Happy Pride, CSI! 🌈 To celebrate this year, we asked our community to share with us their favourite books, movies, TV shows, and podcasts that help to celebrate, uplift, teach, and honour 2SLGBTQIA+ stories.
Below, we have an awesome roundup of recommendations from across the CSI community. Head over to your local library, tune in to watch, or plug in to listen and enjoy these diverse stories.
As we near the end of June, we invite you to join us reading, watching, and listening to stories from the 2SLGBTQIA+ community and to explore what Pride means to you, and to carry that work forward throughout the year.
Books
This Is How It Always Is: A Novel by Laurie Frankel
This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it’s about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again; parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts; children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever. Read more!
Recommended by Laura Manni (Mendicant Group Inc.)
Beyond Pronouns: The Essential Guide for Parents of Trans Children by Tammy Plunkett
“One of my friends wrote a guide for parents of transgender children based on her own experience with her son. ‘The go-to resource for parents with trans or gender-questioning children, authored by the parent of a trans child.’ She not only gives guidance to parents as to how to support their child but provides exercises at the end of each chapter to help them process the changes and find support amongst other parents.” Read more!
Recommendation by Paula Cowen
Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree
“The story is about being resilient, resourceful, trusting your instincts and not letting others define you as you try to reinvent yourself. Oh- and the main characters are a female orc, a succubus, gnomes, fairies and other creatures from the world of fantasy! Most importantly, the book celebrates and uplifts the 2SLGBTQIA+ community by cleverly portraying relatable struggles, challenges, acceptance, support and successes of the characters while transporting the reader to another time and place! Yes, the intended audience of this book are teens and young adults but hey, great books are meant to be read by all!” Read more!
Recommendation by Athena Lee
Boulder by Eva Baltasar
“I’m recommending Boulder by Eva Baltasar. Eva’s writing suits my aesthetic: short, curt sentences that allow the mind to wander and not visualize with too much certainty. The scenes in the book always seem to be enclosed in a dark fog, the characters reappearing in flashes of distant lightning. These characters and especially the protagonist don’t fit the usual mold (in all aspects of their being). Despite my many differences (temperament, sexuality, etcetera) with the protagonist, her psychology and emotionality as she enters the role of the non-birthing parent synced up with my own struggles as a new father. This synchronicity was a bonus to me, I was already enthralled and goosebumped once I read the first few sentences”:
“Quellón. Chiloé. A night years ago. Sometime after ten. No sky, no vegetation, no ocean. Only the wind, the hand that grabs at everything. There must be a dozen of us. A dozen souls. In a place like this, at a time like now, you can call a person a soul.” Read more!
Recommendation by Nash Paul D’Souza
Mad Honey by Jennifer Finney Boylan and Jodi Picoult
MAD HONEY has all of the things: alternating narratives, suspense, courtroom drama, and a love story at its core. It’s about authenticity, identity, and it explores the secrets we keep and the risks we take in order to become our true selves. Read more!
Recommended by Laura Manni (Mendicant Group Inc.)
Lunar Boy by Jes and Cin Wibowo
“I’m Indonesian and my friends Jes and Cin Wibowo from Indonesia just released their first Graphic novel “Lunar Boy”. It’s an Indonesian queer centric story rooted story. I think its one of the first queer south east Asian story being published in mainstream media and my friends are pretty cool! Representation is always so important!” Read more!
Recommendation by Marissa Uli (LURA Consulting)
Pride is Political! from Between the Lines
“Lots of good stuff from local indie publisher Between the Lines on this list they put together!”
Recommendation by Dave Gray-Donald (The Grind)
TV & Movies
Schitt's Creek
When the filthy-rich Roses suddenly find themselves broke they’re forced to rebuild their empire within their only remaining asset – Schitt’s Creek, an arm pit of a town they once bought as a joke. Watch more!
Recommended by Laura Manni (Mendicant Group Inc.)
Disclosure
An in-depth look at Hollywood’s depiction of transgender people and the impact of those stories on transgender lives and American culture. Watch more!
Recommended by Luis Augusto Nobre (Pride at Work Canada)
Pose
In the New York of the late ’80s and early ’90s, this is a story of ball culture and the gay and trans community, the raging AIDS crisis, and capitalism. Watch more!
Recommended by Luis Augusto Nobre (Pride at Work Canada)
All of Us Strangers
A screenwriter drawn back to his childhood home enters into a fledgling relationship with his downstairs neighbor while discovering a mysterious new way to heal from losing his parents 30 years ago. Watch more!
Recommended by Laura Manni (Mendicant Group Inc.)
The Bubble
Ashraf, a Palestinian, meets Noam, an Israeli, at a checkpoint station. The pair begin a relationship, and Ashraff moves in illegally with Noam and Noam’s roommates, Lulu and Yelli. The hip Tel Aviv neighborhood in which they live insulates them from the ongoing conflict between Arabs and Jews, but their protection cannot last forever. Watch more!
Recommended by Luis Augusto Nobre (Pride at Work Canada)
Hollywood
A group of aspiring actors and filmmakers in post-World War II Hollywood try to make it big – no matter the cost. Watch more!
Podcasts
The Uncovering Belonging Podcast
Uncovering Belonging explores the professional and personal stories of unique voices on what it means to belong and the journey to finding our authentic selves. Led by leaders in the inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility space, Erin Davis (she/her) and Jade Pichette (they/them) work to create a psychologically safe space for all their guests to share their own journey to finding a sense of belonging and help listeners along the way to also be who they are. Listen here!
Recommended by Luis Augusto Nobre (Pride at Work Canada)
Inside Stories Podcast
INSIDE STORIES exists to foster connection in a world suffering and dying from disconnectivity. It seeks to examine the stories we tell and don’t tell and how that impacts us. The series will feature 20 personal stories of the People of Reset. This episode features Arwyn Carpenter (AKA Gorge), who talks about how he figured out he was Trans, the challenges and liberation of living into his true identity, the joy derived from his recent foray into the art of Burlesque (Stage Name: Gorge Michael), the fluidity of gender, and breaking down the colonization of bodies. Listen here!
Recommended by Rachel Rainbow
