10 essential LGBTQ books to read after seeing Call Me By Your Name

Call Me by Your Name has been met with plenty of love from critics and awards bodies in the few months since it was released in select cities. Now, finally, the Oscar contender has made it to theaters nationwide. Whether you were one of the lucky few to catch the film already, or are planning to head to your local theater this weekend, here are 10 great LGBTQ books to read after the credits finish rolling. 

This pioneering, poignant novel is an autobiographical work from Edmund White. Its unnamed narrator comes of age in the intolerant and stifling 1950s, trying to accept his sexuality. Buy it here.

Poet and performance artist Justin Chin compiles a vibrant debut collection with Bite Hard. The author relays his experiences as an Asian gay man with striking specificity, demonstrating both scathing wit and emotional transparency. Buy it here.

This sweeping queer romance jumps forward and backward, moving through decades of pivotal moments in LGBTQ history as two lovers, long estranged, finally come back together when they lose one of their friends to AIDS. Buy it here.

Alison Bechdel’s gorgeous, innovative graphic memoir juxtaposes one’s coming out with another’s suffocation in the closet. Alison comes of age as a queer woman while her father, who owns a funeral home, spirals into depression as he rejects his own queer identity. It was recently adapted into a Tony-winning Broadway musical. Buy the book here.

A half-century of Irish history is spanned through the eyes of Cyril, an adopted boy who spends a lifetime struggling to accept his identity. Buy it here.

This warm, empathetic coming-of-age novel features an ensemble of teachers and students gearing up for the last day of school. But tragedy strikes when one brilliant teacher, a gay man grappling with self-loathing, faces a reckoning. Buy it here.

Here’s the rare gay romance to have a (relatively) happy ending. Maurice is set at the dawn of the 20th century at Cambridge University, and tracks a blossoming undergraduate love affair. James Ivory, screenwriter of Call Me by Your Name, adapted the book into a film starring a young Hugh Grant, who gives one of his most acclaimed performances. Buy the book here.

This astonishing literary biography interrogates social mores simply by relaying its author’s experience. Delany, a black gay man, analyzes his open marriage, recounts his life through the turbulent ’60s, and poses vital questions about masculinity and sexuality. Buy it here.

The debut novel of the renowned Truman Capote features the author’s trademark prose and feel for the Gothic. Other Voices, Other Rooms tells the story of a young gay boy exploring his sexuality in the deep, unforgiving South. Buy it here.

Fans of Carol, Todd Haynes’ exquisite 2015 melodrama, probably already have this on their reading list. Patricia Highsmith’s ’50s-set lesbian romance is a cult classic, steeped in the coded language and fleeting glances that defined so many queer romances in unforgiving times. Buy it here.