Unearthing Queer Histories: How LGBTQ+ Fiction Preserves Stories of Love and Resilience

Reimagining Queer Pasts Through Fiction

For centuries, LGBTQ+ stories have been buried, erased, or reshaped to fit heteronormative narratives. Much of queer history survives only through coded letters, fragmented archives, or whispered recollections. In a world where historical erasure continues to threaten LGBTQ+ visibility, historical fiction has emerged as a vital form of reclamation. While these stories may not always adhere strictly to documented fact, they offer something equally powerful: representation, imagination, and the chance to envision what life and love might have looked like for queer people in eras that sought to silence them.

Among those breathing life into these forgotten narratives is Jeza Belle, a New York City–based drag queen, comedian, and author of The Freedom to Love. Her creative journey, spanning drag performance, screenwriting, and international publishing, illustrates how storytelling can preserve queer identity across mediums.

For Jeza Belle, drag and writing intertwine as acts of defiance and self-expression, each offering space to rewrite history on her own terms. By merging art and activism, she demonstrates how imagined pasts can illuminate real truths about resilience, pride, and the enduring freedom to love.

Remembering Where Queer Lives Have Always Been

LGBTQ+ historical fiction occupies a space between remembrance and imagination. These stories restore visibility for those who have always existed, even when society refused to acknowledge them. While fiction cannot replace erased historical records, it fills emotional and cultural voids, reminding readers that queer love, identity, and resilience have endured throughout human history.

“If you look at any society and any history of humanity, we are there,” Jeza Belle says, a sentiment that drives her to explore love and identity in periods when queer existence was often invisible. Set during the era of American slavery, her novel examines the complexities of race, power, and forbidden intimacy between two men whose connection defies societal norms. Through this story, Jeza Belle reimagines what queer love might have looked like under the harshest conditions while confronting the intersecting realities of race and sexuality, showing that visibility itself can be a radical act of love and remembrance.

Reclaiming the Past: Queer Stories That Refuse to Disappear

For much of history, LGBTQ+ lives were omitted or rewritten to fit dominant cultural narratives. From ancient societies to modern times, queer people have existed in every culture, yet their presence has often been ignored or erased. Historical fiction allows authors to reinsert LGBTQ+ characters into the eras that tried to erase them. These narratives do more than reimagine history—they reclaim space, restoring dignity and visibility to lives that were always there.

“It’s important because it puts a marker in the sand and says to people, we were there,” Jeza Belle notes. Her words capture the essence of LGBTQ+ historical fiction: to remind readers that queer existence is not a modern phenomenon but an enduring truth woven through every age. In works like The Freedom to Love, Jeza Belle challenges erasure and sparks conversations around race, gender, and sexuality, ensuring that queer history, real and imagined, continues to live on.

Echoes of the Past in the Present

Historical fiction often mirrors contemporary struggles. By placing queer stories in past eras of oppression, these narratives reveal how power, prejudice, and resilience remain relevant today. Themes of injustice and survival resonate across centuries, reminding readers that history is not a distant memory but an ongoing cycle of challenges and triumphs.

“There’s a great parallel to what’s happened in the past and through these books to what’s happening today,” Jeza Belle says. In her novel, the intersections of race, sexuality, and social hierarchy in 19th-century America feel strikingly modern, a call to resist erasure and affirm that queer people, and their love, endure across time. LGBTQ+ historical fiction becomes more than escapism; it is a reclamation of voice, an act of defiance, and a testament that even in the face of oppression, the community’s presence is unyielding.

Writing Our Future into History

Just as LGBTQ+ historical fiction breathes life into the stories of those who came before, today’s queer voices are shaping the history that future generations will remember. Every era has its turning point, and though the community continues to face resistance, there is also an undeniable momentum toward visibility, equality, and joy. Through art, activism, and everyday authenticity, queer people are refusing to be silenced, ensuring that their presence endures beyond this moment in time.

What we create and how we live today will one day become the record of our resilience. Whether through storytelling, advocacy, or simply embracing the freedom to love and exist openly, each act of visibility contributes to a collective legacy. LGBTQ+ historical fiction reminds us that the past and present are intertwined, and that by honoring where we’ve been, we find the courage to define where we’re going.

And remember: every day is all we have, so you've got to make your own happiness.

For more information on this topic, listen to Episode 165. Reclaiming Queer History: The Impact of LGBTQ+ Historical Fiction (with Jeza Belle).

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