Display Highlight: Pride Month

June 7, 2021 – Alli Boyer, Adult Services

Rainbow text reads Pride Month above a row of books whose covers form a rainbow gradient from red to purple.

After the events of 2020, I am happy to announce that Pride 2021 is back in full swing. According to the NYC Pride organization, the official theme this year is “The Fight Continues” to reflect both the challenges of a global pandemic in 2020 and the legal battles for LGBTQ rights still underway in many cities and countries.
Just some quick history about the month: Pride Month is largely credited as being started by bisexual activist Brenda Howard. Known as “The Mother of Pride,” a year after the Stonewall Riots, Brenda organized Gay Pride Week and the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade. This eventually morphed into what we now know as the New York City Pride March, and from where parades and marches across the world evolved.
As with every other month that we celebrate here, I’d just like to remind you that representation matters, and encourage you to check out some materials here to broaden your understanding of the LGBTQ community. Here are some of the highlights you can find in our Pride displays at the Cape Girardeau Public Library.

Adult Collection:
• The Stonewall Reader by Jason Baumann
• Gay Like Me by Richie Jackson
• Love and Resistance by Kay Tobin
• Spellbound: A Graphic Memoir by Bishakh Som
• I Hope We Choose Love by Kai Cheng Thom

Teen Collection:
• The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang
• Zenobia July by Lisa Bunker
• The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher by Dana Alison Levy

Youth Collection:
• Jack (not Jackie) by Erica Silverman
• Jerome by Heart by Thomas Scotto
• Julián is a Mermaid by Jessica Love