Respect Your Queer Elders: Books About LGBTQ People In Their 60s, 70s, and 80s

Ma-Nee Chacaby is an Ojibwa-Cree lesbian in her 70s, and in this memoir, she looks back at her life, including leading the first gay pride parade in Thunder Bay. She recounts the traditional knowledge she was taught as a child, as well as the abuse she suffered, which led to alcoholism as a teenager. Over decades, she achieves sobriety, leaves an abusive relationship, raises her children and fosters more, comes out as a lesbian, and fights to help her community.

Here’s another memoir, this one by a 79-year-old trans woman who is pivotal to the queer history of the United States. Miss Major Griffin-Gracy is a major name in the history (and present) of trans activism. She is a veteran of the Stonewall Riots and has fought for collective liberation for decades, starting one of the first needle exchange clinics in the U.S., organizing for sex workers’ rights and safety, and much more. This is a memoir told in conversations, with advice for activists today about the pitfalls to avoid and the strategies to use while organizing.

It’s pretty rare to have any romance cover have an older woman on the front, and this one is an F/F Regency romance! Seventy-three-year-old widow Bertrice Martin is enjoying a quiet life when 69-year-old Miss Violetta Beauchamps shows up, asking for her help to remove Bertrice’s Terrible Nephew from Violetta’s boarding house. She can’t help but be won over, and together they hatch a scheme to get revenge on the Terrible Nephew — and fall for each other at the same time. I would like approximately 300 more cute queer romances with older main characters, please!

This has two main characters: 79-year-old Arthur and his 21-year-old grandson, Teddy. Arthur has just come out to his family, but unbeknownst to him, Teddy is also in the closet. He’s not ready to come out yet, especially as the family is still dealing with Arthur’s announcement. They both find themselves navigating dating and coming into their queer identity at the same time.

This unique, genre-blending science fantasy novel has several main characters, including 79-year-old Shizuka, a violin teacher who sold her soul for musical talent. If she can find seven souls to take her place, she’s freed from the contract, and she only has one more to go — and one year to do so. Her new student is the perfect candidate: Katrina, a teen trans girl who is a violin prodigy. Oh, and then there’s Lan, an alien running a donut shop, who Shizuka slowly starts to fall for. This is a beautiful book that also has some harrowing moments of trauma and transphobia. I’ve truly read nothing like it, and I wish there was a lot more SFF with older characters like this one.

Laura Sackton wrote a beautiful post about this book, The Power of Portals: Seeing My Own Future in Graphic Novels About Queer Elders, so I’ll just quote her here: “The reason I can’t get Kumiko out of my head isn’t because her story is a mirror or a window, although, in different ways, for me, it’s both. Her story, and the stories of the queer elders in these graphic novels, is possibility. Seeing her old body celebrated and honored allows me to imagine my own old body. Seeing queer elders come alive on the page, imperfect and full of regret, still struggling, still afraid of death, still falling in love, dealing with pills and back pain and a world that wants to kill or erase them, watching these funny, weird, loving, messy elders have sex and fight monsters and bask in the luxurious pleasure of a cup of tea — it creates a portal into a queer future, and gives me space to imagine myself there.” I highly recommend reading Laura’s whole post, because it eloquently describes the importance of queer elders being represented in media.