Throughout June, GeekMom celebrates Pride Month with lots of LGBTQ content. Follow the Pride Month tag to find everything all in one space (including LGBTQ content from previous years) and keep checking back for more throughout the month. Today’s book review is Pride by Stella Caldwell.
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I wanted to kick off this year’s Pride Month coverage with a book that feels like the perfect fit for GeekMom. Pride: An Inspirational History of the LGBTQ+ Movement by Stella Caldwell is a bold and bright non-fiction book aimed at younger readers (middle-grade and up) that explores the history of the LGBTQ+ movement.
Spread over seven chapters, the book progresses in roughly chronological order, beginning with the history of LGBTQ+ folks in history right back to the Ancient Greeks and ending with a look at where we are now and the challenges still faced by queer communities, particularly transgender individuals. Throughout the other chapters, the book explores the birth of LGBTQ+ rights and how the tide began to turn in favor of queer people, the beginnings of the pride movement, and the devastating impact of the AIDS crisis on the fight for equal rights.
Also scattered throughout Pride are short interviews with real queer people who share how they identify and why they have chosen (at least for now) the labels they have. Many short profiles of famous people from LGBTQ+ history such as Oscar Wilde, Harvey Milk, and Andrew Shephard, are also included with explanations of why they are so important. The book is filled with colorful illustrations and photos as well as quotations and other inserts that help break up the text into small chunks and make the book incredibly easy to read.
Pride is a perfect introductory book for anyone new to the queer community, from young people questioning their identity to parents wanting to learn more after their child comes out, to allies of any age wanting to support friends and family. The book tackles all the most pertinent points of queer history – both good and bad – and provides dozens of jumping-off points for those wanting to learn more.
GeekMom received a copy of this title for review purposes.
