Pride and Proud to be Reading |

June is Pride Month, a time for the LGBTQ community and everyone to celebrate diversity, queer sensibilities and good summer times. In Toronto, it culminates in the Pride Parade, scheduled for Sunday, June 24, the 38th annual parade in Toronto and one of the largest in the world

Toronto Public Library staff are active participants in Pride and regularly march in the parade. We even wrap the Yorkville Library near Yonge and Bloor in the rainbow flag. Yorkville houses the library’s LGBT Collection.

This year’s parade theme is a remembrance of those who lived and who are living with HIV / AIDS. It’s also a chance to honour those who took action to change medical, social and political circumstances. Awareness of AIDS and its devastation was still not recognized as a common cause among the general population in 1989. Now, thanks to the work of so many on so many fronts, HIV is no longer an automatic death sentence and Pride celebrations are part of Toronto’s mainstream. Discrimination and misunderstanding have not disappeared, but we’ve come a long way, maybe.

Special Day: Gay Pride Day Celebrants Line Yonge Street, 1989

Because we love books and reading, and because part of our job is finding you things to read that are thoughtful, illuminating, artful, trenchant, serious, funny, entertaining and/or life changing, here are some recommendations. Download The 2018 LGBTQ+ BOOKS + eBOOKS (PDF) pamphlet, link to the TPL We Recommend list, or try the sampling of titles below.