the US civil rights movement, and LGBTQ rights and feminist movements, Unapologetic... Read more

Black on Both Sides

A Racial History of Trans Identity

By: C. Riley Snorton
Narrated by: C. Riley Snorton
Length: 8 hours 51 minutes

The story of Christine Jorgensen, America's first prominent transsexual, narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives. Their erasure from trans history masks the ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. In Black on... Read more

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments

Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval

By: Saidiya Hartman
Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
Length: 10 hours 5 minutes

“This intense, experimental history weaves together biography, archival record, photographs, and a kind of radical act of imagination to tell the stories of Black and queer women in Philadelphia & NYC at the turn of the century - their experiments in love, living, sex, family, gender, autonomy - all while under severe legal, societal, and... Read more

Bayard Rustin

A Legacy of Protest and Politics

By: Michael G. Long
Narrated by: Bill Andrew Quinn
Length: 7 hours 31 minutes

While we can all recall images of Martin Luther King Jr. giving his "I Have a Dream" speech in front of a massive crowd at Lincoln Memorial, few of us remember the man who organized this watershed nonviolent protest in eight short weeks: Bayard Rustin.



This was far from Rustin's first foray into the fight for civil rights. As a world-traveling... Read more