National Coming Out Day is October 11th. This day celebrates and acknowledges the often difficult and emotional process of "coming out of the closet" and endeavors to bring awareness and visibility to LGBTQ+ people. This book list features teens of many different orientations and their stories of coming out in the world. These experiences are sometimes joyful but sometimes the teenaged characters face a great deal of hardship in their journeys to being out in the world.
Readers should exercise care with these titles if challenging coming out experiences would be difficult or triggering for them to read about.
#IndyPLTeens
Imogen is a heterosexual ally, obviously. Her sister and two best friends are queer and she's always been extremely supportive of all three of them. But when she visits her friend Lili at college, she starts to question everything she…
Ben's coming out is not easy. When they come out as nonbinary, they're thrown out of their parents' house and forced to move in with their much older sister who they haven't spoken to in a decade. The familial relationships are real and…
Juliet Takes a Breath begins with Juliet having just come out as lesbian to her family and her mom is still not handling it well. So Juliet leaves for an internship in Portland, Oregon to both escape the problems at home and to find her…
Fair warning: this book is not an easy read and is full of emotion and trauma. Aaron is struggling with his father's suicide and his own attempt at the beginning of this book and he feels like he has nowhere he can turn for help. His…
Amir is pretty sure his Iranian Muslim family won't take his coming out well. So he takes the obvious solution of running away to Rome and immersing himself in the Italian gay scene there and learning to accept himself. Of course it…
Set in 1977 and told through alternating letters sent between pen pals Tammy and Sharon, this historical fiction novel really transports you back to a fraught time in the gay rights movement in American history. Both Tammy and Sharon find…
Rukhsana grew up in a very conservative Muslim Bangladeshi household. She didn't mean to ever come out to her parents, at least not until she was away at college, but when she's caught kissing her girlfriend that all changes and she's sent…
Loveless follows protagonist Georgia in her first year at university alongside her two best friends. Georgia is worried because she's never had a crush, never kissed anyone, and feels totally behind compared to her peers so she sets her…
Set in the 1950s in San Francisco's Chinatown during the Red Scare, a time of scrutiny for Chinese Americans, this novel is a complex historical fiction centered on identity and belonging. Protagonist Lily Hu struggles with her father's…
Sixteen year old Simon has been hiding his sexuality from everyone... except in emails to the mysterious Blue, the anonymous boy he's been talking to online. But when his emails are found and he's blackmailed about his secret everything…
Forget Me Not begins with the secret relationship of teenage girls Stevie and Nora in their super conservative small town with families who certainly won't understand. Everything gets turned upside down when Stevie suffers an accident and…
