Queer literature recommendations for Pride Month - Non-fiction

Pride month is for widening our understanding of LGBTQIA+ experiences.

It is the perfect time to unlearn the limited ways in which society has taught us to view them. We’ve compiled a list of non-fiction works that delve into queer representation and participation across various spaces—social media, film, literature, the diaspora—spaces where they enacted alternative ways of survival and self-expression, spaces they have made their own against all odds. 

Hindi Nangyari Dahil Wala sa Social Media: Interogasyon ng Kulturang New Media sa Pilipinas, edited by Rolando B. Tolentino, Vladimeir B. Gonzales, Laurence Marvin S. Castillo

This anthology of critical essays investigates how Filipinos navigate the ever-evolving social media landscape in a time of globalization and neoliberalism. The essay, “Cyberqueer, Alter Accounts, and Communicative Capitalism” by Laurence Marvin S. Castillo, delves into the phenomenon of alter accounts and their connection to the online queer community. Are alter accounts an avenue for free expression or do they endanger participants to sexual exploitation? Castillo answers this question with nuance, problematizing our understanding of desire and sex-positivity in the digital space, along with the illusions that may be attached to them. 

Get the book: Lazada and Shopee   

Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Philippine Edition) by Martin F. Manalansan IV

With narratives compiled through fieldwork and interviews, Manalansan showcases vivid, complex, and diverse portraits of the Filipino gay immigrant experience in New York City. Manalansan asserts that “these Filipino gay men are neither heroes of a triumphant story of queer liberation nor are they dupes or victims of perpetual displacement, cultural forlornness, or oppression. Rather, these Filipinos are queer subjects constituted through struggles that oscillate between exuberance and pathos and between survival and loss.” 

Get the book: Lazada and Shopee   

Martial Law Melodrama: Lino Brocka’s Cinema Politics by José B. Capino

In “Picturing ‘A Faggot’s Dilemma’: Sexuality, Politics, and Commerce in Queer Movies,” Capino explores the complex sexualities, desires, and sexual politics represented in the films of pioneer queer director Lino Brocka. The late director’s works were ground-breaking for their depiction of same-sex intimacy, sexual fluidity, bisexuality, cross-dressing, and gay parenthood amidst the censorship of the Marcos regime. The essay analyzes dynamic queer protagonists who “yearned to escape the crushing pressure of social marginalization, harbored fantasies of ideal partners and guiltless sex, and waxed melancholic for a better world for queer persons.” 

Get the book: Lazada and Shopee   

Sine Tala Series: Philippine Cinema and Culture by Nick Deocampo

The 1993 essay, “Homosexuality as Dissent/Cinema as Subversion: Articulating Gay Consciousness in the Philippines” staunchly criticizes the patriarchal values embedded into the production of mainstream film and television that have led to limited representations of queer identities and experiences. Deocampo recounts a personal journey into the alternative cinema of Super 8 films where he found a way to speak up against the silence imposed upon queer issues, which have always been Filipino issues—” for the Filipino homosexual, his struggle is his society’s struggle.”

Get the book: Lazada and Shopee   

Plus/+, at Iba Plus, Maramihan: New Philippine Nonfiction on Sexual Orientations and Gender Identities, edited by Rolando B. Tolentino and Chuckberry J. Pascual

This anthology provides a platform for the personal truths of individuals across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. One writer explains the unjust importance placed upon “passing” for trans women.  Another writer articulates the stereotypes associated with bisexuality and their many encounters with biphobia. One writer is a volunteer and advocate for HIV awareness and their essay talks about the life of their friend who is a Person Living with HIV (PLHIV).  The editors invite readers to become witnesses to these testimonies, to sit with the confusion and the pain expressed in them, and to echo their calls for a free and equal society—”magbasa, makibaka,’wag matakot.”

Get the book: Lazada and Shopee