Complete Book List 

Current Theme: Queer Voices

What does this entail?

Queer Voices centers the power of speaking, telling, and witnessing queer truths in all their complexity. This theme celebrates the radical act of being heard in a world that has often tried to silence, distort, or erase queer experiences. It honors storytelling as survival, resistance, and connection—whether those stories are whispered, shouted, written, sung, or lived.

Queer Voices highlights narratives where identity, history, culture, and self-expression intersect. These stories push beyond representation for representation’s sake, offering depth, nuance, and specificity. They reflect the diversity of queer life across race, class, gender, disability, geography, and generation—reminding us there is no singular queer story, only a chorus of lived truths.

This theme invites us to listen attentively and generously: to voices that affirm, challenge, unsettle, and expand our understanding of queerness. It recognizes voice not only as speech, but as perspective—how we name ourselves, how we claim space, and how we insist on being known on our own terms.

Key points to consider are:

Voice as Self-Definition:
At the heart of Queer Voices is the right to self-definition. These stories resist narratives imposed from the outside and instead allow queer people to name their own realities. Voice becomes an assertion of autonomy—an act of reclaiming language, identity, and meaning where silence or misrepresentation once existed.

Multiplicity and Intersectionality:
Queer Voices rejects the idea of a monolithic queer experience. It amplifies stories shaped by intersecting identities, acknowledging how race, class, gender, disability, culture, and location influence how queerness is lived and expressed. This theme asks us to honor difference without hierarchy and complexity without simplification.

Storytelling as Resistance:
To speak as a queer person has historically been—and often still is—a political act. These narratives document survival under oppression, joy amid constraint, and the refusal to disappear. Queer Voices recognizes storytelling as resistance: proof of existence, endurance, and collective memory.

Listening and Witnessing:
This theme is as much about listening as it is about speaking. Queer Voices encourages us to read with care and curiosity, especially when encountering experiences outside our own. Witnessing one another’s stories builds empathy, solidarity, and deeper community understanding.

Continuity and Legacy:
Queer Voices exist in conversation with those who came before and those still finding their words. This theme honors lineage—how stories are passed down, reshaped, and carried forward. It acknowledges that every voice contributes to a larger cultural narrative, ensuring queer lives are remembered, recorded, and respected.

Book suggestions for this theme:

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H

Need to find a bookstore?

Here is a list of most of the small, owned bookstores within a 3-hour drive of the FM area. 

West Fargo Library 

Fargo Library 

Moorhead Library 

Queer Liberation Library 

Quatrefoil Library