Powerful Words From LGBTQIA+ Authors
On June 28, 1969, a police raid took place at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village. Police arrested employers for selling alcohol without a license, arrested and roughed up patrons, and cleared the bar. Almost exactly 47 years later, on June 12, 2016, a gunman killed 49 people and wounded 53 others at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, FL.
The month of June holds a lot of history for the gay community in the United States — a history of both pain and triumph. Today, we uplift authors in the LGBTQIA+ community, and their contributions to great literature. Through their creativity and willingness to share their stories, they show us the strength and durability of the human spirit. Their works of literature also remind us that there is much more that unites us than what divides us.
“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.” — James Baldwin
“We know what the world wants from us. We know we must decide whether to stay small, quiet, and uncomplicated or allow ourselves to grow as big, loud, and complex as we were made to be.” — Glennon Doyle
“Drowning people sometimes die fighting their rescuers.” — Octavia E. Butler
“Her heart was heavy because it was open, and so things filled it, and so things rushed out of it, but still the heart kept beating, tough and frighteningly powerful.” — Helen Oyeymi
“The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.” — Lorraine Hansberry
“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” — Virginia Woolf
“It’s not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” — Audre Lorde
What books do you love by these bestselling authors? Share them with us @meetcopper so we can share them with our Copper Community!
Photo by Kimberly Farmer on Unsplash
