LGBTQ+ Pride Month is celebrated in June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots in Manhattan, which was a key moment in the gay rights movement in the United States. You're invited to explore the many LGBTQ+ books and resources we offer.

Wildcat Reads and Books That Matter Collections

The Arizona Triangle: a Jo Bailen detective novel by Sydney Graves

A whodunnit about a hardboiled queer private eye whose professional life crosses with her complicated personal history. Justine "Jo" Vega is a queer woman private investigator on the cusp of 40 who works for an all-female agency based in Tucson, Arizona.

Wildcat Reads is a collection of recreational titles over a wide range of genres available for checkout on the 3rd floor of the Main Library.

Books That Matter, located on the Main Library's 2nd floor, is a curated exhibit of our larger collection highlighting identities, histories, and genres. 

The University of Arizona Press

Reckon by Tucson Poet Laureate Logan Phillips

Phillips reveals what it was like to grow up in Tombstone, Arizona, the fabled town of gunfights, outlaws, and Hollywood cowboys. This hybrid memoir also explores sexuality, masculinity, parenting, and what it means to love a land rife with contradiction and "slathered in murder." This memoir has essays, photography, poetry, newspaper clippings from the Tombstone Epitaph Local Edition, and of course, movie screenplays. Characters include Teenme and Youngfather; Phillips’s father worked as historical exhibit designer at the Courthouse Museum and his uncle as a stuntman at Old Tucson Studios. 

Queer Indigenous Cinemas: Sovereign Genders from Seven Directions by Gabriel S. Estrada

This groundbreaking work offers an analysis of queer Indigenous media from the Americas, the Pacific, and the Caribbean, and uses Indigenous directional space and sovereign mapping methods to uncover the emotional, spiritual, and cultural dimensions of queer Indigenous lives. The seven Indigenous directions—east, south, west, north, down, up, and center—provide a map of understanding gender in media history. The book’s seven chapters—each one of the directions—look closely at media such as cinema and streaming videos that draw on Indigenous concepts from diverse nations such as Diné, Caxcan, Kanaka Maoli, and Nehiyawak.

The University of Arizona Press (UA Press) is the premier publisher of academic, regional, and literary works in the state of Arizona. UA Press disseminates ideas and knowledge of lasting value that enrich understanding, inspire curiosity, and enlighten readers; and advances the University of Arizona mission by connecting scholarship and creative expression to readers worldwide.

Archive Tucson oral histories

• Erin Russ discusses Tucson's LGBT community in the 1990s in this two-part recording.
• Jeff Brown and John McNulty share Brown's childhood in Tucson during the 1950s, McNulty's coming-out experience in the early 1970s, the Dunbar Spring neighborhood from 1980s to 2018–changing racial demographics, gentrification, water harvesting, and more, in this three-part recording.
• Collette Barajas talks dating and social stigma of bisexuality, deciding to identify as a lesbian, Tucson’s lesbian community in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and more, in this two-part recording.

Archive Tucson is a living and growing collection of audio interviews about life and change in Tucson and Southern Arizona. University Libraries oral historian and videographer, Aengus Anderson, has spent more than six years interviewing 100+ people and recording their stories about our city.

Special Collections

• Dr. Lydia R. Otero's papers is a significant six-section collection of the local artist, author, educator, and activist. The Otero papers collection is in the Arizona Queer Archives, Arizona’s first LGBTQI+ collecting archives and hands-on archival learning space.
• Tucson Prime Timers (TPT) collection contains newsletters, electronic correspondence, event calendars, meeting minutes, and event flyers of TPT, a social organization created in 1993 for mature gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals who self-identify as male and are over the age of 21.
• Gay Liberation papers document the beginnings of the gay rights movement in 1970s Tucson.

University Libraries Special Collections holds rare and archival materials mainly in the areas of literature, Arizona and Southwestern history, and the sciences. We also have substantial collections relating to the lands and peoples of Arizona and the U.S.-Mexican borderlands region. Scholars, researchers, and the public can access our space and materials which include rare books, literature, printed materials, manuscript collections, photographs, maps, and audio and visual recordings.

Additional library resources

LGBTQ+ Studies: an online repository of articles, resources, primary sources, and more. 

Creating an LGBTQ-inclusive Classroom: a libguide for instructors and faculty on making their classrooms a welcoming space.