It’s #PrideMonth, and we’re here to celebrate, promote, and fight for the human rights of LGBTQ+ people all over the world 🏳️‍🌈

For us here at The Experiment, it all starts with stories.

LGBTQ+ narratives continue to be underrepresented in mainstream media, but now more than ever it’s important to recognize the artists and authors who, after having searched for stories like theirs and finding none, decided to write their own. Here is a roundup of books that need to be on your #Pride2022 reading list.

For advocates, allies, or anyone who wants to read and learn more about gender and sexual diversity.

How to Be a Girl is an intimate, inspiring memoir about Marlo Mack’s experience raising her transgender daughter, M.

When M utters the words “Mama, something went wrong in your tummy – and it made me come out as a boy instead of a girl,” Marlo Mack is first faced with her own biases and ingrained notions of gender, but she also realizes that she needs to start listening to her child. As the journey continues, and mother and daughter teach each other a new perspective, Mack understands that it’s really the world that has a lot to learn—from her sparkly, spectacular M.

How We Do Family is a heartfelt memoir that sheds light on what author Trystan Reese and his partner, Biff, learned about love and LGBTQ parenthood.

Reese covers so many issues in his book, from adoption to trans pregnancy. As such, How We Do Family is much more than a memoir; it is a much-needed resource that strives to redefine the conception of family for the LGBTQ community and beyond, and a reminder that family, ultimately, is all about love.

Dr. Diane Ehrensaft has devoted her career in psychology to the care of children and teens who do not identify with their biological gender. In her first book, Gender Born, Gender Made, she coined the phrase “gender creative” for what the American Psychiatric Association at the time officially termed a “disorder.” Now, Dr. Ehrensaft offers a comprehensive resource for children and adolescents whose gender expression is fluid, rather than binary.

The Gender Creative Child is the perfect book for parents, teachers, clinicians, gender studies students, gender-curious adults—not to mention gender-creative kids and adolescents themselves—and everyone who wants to learn more about gender creativity in children.

Going the Other Way is an intimate memoir of major league baseball’s only openly gay former player—and now its first-ever Ambassador for Inclusion. In the prime of his career, he had to make a terrible choice between his love of the game and the love of his life.

More than ten years after its original publication, Going the Other Way remains deeply moving, and more timely than ever. At once heartbreaking and farcical, ruminative and uncensored, this unprecedented memoir points the way toward a more perfect game, one in which all players can pursue their athletic dreams free of prejudice and discrimination.