Broadleaf Books is committed to uplifting queer voices and stories not just during Pride Month but all year round. These stories provide the representation essential in creating a more inclusive society where people of all identities and orientations can thrive. The books below celebrate the diversity and beauty of queer literature while exploring a wide range of topics and experiences, all of which contribute to the wider collective of the LGBTQIA+ community. Whether you are in, out, an ally, or somewhere in between, you are loved, valued, and worthy.
Scroll for the books or click the topics below to jump to that section.
Books on Navigating Relationships
Books on Navigating Relationships
Raising Kids beyond the Binary
The debate around transgender children rages, with some Christians being the loudest voices against supporting these young people. So, now more than ever, people of faith need to be grounded in God's call to love and affirm young people in who God created them to be. Drawing on the author's experience as the mother of a transgender child and her years of advocacy work, Raising Kids beyond the Binary helps Christian parents navigate the emotional, spiritual, and logistical landscape of raising a gender-diverse child. It paints a picture of who transgender, nonbinary, and gender-diverse young people are and what they need to thrive.
For decades, our cultural discourse around trans and gender-diverse people has been viewed through a medical lens or a political lens. But those who claim non-binary gender identity deserve their own discourse. In tracing the history and theory of non-binary identity, and telling of their own coming out, non-binary writer Dex E. Anderson answers questions about what being non-binary might mean, but also about where non-binary people fit in the trans and queer communities. In Transit looks forward to a world where being who we are, whatever that looks like, is met with acceptance and love. Being non-binary is about finding home in the in-between places.
The rise of White Christian nationalism seems impossible to stop. We need a road map to countering recruitment. And we needed it yesterday. For White folks alarmed by the rise of Christian nationalism, Bring Back Your People is a mouthy, practical guide to resisting, organizing, and holding conversations with your friends, family, or anyone else who has been misled by White Christian nationalist ideas.
Nia Chiaramonte, Katie J. Chiaramonte
When Nia Chiaramonte came out as a trans woman to her wife Katie, she knew she would be met with a loving response. But she was less sure what would happen when they began to bring their community alongside them on their journey of identify formation as a Queer family. Embracing Queer Family is a guidebook with tools for learning and reflection for Queer families on how to live into your true selves and strengthen your communities through radical love, acceptance, and mutual healing.
Books Exploring Society and Culture
No One Taught Me How to Be a Man
As a trans man, Shannon Kearns constructed his relationship with masculinity using bits and pieces from the world around him: male behavior, portrayals in movies, and unspoken cultural expectations. As he lived more and more in the world of men, he discovered that cis men's relationship to masculinity was similar to his. No one taught them how to be a man either. In No One Taught Me How to Be a Man, Kearns takes masculinity head-on, pointing cis and trans men alike toward better ways of being in the world.
The height of the AIDS crisis in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s left many profound stories that remained untold. In Hidden Mercy, gay Catholic journalist Michael O'Loughlin uncovers the stories of Catholics who at great personal cost chose compassion. A compelling picture of those who responded to human suffering with mercy, offering insights for LGBTQ and other people of faith struggling to find a home in religious communities today.
Western culture hates the fact that we have bodies—from evangelical culture, which insists "you are a soul and have a body," to wellness culture that turns your control over your body into a moral test, to transphobic activism that insists any step taken to change one's body is an immoral act, to the treatment of disabled bodies in a profoundly ableist culture. Body Phobia is an examination of the fear of the body, how it permeates all parts of culture, alienates us from one another, marginalizes some, and harms us all.
Sexual abuse is utterly rampant in Christian churches in America. And the reasons are somewhat different than those you might find in the #MeToo stories coming out of Hollywood or Washington. #ChurchToo turns over the rocks of the church's sexual dysfunction, revealing just what makes sexualized violence in religious contexts both ubiquitous and uniquely traumatizing. Emily Joy Allison lays the groundwork for survivors of abuse to live full, free, healthy lives.
It's reflexive and common to view our online presence as fake; to see the internet as a space we enter when we aren't living our real, offline lives. But ever since a pandemic pushed more and more of our work, relationships, and even leisure into digital space, the internet doesn't feel so fake anymore. Every day, the lines between digital and "real" space blur even further. In IRL, activist and writer Chris Stedman explores authenticity in the digital age, shining a light into and beyond age-old notions of realness—who we are and where we fit in the world—to bring fresh understanding for our increasingly online lives.
Human beings are not trash, and the system that enables humans to imagine each other as such needs to end. Daily, 66 million poor white people pay the price for failing whiteness. In Trash, activist and chaplain Cedar Monroe introduces us to the poor residents of a small town in Washington who grapple with a collapsing economy and their own racism. Trash asks us to see the peril in which poor white people live and the choices we all must make.
Books to Help You Connect with Mind, Body, and Spirit
Too many of us are stuck on the treadmill of consumer spirituality, clinging to the illusion that we are in charge of our own spiritual growth and development. But the path of true transformation, according to Hunter Mobley, isn't in doing more, but in doing less—in letting go of control and adopting a contemplative posture that will naturally lead us to our true self. Letting Go, Finding You shows how a contemplative spiritual path, informed by the Enneagram, will allow you to finally stop striving after false promises and start surrendering to the truest version of yourself.
When Christian singer and speaker Staci Frenes learned her teenage daughter was gay, she found her dreams for the future—along with her lifelong faith—collapsing around her. Coming to terms with a new reality offered an invitation to make room for many things: the inevitability of uncertainty, hope in the midst of loss, awkward and tough conversations, an expanding faith, and a greater understanding of how people are more the same than different.
The world of contemplative Christianity has yielded to the same voices for too long, most from centuries before our time with lives unlike ours and experiences disconnected from marginalization and oppression. In Queering Contemplation, Cassidy Hall flings the doors wide open for all seeking an inclusive, authentic, and definitely more queer contemplative experience.
We all carry sexual shame. Whether we grew up in the repressive purity culture of American Evangelical Christianity or not, we've all been taught in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that sex (outside of very specific contexts) is taboo. Psychotherapist Matthias Roberts helps readers overcome their shame and determine their own definition of healthy sex. Define your sexual values on your own terms, overcome your shame, and start having great, healthy sex.
In the past decade, church attendance among US adults has decreased by more than 25 percent. Americans report leaving religious communities because of the institutions' hypocrisy and resistance to change or because of trauma they have experienced in those spaces. In Holy Runaways, Matthias Roberts reaches out to those who, like him, want to understand the religion they've run from and erect a new faith on firmer foundations. He suggests ways we can all contribute to a new system built on love—and a new home we can inhabit together.
Books on Self-Help and Transformation
Weeping, one of our most private acts, can forge connection. But many of us have been taught to hide our tears. When writer Benjamin Perry realized he hadn't cried in over ten years, he undertook an experiment to cry every day. Learning to Cry explores humans' rich legacy of weeping and helps us reclaim our crying to bring us into deeper relationship with a world that's breaking.
You can find peace, whether or not you forgive those who harmed you. Feeling pressured to forgive their offenders is a common reason trauma survivors avoid mental health services and support. You Don't Need to Forgive is an invaluable resource for trauma survivors and their clinicians who feel alienated and even gaslighted by the toxic positivity and moralism that often characterize attitudes about forgiveness in psychology and self-help.
So many of us are leaving conservative faith traditions behind, rightly saying goodbye to toxic theology, bigotry, and harm. With wit and practical guidance, What Makes You Bloom helps us create a new spiritual practice after our faith has fallen apart. Spiritual coach Kevin Miguel Garcia shows us how we can connect with the Divine already inside us and cultivate meaningful spiritual practices that help us heal from the past, tap into the present, and imagine a delicious future.
In a series of tender narrative essays written to his daughter, activist and author Brian C. Johnson shares what he's learned from his struggles, victories, and defeats over twenty-five years of advocacy work. The Work Is the Work is an inspiring collection of field notes that is perfect for new or seasoned activists who want to lead well in the work for transformational change.
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