Elliot Page’s Queer Cultural Recommendations
Mastermind 16 cover star Elliot Page shares a range of book, film and documentary recommendations that celebrate queerness.
Photography by Craig McDean
“When and where I grew up, I had almost no examples of queerness, let alone transness, and no language for it whatsoever,” says Elliot Page, Oscar-nominated actor and author of the bestselling memoir Pageboy, in his Mastermind 16 cover interview. “Any little glimpse of queerness really helped me. In times when I didn’t have access to a community, books by queer and trans people changed my life.”
It’s in this spirit that Page shares the following cultural recommendations, a list of books, films and documentaries that celebrate queerness, providing visibility and a reference point for those who may be searching for it.
BOOKS
Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man by Thomas Page McBee
None of the Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary by Travis Alabanza
A Trans Man Walks into a Gay Bar: A Journey of Self (and Sexual) Discovery by Harry Nicholas
Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary by Miss Major Griffon-Gracy and Toshio Meronek
The Risk it Takes to Bloom: On Life and Liberation by Raquel Willis
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor
Bellies by Nicola Dinan
FILMS
Tomboy (2011) by Céline Sciamma
Dating Amber (2020) by David Freyne
Bottoms (2023) by Emma Seligman
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) by Céline Sciamma
Desert Hearts (1985) by Donna Deitch
Booksmart (2019) by Olivia Wilde
DOCUMENTARIES
Disclosure (2020) by Sam Feder
Changing the Game (2019) by Michael Barnett
The Stroll (2023) by Zackary Drucker and Kristen Lovell
No Ordinary Man: The Billy Tipton Documentary (2020) by Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt
Read Elliot Page’s interview in Mastermind 16 which is available for pre-order now, and arrives in stores from October 2 onward.