The Gay Books Amazon Doesn’t Want You to Read

As infuriating as Amazon’s decision to de-rank a wide swath of LGBT lit on the basis of it being ‘adult’ is and as unbelievable as their assertion that the problem was a ‘glitch’ is, actually seeing the books they’ve gone after is a whole experience entirely.

Amazon has consigned the gay canon to the status of ‘porn’, but they’ve done us a favor– a brief glance at the books they banned is a fantastic reading list of some of the great works of literature written by LGBT authors. A full list is here.

This is your heritage and your birthright and I don’t need to tell you that it ought to be defended. What follows are some of the books banned by Amazon. All of them are fantastic reads; go pick one up today, just not from Amazon.

The Book	Written By	Why It’s Super Triple XXX Pornographic
The Well of Loneliness	Radclyffe Hall	This 1928 British class novel follows Englishwoman Stephen Gordon who always knows she’s a lesbian and finds love while working as an ambulance driver in World War I. It features the explicit plea, “Give us also the right to our existence”
Heather Has Two Mommies	Lesléa Newman	Newman was inspired to write this children’s book after a friend in Northampton commented there were no children’s books that showed a family that looked like theirs. It’s a popular target of conservative groups.
Maurice	E.M. Forster	Another class-based story of sexual awakening, Forster held onto his manuscript, leaving it with the note “Publishable, but worth it?” In 1971, the book was finally printed and eventually turned into a film.
The City and the Pillar	Gore Vidal	Famous for being one of the first novels to treat homosexuality as normal, it follows tennis player Jim Williams as he discovers his sexuality and fights in World War II. William F. Buckley famously called Vidal a queer, though Buckley’s dead and Vidal is still kicking.
Giovanni’s Room	James Baldwin	An American’s love affair with an Italian waiter is the set-up for the searing novel about alienation. Baldwin feared the novel would alienate him from his Black readership, but critics were too caught up in Baldwin’s brilliant writing to get angered by the homosexuality.
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit	Jeanette Winterson	Winner of the Whitbread Award and often taught in British schools, it tells the story of Jeanette who is raised in an evangelical household who grapples with her lesbian identity, while submitting to exorcisms by her famly.
Running With Scissors	Augesten Burroughs	A bestselling memoir about Burroughs relationship with his eccentric mother who sends him to live with her psychiatrist. Burroughs winds up having an intense sexual relationship while he’s 13 with the psych’s 33-year-old son.
The Front Runner	Patrica Nell Warren	This 1973 novel is a classic of the gay sports genre (or any other genre for that matter).  When three promising young athletes come to a coach for training, knowing he, like them is gay, none of them know where their relationship will lead.
The Price of Salt	Patricia Highsmith	Writing under the pseudonym Clair Morgan, Highsmith created a novel with all the elements of lesbian pulp, only the characters wind up with a happy ending, defying convention and enraging critics when it was released in 1951.
Edinburgh	Alexander Chee	Chee’s debut novel is a gripping account of how someone whose been molested as a child can overcome the violation of trust and hurt brought on by the molestation. Lyrical and filled with rich characters, Chee’s novel was hailed as an instant classic upon its release in 2001.
The Book	Written By	Why It’s Super Triple XXX Pornographic