13 Banned Books by Queer Writers That Refused to Stay Silent
Banned books by queer writers have a habit of outlasting the people who tried to suppress them, from a 1928 obscenity trial in a London courtroom to school board meetings happening right now.
This banned books list looks at works spanning classic literature to contemporary YA, written by queer authors and repeatedly pulled from shelves, courtrooms and curricula, with the real story behind each ban.
If you’re after a banned books list for Pride Month or Banned Books Week, or you’re simply curious about why so many LGBTQ+ books get banned, this is a solid place to start.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links and as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This means I earn a small commission if you choose to make a purchase using a link, but at no cost to you. I’ve included Amazon links to each recommended book as well as Spotify and Bookshop.org (US and UK) where available.
A REBEL’S READING CHALLENGE
Banned Books Journal
Discover 100 banned books from around the world, then read them yourself and write down your thoughts.
1. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde (1890)
Dorian Gray remains eternally youthful while a hidden portrait absorbs the visible toll of his vanity and cruelty, in a novel steeped in aestheticism, temptation and moral decay.
Why it Was Banned
Wilde revised the novel’s more homoerotic passages for its 1891 book publication after the original magazine version drew accusations of immorality, and the text was later used as evidence against him at his 1895 trials for gross indecency.
Wilde served two years’ hard labour and died just three years after his release.
Read Next: The Picture of Dorian Gray also appears on my lists of Classic Banned Books That Shaped Literature and Classic Horror Books.
About the Author
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was an Irish playwright, poet and novelist celebrated for his wit, whose life and career were destroyed by the same society that had once lionised him.
2. The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall (1928)
Stephen Gordon, an upper-class Englishwoman who identifies as male in all but body, falls in love with women and struggles for acceptance in a society with no language for who she is.
Why it Was Banned
The novel was tried for obscenity at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court in November 1928 and ordered destroyed, with the magistrate ruling that its calm, sympathetic depiction of “unnatural practices between women” made it obscene regardless of its literary merit.
The ban stood in Britain until 1959, sixteen years after Hall’s death.
About the Author
Radclyffe Hall (1880–1943) was a British poet and novelist who lived openly with her partners at a time when doing so carried real social and legal risk.
3. Maurice – E. M. Forster (written 1913–14, published 1971)
Maurice Hall gradually accepts his love for other men across the class divides of Edwardian England, in a novel notable for granting its gay characters a genuinely happy ending.
Why it Was Banned
Forster never submitted the novel for publication in his lifetime, writing on the manuscript itself, “Publishable. But worth it?”, and leaving instructions that it should only appear after his death.
Forster feared the book would end his career and expose him to prosecution under laws that criminalised homosexuality in Britain until 1967.
About the Author
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) was an English novelist best known for A Passage to India and Howards End, who kept his own sexuality private for most of his life.
Read Next: E. M. Forster’s A Room With A View is one of my favourite books set in Italy.
4. Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin (1956)
David, an American living in Paris, is swept into a passionate affair with an Italian bartender named Giovanni, even as his fiancée’s return forces him to choose between concealment and honesty.
Why it Was Banned
Baldwin’s American publisher initially rejected the manuscript and reportedly urged him to burn it, warning that its homosexual content would alienate the audience built by his first novel.
It remains one of the most frequently banned LGBTQ+ classics, and is currently banned in Russia.
About the Author
James Baldwin (1924–1987) was an American novelist and essayist who moved to Paris in 1948 to escape the racism and homophobia he faced in the United States.
5. Rubyfruit Jungle – Rita Mae Brown (1973)
Molly Bolt grows up poor in Pennsylvania and Florida, refusing to be defined by class, gender or sexuality as she claims her identity as a lesbian on her own unapologetic terms.
Why it Was Banned
Every major publishing house in the US declined the manuscript before a small feminist press took it on, and the novel has appeared for decades on banned-book lists over its explicit lesbian content.
It has nonetheless sold well over a million copies and remains a foundational text of American lesbian fiction.
About the Author
Rita Mae Brown (born 1944) is an American novelist, poet and activist who has been closely involved in the lesbian and feminist civil rights movements.
6. Annie on My Mind – Nancy Garden (1982)
Liza and Annie, two New York teenagers who meet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, fall in love, in what’s widely considered the first YA novel about gay characters to end happily rather than in tragedy.
Why it Was Banned
Copies of the book were publicly burned on the steps of the Kansas City school district headquarters in 1993 after a local gay organisation donated it to schools, and a Kansas school district’s decision to remove it from library shelves was later ruled unconstitutional by a federal court.
Reviewers have noted there is no explicit content in the novel at all; only two teenage girls falling in love.
About the Author
Nancy Garden (1938–2014) was an American author of children’s and YA fiction who continued writing LGBTQ+ stories for young readers throughout her career, despite the backlash the book brought her.
7. Stone Butch Blues – Leslie Feinberg (1993)
Jess Goldberg comes of age as a butch lesbian and later transgender person in 1970s industrial New York, navigating factory work, police brutality and the search for a community that understands eir identity.
Why it Was Banned
The novel has been challenged and removed from some US prison libraries and school collections for its explicit depictions of sexuality and violence against LGBTQ+ people.
It remains a cornerstone text cited in transgender literature courses precisely because so few books from that era gave voice to a working-class trans narrator.
About the Author
Leslie Feinberg (1949–2014) was an American transgender activist and writer who used ze/hir pronouns and identified as an anti-racist, working-class revolutionary alongside eir writing career.
8. The Color Purple – Alice Walker (1982)
Celie, an abused and illiterate Black woman in the early twentieth-century American South, finds her voice and eventually her own agency, in part through her love for the singer Shug Avery.
Why it Was Banned
The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel has repeatedly appeared on the ALA’s list of most banned and challenged books in the US, cited for sexual content, violence, and Celie’s relationship with Shug.
Even the 1985 film adaptation was criticised for softening Celie’s queerness compared with the novel.
About the Author
Alice Walker (born 1944) is an American novelist, poet and essayist who has described herself as bisexual and has written about her relationships with women.
9. This Book Is Gay – Juno Dawson (2014)
Part memoir, part handbook, this nonfiction guide for LGBTQ+ teenagers covers coming out, dating, sex and relationships, written by a former sex-education teacher who wanted to fill a gap she’d felt keenly as a teenager herself.
Read Next: To learn more about frequently challenged young adult literature, check out this list of Banned YA Books That Sparked Fierce Debate.
Why it Was Banned
The book jumped from the tenth most challenged title in America in 2022 to the third the following year, facing 71 separate removal attempts in a single year.
Objectors have cited its frank sex-education content, though the book is explicitly marketed as being for teenagers rather than younger children.
About the Author
Juno Dawson is a British transgender author and former secondary school teacher whose YA fiction and nonfiction focus heavily on gender, sexuality and identity.
10. Two Boys Kissing – David Levithan (2013)
Inspired by a real Guinness World Record attempt, two teenage boys try to break the record for the longest kiss, while the novel weaves in the stories of other queer teenagers across a single momentous weekend.
Why it Was Banned
The novel has appeared on the ALA’s lists of most challenged books for its depiction of same-sex relationships and its cover image of two boys kissing, which several school districts cited as grounds for restricting access.
Levithan has said he wrote the novel partly as a tribute to the generation of gay men lost to the AIDS crisis.
About the Author
David Levithan (born 1972) is an American author and editor whose YA novels, including Boy Meets Boy, are widely credited with normalising gay teenage romance in mainstream young adult fiction.
11. Gender Queer: A Memoir – Maia Kobabe (2019)
This autobiographical graphic novel traces Kobabe’s journey to understanding eir identity as nonbinary and asexual, using comic-strip storytelling to depict experiences of gender confusion, discovery and eventual self-acceptance.
Why it Was Banned
Gender Queer was the single most banned book in American school districts from mid-2021 to the end of 2022 and has topped the ALA’s most-challenged list for two consecutive years.
Objections centre on its depictions of sex, though the book carries an 18+ rating from its own publisher and was written, in Kobabe’s words, to give younger readers guidance e never had.
About the Author
Maia Kobabe is an American cartoonist and author who identifies as nonbinary and asexual and uses e/em/eir pronouns.
12. All Boys Aren’t Blue – George M. Johnson (2020)
Part memoir, part manifesto, this essay collection traces Johnson’s coming of age as a queer Black man, addressing family, masculinity, sexuality and race with a directness rarely aimed at a teenage audience.
Why it Was Banned
The book rose to the second most challenged title in America in 2022, with objections centred on its LGBTQ+ content and sexually explicit passages.
Johnson has spoken widely about the book being aimed at helping other queer Black youth feel less alone than he did.
About the Author
George M. Johnson is an American journalist and author whose work focuses on Black, queer identity and lived experience.
13. Melissa – Alex Gino (2015)
Melissa knows she’s a girl, even though everyone else sees a boy named George. Ahead of the school talent show, she gets a chance to play Charlotte in Charlotte’s Web and, in doing so, finally show her class who she really is.
Read Next: Would you believe it, Charlotte’s Web also appears on this list of Children’s Banned Books Through History!
Why it Was Banned
Originally published as George, the novel has appeared on the ALA’s list of most banned and challenged books nearly every year since its release, cited for LGBTQ+ content and for being considered sexually explicit despite containing no sexual content at all.
It was retitled Melissa in 2022 to use the character’s chosen name throughout.
About the Author
Alex Gino is an American author who is nonbinary and transgender, and has said the book was written to be the mirror they wished they’d had as a trans kid.
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More Banned Books by Queer Writers
This banned books by queer writers collection shows a pattern stretching back nearly a century: it is very often not violence or profanity that gets a book pulled from shelves, but simply a queer author writing queer life as ordinary, survivable, or even happy.
Each of these banned LGBTQ books outlasted the attempts to suppress it, and some became more widely read precisely because of the controversy.
Whether you’re building a Pride Month reading list or just want to understand why LGBTQ books get banned so often, these titles are a genuinely rewarding place to start.
Did I miss a favourite of yours? Let me know in the comments below.
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Fantastic Books & Where to Find Them
For more of what to read where, check out my full Travel Books Guide, filled with book recommendations for different destinations, the most beautiful bookstores around the world, tips on how to get the best deals on audiobooks and e-books, as well as more literary travel.
Travel Essentials
Here are the websites and services I personally use and recommend.
FLIGHTS: The best deals can be found on Skyscanner, Google Flights and Kiwi (learn more about Kiwi travel hacking here).
TRAVEL INSURANCE: I recommend World Nomads for travel insurance because you can purchase once you’re already overseas and you can easily extend your policy. For digital nomads, I recommend and personally use Genki (learn more about Genki digital nomad health insurance here).
E-SIM: For travel in Europe, I use an e-sim with GoMobile, which is a provider based in Malta, but you need to be there to set it up.
ACCOMMODATION: I use Booking.com for hotels and Airbnb for apartments. For Colivings, I usually book privately, but Coliving.com is a good place to start.
THINGS TO DO: I use Viator or Get Your Guide for booking day trips, city tours and other activities, though I often check reviews on TripAdvisor too.
Amy Poulton
I’m Amy, an explorer of real and fictional worlds. A word huntress. An escape artist. A page traveller.
I started this blog in 2015 when I was living as an expat in Hong Kong, as a way to keep in touch with friends and family back home. Later, I wrote about my backpacking adventures in Southeast Asia and Mexico, as well as my other experiences living overseas in Italy and Thailand.
Two years ago, I started my next chapter as a digital nomad and travelling cat mom. And of course, I’ve been journeying through books all that time, too.
Now I host Nomad Book Club and literary reading retreats, and offer trip planning services.
Learn more about me and the Page Traveller blog here.