Águila: The Vision, Life, Death, & Rebirth of a Two-Spirit Shaman in the Ozark Mountains by
Águila tells the astonishing life story of María Cristina Moroles, a healer and shaman who has spent the past fifty years in the Arkansas Ozarks, where she oversees a healing sanctuary for women and children of color on a five-hundred-acre wilderness preserve. Moroles vividly recounts the events that earned her the ceremonial names "SunHawk" and "Águila" as well as her efforts to build a sustainable community off the grid.
American Teenager: How Trans Kids Are Surviving Hate and Finding Joy in a Turbulent Era by
Media coverage tends to sensationalize the fight over how trans kids should be allowed to live, but what is incredibly rare are the voices of the people at the heart of this debate: transgender and gender nonconforming kids themselves. For their groundbreaking new book, journalist Nico Lang spent a year traveling the country to document the lives of transgender, nonbinary, and genderfluid teens and their families. Drawing on hundreds of hours of on-the-ground interviews with them and the people in their communities, American Teenager paints a vivid portrait of what it's actually like to grow up trans today.
The Risk It Takes to Bloom: On Life and Liberation by
A passionate, powerful memoir by a trailblazing Black transgender activist, tracing her life of transformation and her work towards collective liberation. Born in Augusta, Georgia, to Black Catholic parents, Raquel spent years feeling isolated, even within a loving, close-knit family. There was little access to understanding what it meant to be queer and transgender. After hiding her identity as a newspaper reporter, her increasing awareness of the epidemic of violence plaguing trans women of color and the heightened suicide of trans teens inspired her to come out publicly. In The Risk It Takes to Bloom, Raquel Willis recounts with passion and candor her experiences straddling the Obama and Trump eras, the possibility of transformation after tragedy, and how complex moments can push us all to take necessary risks and bloom toward collective liberation.
Spectrums: Autistic Transgender People in Their Own Words by
Written by autistic trans people from around the world, this vital and intimate collection of personal essays reveals the struggles and joys of living at the intersection of neurodivergence and gender diversity. Weaving memories, poems and first-person narratives together, these stories showcase experiences of coming out, college and university life, accessing healthcare, physical transition, friendships and relationships, sexuality, pregnancy, parenting, and late life self-discovery, to reveal a rich and varied tapestry of life lived on the spectrums. With humour and personal insight, this anthology is essential reading for autistic trans people, and the professionals supporting them, as well as anyone interested in the nuances of autism and gender identity.
Sylvia Rivera by
Meet Stonewall uprising veteran Sylvia Rivera―once just a kid from New York City. A transgender Latina, Sylvia became an influential gay liberation and transgender rights activist who fought especially for transgender people of color. In the 1970s, Sylvia and Marsha P. Johnson founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a group devoted to providing services and advocacy for homeless LGBTQ+ people. Nearly two decades after her passing, Sylvia and her legacy continue to have an impact on the LGBTQ+ rights movement and remain an inspiration for marginalized queer people everywhere.
Are You This? or Are You This?: A Story of Identity and Worth by
When Madian Al Jazerah came out to his Arab parents, his mother had one question. 'Are you this?' she asked, cupping her hand. 'Or are you this?' she motioned with a poking finger. If you're the poker, she said, you aren't a homosexual. For Madian, this opposition reveals not who he is, but patriarchy, power, and society's efforts to fit us into neat boxes. He is Palestinian, but wasn't raised in Palestine. He is Kuwaiti-born, but not Kuwaiti. He's British-educated, but not a Westerner. He's a Muslim, but can't embrace the Islam of today. He's a gay man, out of the closet but still living in the shadows: he has left Jordan, his home, three times in fear of his life.Madian has searched for acceptance and belonging around the world, joining new communities in San Francisco, New York, Hawaii and Tunisia, yet always finding himself pulled back to Amman. This frank and moving memoir narrates his battles with adversity, racism and homophobia, and a rich life lived with humour, dignity and grace.
Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I'd Known by
In Flamboyants, George M. Johnson celebrates writers, performers, and activists from 1920s Black America whose sexualities have been obscured throughout history. Through 14 essays, Johnson reveals how American culture has been shaped by icons who are both Black and Queer - and whose stories deserve to be celebrated in their entirety. Interspersed with personal narrative, powerful poetry, and illustrations by award-winning illustrator Charly Palmer, Flamboyants looks to the past for understanding as to how Black and Queer culture has defined the present and will continue to impact the future.
Native Country of the Heart by
Moraga's memoir begins with her mother, Elvira Isabel Moraga, who as a child, along with her siblings, was hired out by her own father to pick cotton in California's Imperial Valley. The lives of Cherríe and her mother, and of their people, are woven together in a story of critical reflection and deep personal revelation as Moraga charts her own coming to consciousness alongside the heartbreaking story of her mother's decline. As a young woman, Elvira left California to work as a cigarette girl in glamorous late-1920s Tijuana, where an ambiguous relationship with a wealthy white man taught her life lessons about power, sex, and opportunity. As Moraga charts her mother's journey--from impressionable young girl to battle-tested matriarch to, later on, old woman suffering under the yoke of Alzheimer's--she traces her own self-discovery of her queer body and lesbian identity, as well as her passion for activism and the history of her pueblo.
Q & A: Voices from Queer Asian North America by
The visual art, autobiographical writings, poetry, scholarly essays, meditations, and analyses of histories and popular culture in the new Q & A gesture to enduring everyday racial-gender-sexual experiences of mis-recognition, micro-aggressions, loss, and trauma when racialized Asian bodies are questioned, pathologized, marginalized, or violated. This anthology seeks to expand the idea of Asian and American in LGBTQ studies.
Sipping Dom Pérignon Through a Straw: Reimagining Success as a Disabled Achiever by
Global humanitarian Eddie Ndopu's rousing memoir about being both profoundly disabled and profoundly successful without trading one for the other. By his early twenties, Eddie had rocketed through every boundary put in front of him—a queer, Black wheelchair user—challenging bias at the highest echelons of power and prestige. Born with spinal muscular atrophy, a rare degenerative motor neuron disease affecting his physical mobility, Eddie was told that he wouldn't live beyond age five. But using his razor-sharp mind and grit, Eddie became the first-ever disabled African awarded a full scholarship to the prestigious Oxford University for a master's degree in public policy, a remarkable feat worthy of a toast. Sipping Dom Pérignon Through a Straw follows Eddie as he scales the mountain of success only to find exclusion, discrimination, and neglect still lying in wait on the other side. Written with his one good finger, Eddie's vibrant prose delivers a clarion call to underdogs everywhere to stop climbing mountains and start moving them instead.
Her Word Is Bond: Navigating Hip Hop and Relationships in a Culture of Misogyny by
"Nowhere near famous but still infamous," Psalm One is a legend to rap nerds, scholars, and "heads," and has gone on to work with the brightest names in rap and have her work celebrated and taught around the globe. In Her Word Is Bond, Psalm One tells her own story, from growing up in Englewood, Chicago through her life as a chemist, teacher, and legendary rapper. Intrinsically feminist, this story is a celebration of the life and career of one artist who blazed the trail for women in hip hop.
More: A Memoir of Open Marriage by
A magnetic, intensely personal debut memoir of a happily married mother's exploration of sex and relationships—outside of her marriage. Molly Roden Winter was a mom of two young children in Park Slope, Brooklyn with a husband, Stewart, who often worked late. One night when Stewart missed the kids' bedtime, again, she stormed out of the house to clear her head. At impromptu drinks with a friend, she met Matt, an unbelievably hot younger man. When Molly told her husband that Matt had asked her out, she was surprised that he encouraged her to accept. So begins Molly's unexpected open marriage, and with it a life-changing journey of self-discovery. Molly Roden Winter narrates her journey with warmth and style in this unputdownable memoir of love, sex, and personal growth.
Open: An Uncensored Memoir of Love, Liberation, and Non-Monogamy by
When Rachel Krantz met and fell for Jacob, he told her that he was looking to make a commitment—one that did not include exclusivity. Both anxious and excited at the prospect of a different way to commit, Krantz entered a relationship built equally on love and liberation. And as an inveterate journalist and writer of extraordinary perceptiveness and emotional nuance, she not only put her heart on the line, but kept painstakingly detailed notes, interviewed other couples, and relentlessly interrogated her own emotions as she went down the rabbit hole of non-monogamy. What results is a unique combination of memoir and immersion journalism that reads like sexy, page-turning fiction and casts an unflinching eye on non-monogamy, from the debilitating jealousy and anxiety spirals to the heart-opening connections and exhilarating eroticism.
Sounds Fake but Okay: An Asexual and Aromantic Perspective on Love, Relationships, Sex, and Pretty Much Anything Else by
'Somehow, over time, we forgot that the rituals behind dating and sex were constructs made up by human beings and eventually, they became hard and fast rules that society imposed on us all.' True Love. Third Wheels. Dick pics. 'Dying alone'. Who decided this was normal? Sarah and Kayla invite you to put on your purple aspec glasses—and rethink everything you thought you knew about society, friendship, sex, romance and more. Drawing on their personal stories, and those of aspec friends all over the world, prepare to explore your microlabels, investigate different models of partnership, delve into the intersection of gender norms and compulsory sexuality and reconsider the meaning of sex—when allosexual attraction is out of the equation. Spanning the whole range of relationships we have in our lives—to family, friends, lovers, society, our gender, and ourselves, this book asks you to let your imagination roam, and think again what human connection really is.
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