TRUNKY
November 16th, 2016
ISBN 0986084492 (ISBN13: 9780986084492)
Profoundly philosophical, surprisingly funny and brutally honest, this modern-day tragic comedy pulls no punches delving into the Sisyphean struggle of human addiction and recovery. After a decade of sobriety and relentless devotion to becoming a writer, Trunky finally finds himself on the brink of success and widespread acclaim. But as fate would have it, he spirals down into depression and begins using heroin again. This relapse is different from those that came before, however, as Trunky ends up institutionalized in a recovery center in the south among a diverse group of dopers--thugs, criminals, white supremacists, professional athletes and business men--all of whom are looking for something they're terrified of finding.
S/He
February 1st, 1995
ISBN 155583888X (ISBN13: 9781555838881)
This brave memoir chronicles Pratt’s struggle to overcome the repressive traditions of Southern womanhood and live her life honestly. It chronicles her youth, her marriage, her eventual decision to come out as a lesbian, and her life with transgender activist and author Leslie Feinberg.
Rethinking Normal: A Memoir in Transition
September 30th, 2014
ISBN 1481418238 (ISBN13: 9781481418232)
In her unique, generous, and affecting voice, nineteen-year-old Katie Hill shares her personal journey of undergoing gender reassignment. Have you ever worried that you’d never be able to live up to your parents’ expectations? Have you ever imagined that life would be better if you were just invisible? Have you ever thought you would do anything to make the teasing stop? Katie Hill had, and it nearly tore her apart. Katie never felt comfortable in her own skin. She realized very young that a serious mistake had been made; she was a girl who had been born in the body of a boy. Suffocating under her peers’ bullying and the mounting pressure to be “normal,” Katie tried to take her life at the age of eight years old. After several other failed attempts, she finally understood that “Katie”–the girl trapped within her–was determined to live.
Surviving Madness: A Therapist's Own Story
March 29th, 2002
ISBN 0299176207 (ISBN13: 9780299176204)
Betty Berzon, renowned psychotherapist and author of the bestselling book Permanent Partners, tells her own incredible story here. Berzon’s journey from psychiatric patient on suicide watch—her wrists tethered to the bed rails in a locked hospital ward—to her present role as a groundbreaking therapist and gay pioneer makes for purely compelling reading. Berzon is recognized today as a trailblazing co-founder of a number of important lesbian and gay organizations and one of the first therapists to focus on means of developing healthy gay relationships and overcoming homophobia. Her sometimes bumpy road to success never fails to fascinate. Along the way she encounters such luminaries as Anaïs Nin, Eleanor Roosevelt, the Sitwells, Evelyn Hooker, and Paul Monette. Her recollections here provide a collective portrait of her fellow pioneers and a stirring lesson in twentieth-century history.
Mississippi Sissy
March 6th, 2007
ISBN 0312341016 (ISBN13: 9780312341015)
Mississippi Sissy is the stunning memoir from Kevin Sessums, a celebrity journalist who grew up scaring other children, hiding terrible secrets, pretending to be Arlene Frances and running wild in the South. As he grew up in Forest, Mississippi, befriended by the family maid, Mattie May, he became a young man who turned the word "sissy" on its head, just as his mother taught him. In Jackson, he is befriended by Eudora Welty and journalist Frank Hains, but when Hains is brutally murdered in his antebellum mansion, Kevin's long road north towards celebrity begins. In a memoir that echoes bestsellers like The Liar's Club, Kevin Sessums brings to life the pungent American south of the 1960s and the world of the strange little boy who grew there.
The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers: An Unconventional Memoir
June 1st, 2010
ISBN 006133698X (ISBN13: 9780061336980)
“I adore the Beekman boys’ story. Their unlikely story of love, the land, and a herd of goats is hilariously honest. If these two can go from Manhattan to a goat farm in upstate New York, then I can’t help feeling there is hope for us all.” –Alice Waters. Michael Perry (Coop, Truck: A Love Story) meets David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim) in this follow-up to Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s beloved New York Times bestselling debut memoir, I Am Not Myself These Days—another riotous, moving, and entirely unique story of his attempt to tackle the next phase of life with his partner… on a goat farm in upstate New York.
Waiting for the Call: From Preacher's Daughter to Lesbian Mom
March 8th, 2007
ISBN 0472032380 (ISBN13: 9780472032389)
Waiting for the Call takes readers from the foothills of the Appalachians—where Jacqueline Taylor was brought up in a strict evangelical household—to contemporary Chicago, where she and her lesbian partner are raising a family. In a voice by turns comic and loving, Taylor recounts the amazing journey that took her in profoundly different directions from those she or her parents could have ever envisioned. Taylor’s father was a Southern Baptist preacher, and she struggled to deal with his strictures as well as her mother’s manic-depressive episodes. After leaving for college, Taylor finds herself questioning her faith and identity, questions that continue to mount when—after two divorces, a doctoral degree, and her first kiss with a woman—she discovers her own lesbianism and begins a most untraditional family that grows to include two adopted children from Peru.
Queen of the Oddballs: And Other True Stories from a Life Unaccording to Plan
April 25th, 2006
ISBN 0060878835 (ISBN13: 9780060878832)
A hilariously offbeat memoir about an adventurous young woman’s escapades as she defies conventions and transforms an ordinary Los Angeles life into a star-studded, extraordinary miracle of self-discovery. Queen of the Oddballs forms a chronology of Hillary Carlip’s habitual straying from roads more traveled – from a wisecracking third- grader suspended from school for smoking (while imitating Holly Golightly) to a headline-making teen activist, juggler and fire eater, friend (NOT “fan”) of Carly Simon and Carole King, grand prize-winning Gong Show contestant, cult rock star, and seeker of spiritual and romantic truths that definitely defy expectations. Illustrated with ephemera – from diary entries and photographs to a handwritten letter from Carly Simon.
The Rules Do Not Apply
March 14th, 2017
ISBN 0812996933 (ISBN13: 9780812996937)
Levy chronicles the adventure and heartbreak of being, in her own words, “a woman who is free to do whatever she chooses.” Her story of resilience becomes an unforgettable portrait of the shifting forces in our culture, of what has changed—and of what is eternal.
Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens
June 6th, 2017
ISBN 1405922028 (ISBN13: 9781405922029)
Over the course of a thirty-year career, Eddie Izzard has proven himself to be a creative chameleon, inhabiting the stage and film and television screen with an unbelievable fervor. Born in Yemen, and raised in Ireland, Wales and post-war England, he lost his mother at the age of six. In his teens, he dropped out of university and took to the streets of London as part of a two-man escape act; when his partner went on vacation, Izzard kept busy by inventing a one-man act, and thus a career was ignited. As a stand-up comedian, Izzard has captivated audiences with his surreal, stream-of- consciousness comedy--lines such as "Cake or Death?" "Death Star Canteen," and "Do You Have a Flag?" have the status of great rock lyrics.
Dad #1, Dad #2: A Queerspawn View from the Closet
June 19th, 2017
ISBN13 9780998875613
When Natalie was twelve years old, her life changed dramatically. After a difficult year with multiple deaths in the family, she was sitting at the kitchen table for another family meeting. “I’m gay,” her dad declared. He moved out the next day. Today there is a lot of talk about gay families, but twenty years ago in Boise, Idaho, the climate was different. Natalie’s dad is a former Chief Judge of the Idaho State Court of Appeals. He would have lost his job if he'd come out publicly. So, for twenty years Natalie lived in a closeted gay family.
My Undoing: Love in the Thick of Sex, Drugs, Pornography, and Prostitution
May 24th, 2006
ISBN 0786717432 (ISBN13: 9780786717439)
For the first time, porn legend Aiden Shaw takes fans behind-the-scenes to the gay adult film world that made him a star. My Undoing ventures from locales such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and London, to the sets of premiere studios like Falcon, Catalina, and Studio 200. Yet, this is not the typical adult film memoir, where stars drop names and titillate readers with explicit moments. Although My Undoing shares in unsparing detail all the hot stories about the sex and drugs that fueled Aiden’s life, it more profoundly follows him through a course of rocky and unfulfilling relationships. As Aiden eloquently and often humorously points out, the romantic life of an adult film superstar is sometimes lonely and lacking in love. But not love only in the form of a relationship, rather also love from within himself.
Stars Without Garters! The Memoirs of Two Gay GI's in WWII
June 28th, 1996
ISBN 1886360049 (ISBN13: 9781886360044)
In World War II, members of the U.S. Special Service companies were combat soldiers by day and in the evenings presented stage shows and movies to entertain and boost the morale of the troops. Eddie Fuller and Tyler Carpenter were successful Broadway actors drafted to serve their country. Their theatre productions were among the best received in the service. Eddie and Ty were like thousands of other patriotic, dedicated GIs in war-torn Europe, except when they came across the English Channel, they also came across with two sailors in the stern of the ship
Confessions of an Empty Purse
January 1, 2010
ISBN13 9781897181331
Confessions of an empty purse is a poetic transmemoir of passion and fear, laughter, nightmares and dysphoria, preservation, degradation, dreams and pride … and it really happened.
Bitch Is the New Black: A Memoir
June 1st, 2010
ISBN 0061778826 (ISBN13: 9780061778827)
Strong, sassy, always surprising—and titled after a Saturday Night Live “Weekend Update” monologue by Tina Fey Bitch Is the New Black is a deliciously addictive memoir-in-essays in which Helena Andrews goes from being the daughter of the town lesbian to a hot-shot political reporter… all while trying to answer the question, “can a strong, single, and successful black woman ever find love?” Fans of Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There’d Be Cake) will love the bold and brassy Bitch Is the New Black.
Stories for Boys: A Memoir
August 28th, 2012
ISBN 0983477582 (ISBN13: 9780983477587)
In this memoir of fathers and sons, Gregory Martin struggles to reconcile the father he thought he knew with a man who has just survived a suicide attempt; a man who had been having anonymous affairs with men throughout his thirty-nine years of marriage; and who now must begin his life as a gay man. At a tipping point in our national conversation about gender and sexuality, rights and acceptance, Stories for Boys is about a father and a son finding a way to build a new relationship with one another after years of suppression and denial are given air and light. MartinOCOs memoir is quirky and compelling with its amateur photos and grab-bag social science and literary analyses. Gregory Martin explores the impact his fatherOCOs lifelong secrets have upon his life now as a husband and father of two young boys with humor and bracing candor.
Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man
January 1st, 2011
ISBN 0142429295 (ISBN13: 9780142429297)
Bono delivers a groundbreaking and candid account of his 40-year struggle to match his gender identity with his physical body, and his transformation from female to male.
My Brother My Sister: Story of a Transformation
September 5th, 2013
ISBN 0670025526 (ISBN13: 9780670025527)
On a visit to New York, the brother of well-known film critic Molly Haskell dropped a bombshell: Nearing age sixty, and married, he had decided to become a woman. In the vein of Jan Morris’s classic Conundrum and Jennifer Finney Boylan's She's Not There, a transgender memoir, Haskell’s My Brother My Sister gracefully explores a delicate subject, this time from the perspective of a family member. Haskell chronicles her brother Chevey’s transformation through a series of psychological evaluations, grueling surgeries, drug regimens, and comportment and fashion lessons as he becomes Ellen. Despite Haskell’s liberal views on gender roles, she was dumbfounded by her brother’s decision. With candor and compassion, she charts not only her brother’s journey to becoming her sister, but also her own path from shock, confusion, embarrassment, and devastation to acceptance, empathy, and love.
Untied: A Memoir of Family, Fame, and Floundering
March 6th, 2012
ISBN 0307719316 (ISBN13: 9780307719317)
Meredith Baxter is a beloved and iconic television actress, most well-known for her enormously popular role as hippie mom, Elyse Keaton, on Family Ties. Her warmth, humor, and brilliant smile made her one of the most popular women on television, with millions of viewers following her on the small screen each week. Yet her success masked a tumultuous personal story and a harrowing private life. For the first time, Baxter is ready to share her incredible highs, (working with Robert Redford, Doris Day, Lana Turner, and the cast of Family Ties), and lows (a thorny relationship with her mother, a difficult marriage to David Birney, a bout with breast cancer), finally revealing the woman behind the image.
Born on the Edge of Race and Gender: A Voice for Cultural Competency
November 23rd, 2015
ISBN 0997012307 (ISBN13: 9780997012309)
In this historic moment of transgender visibility in the U.S., writer, activist, and public health consultant Willy Wilkinson's Born on the Edge of Race and Gender: A Voice for Cultural Competency uses the power of storytelling to contextualize one of the most misunderstood social issues of our time. This poetic, journalistic memoir shines an intersectional beacon on the ambiguity and complexity of mixed heritage, transgender, and disability experience, and offers an intimate window into how current legislative and policy battles impact the lives of transgender people. Whether navigating the men's locker room like a "stealth trans Houdini," accessing lifesaving health care, or appreciating his son's recognition of him as a "transformer," Wilkinson compellingly illustrates the unique, difficult, and sometimes comical experiences of transgender life.
No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America
May 29th, 2018
ISBN 1568589484 (ISBN13: 9781568589480)
When Darnell L. Moore was fourteen years old, three boys from his neighborhood tried to set him on fire as he was walking home from school. Darnell was tall and awkward and constantly bullied for being gay. That afternoon, one of the boys doused him with gasoline and tried lighting a match. It was too windy, and luckily Darnell's aunt arrived in time to grab Darnell and pull him to safety. It was not the last time he would face death. It wasn't until Darnell was pushed into the spotlight at a Newark rally after the murder of a young queer woman that he found his voice and his calling. He became a leading organizer with Black Lives Matter, a movement that recognized him and insisted that his life mattered.
Visions and Revisions: Coming of Age in the Age of AIDS
April 7th, 2015
ISBN 1616954418 (ISBN13: 9781616954413)
Novelist and critic Dale Peck's latest work, part memoir, part extended essay, is a foray into what the author calls 'the second half of the first half of the AIDS epidemic'. Reminiscent of Joan Didion's The White Album and Kurt Vonnegut's Palm Sunday, Visions and Revisions has been assembled from over a dozen essays and articles that have been extensively rewritten and recombined to form a sweeping, collage-style portrait of a tumultuous era.
Some Assembly Required: The Not-So-Secret Life of a Transgender Teen
September 30th, 2014
ISBN 1481416758 (ISBN13: 9781481416757)
Seventeen-year-old Arin Andrews shares all the hilarious, painful, and poignant details of undergoing gender reassignment as a high school student in this winning memoir. We've all felt uncomfortable in our own skin at some point, and we've all been told that it's just a part of growing up. But for Arin Andrews, it wasn't a phase that would pass. He had been born in the body of a girl and there seemed to be no relief in sight. In this revolutionary memoir, Arin details the journey that led him to make the life-transforming decision to undergo gender reassignment as a high school junior. In his captivatingly witty, honest voice, Arin reveals the challenges he faced as a girl, the humiliation and anger he felt after getting kicked out of his private school, and all the changes, both mental and physical, he experienced once his transition began.
The Bishop's Daughter: A Memoir
May 17th, 2008
ISBN 0393059847 (ISBN13: 9780393059847)
Paul Moore's vocation as an Episcopal priest took him—with his wife Jenny and a family that grew to nine children—from robber-baron wealth to work among the urban poor of postwar America, prominence as an activist bishop in Washington during the Johnson years, leadership in the civil rights and peace movements, and two decades as the bishop of New York. The Bishop's Daughter is a daughter's story of that complex, visionary man: a chronicle of her turbulent relationship with a father who struggled privately with his sexuality while she openly explored hers, and a searching account of the consequences of sexual secrets. With a depth of questioning that recalls James Carroll's An American Requiem, this memoir engages the reader in the great issues of American life: war, race, family, sexuality, and faith.
Transitioning Together: One Couple's Journey of Gender and Identity Discovery
February 21st, 2017
ISBN 1785921037 (ISBN13: 9781785921032)
This is the story of a long-lasting relationship, surviving against the odds. It is the story of Wenn and Beatrice Lawson, born almost twelve years apart in different countries with different cultures, who were both assigned female at birth. After nineteen years of marriage and four children, Wenn entered a same-sex relationship with Beatrice. Little did Beatrice know that twenty-two years later, Wenn would transition from female to male. This unique and honest memoir tells the story of Wenn's transition and Beatrice's journey alongside him.
Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father
June 3rd, 2013
ISBN 0393082520 (ISBN13: 9780393082524)
A beautiful, vibrant memoir about growing up motherless in 1970s and ’80s San Francisco with an openly gay father. After his wife dies in a car accident, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city in the midst of revolution, bustling with gay men in search of liberation—few of whom are raising a child. Steve throws himself into San Francisco’s vibrant cultural scene. He takes Alysia to raucous parties, pushes her in front of the microphone at poetry readings, and introduces her to a world of artists, thinkers, and writers. But the pair live like nomads, moving from apartment to apartment, with a revolving cast of roommates and little structure.
The Boy Who Was Born a Girl: One Mother’s Unconditional Love for Her Child
February 28th, 2012
ISBN 1446494063 (ISBN13: 9781446494066)
Brought up as female for fifteen years, Jon can remember feeling different from other girls since he was only five years old. But it will take years of depression, incessant bullying, self-harm and isolation before he discovers why. When Jon eventually confides to his mother that he feels like a boy, Luisa commits herself unconditionally to helping her child. For Jon, the changes that follow are his path to happiness. But for Luisa, this means coming to terms with the enormous loss of her daughter.
The Best Little Boy in the World
January 1st, 1973
ISBN 067960314X (ISBN13: 9780679603146)
When The Best Little Boy in the World was first published in 1973, Andrew Tobias could write about what it had felt like to begin to accept his homosexuality, but he couldn't bring himself to sign his own name to the book, for fear of embarrassing his parents. And so it was "John Reid" who became a hero to the thousands of gay males who found in this memoir a mirror for their own experiences. Although the book appears rambling at times, Tobias always has a clear sense of where he wants to take readers with the story. He treats his closeted adolescence and college years, and his stumbling first attempts at "doing a thing" with other gay men, with a self-effacing humor that exposes his pain without descending into self-pity. And if his life seems fairly ordinary, apart from the sexual awakening ... well, that was the whole point.
The Confession
September 19th, 2006
ISBN 0060898623 (ISBN13: 9780060898625)
In August 2004, Governor James E. McGreevey of New Jersey made history when he stepped before microphones, declared “My truth is that I am a gay American,” and announced his resignation. The story made international headlines but what led to that moment was a human and political drama more complex and fascinating than anyone knew. Now, in this extraordinarily candid memoir, McGreevey shares his story of a life of ambition, moral compromise, and redemption.
The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss
April 5th, 2016
ISBN 006245496X (ISBN13: 9780062454966)
A touching and intimate correspondence between Anderson Cooper and his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, offering timeless wisdom and a revealing glimpse into their lives. Both a son’s love letter to his mother and an unconventional mom’s life lessons for her grown son, The Rainbow Comes and Goes offers a rare window into their close relationship and fascinating life stories, including their tragedies and triumphs. In these often humorous and moving exchanges, they share their most private thoughts and the hard-earned truths they’ve learned along the way. In their words their distinctive personalities shine through—Anderson’s journalistic outlook on the world is a sharp contrast to his mother’s idealism and unwavering optimism.
My Two Moms
April 26th, 2012
ISBN 1592407137 (ISBN13: 9781592407132)
It has been almost two years since Zach Wahls (then 19 years old) bravely stood up in front of the Iowa House of Representative and defended gay marriage and his family. Wahls proudly proclaimed, "The sexual orientation of my parents has had zero effect on the content of my character,” and his speech instantly went viral and became YouTube’s #1 political video of 2011. In My Two Moms, Zach offers a stirring and brave defense of his family. Raised by two moms in a conservative Midwestern town, Zach’s parents instilled in him values that families everywhere can embrace—values driven home by his journey toward becoming an Eagle Scout.
Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen
June 7th, 2016
ISBN 0735207445 (ISBN13: 9780735207448)
Jazz Jennings is one of the youngest and most prominent voices in the national discussion about gender identity. At the age of five, Jazz transitioned to life as a girl, with the support of her parents. A year later, her parents allowed her to share her incredible journey in her first Barbara Walters interview, aired at a time when the public was much less knowledgeable or accepting of the transgender community.
My Father’s Closet
April 4th, 2017
ISBN 0814213324 (ISBN13: 978081421332
Thirty years after her father’s death, Karen McClintock sets out to find the gay father she never really knew. As we follow the unraveling family secret, we find ourselves drawn into her story as they stumble into infidelity, grieve heartbreaking losses, and remain loyal in love. Set in Columbus, Ohio, My Father’s Closet tells the story of how just before the war, McClintock’s parents fell in love and married, while overseas in Germany the man whom she believes became her father’s lover was concealing his Jewish and gay identities in order to escape to America. A set of her father’s journals, letters her parents sent to each other during the Second World War, and a mysterious painting all lead her toward the truth about her gay father.
When We Rise: My Life in the Movement
November 29th, 2016
ISBN 0316315435 (ISBN13: 9780316315432)
Born in 1954, Cleve Jones was among the last generation of gay Americans who grew up wondering if there were others out there like himself. There were. Like thousands of other young people, Jones, nearly penniless, was drawn in the early 1970s to San Francisco, a city electrified by progressive politics and sexual freedom. Jones found community--in the hotel rooms and ramshackle apartments shared by other young adventurers, in the city's bathhouses and gay bars like The Stud, and in the burgeoning gay district, the Castro, where a New York transplant named Harvey Milk set up a camera shop, began shouting through his bullhorn, and soon became the nation's most outspoken gay elected official. With Milk's encouragement, Jones dove into politics and found his calling in "the movement."
The Mirror Makes No Sense
March 7th, 2006
ISBN 1425924042 (ISBN13: 9781425924041)
The Mirror Makes No Sense is a true story of a young man's journey. This is no ordinary man; Mark Angelo Cummings was born biologically a female. He brings the readers into his life, sharing his emotions, trials and tribulations. This book has something for everyone. He will make you laugh, cry and get you to think about your own feelings, towards many controversial subjects. Mark is a spiritual and God loving man. He wants to create awareness of the much needed unconditional love in our world. Mark's question to you is, are you happy with the reflection you see in the mirror? If the answer is yes, then you can feel really blessed, because for some of us though, the mirror makes no sense. Being transsexual is not a sin, a crime, nor deviant behavior.
Memoirs of a Gay Soldier
October 1st, 2011
ISBN 0578077094 (ISBN13: 9780578077093)
From what was originally intended to be a collection of journal entries documenting the author's first year in the army comes an intimate divulgence of emotion and thought, which brings to light the recent decrease in the military's standard of training. Insightfully written and peppered with formidable disputes against the military's contentious former Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, an assortment of detailed narratives follows the writer as he matures from aimless adolescence to disillusioned adulthood.
Transparent
May 10th, 2011
ISBN 0982702787 (ISBN13: 9780982702789)
In this unique memoir, Primetime CNN anchor Don Lemon takes readers behind the scenes of journalism, detailing his own struggle to become one of the most prominent African American men in television news--and inside some of the biggest stories of our times. Never one to stop at the surface of the story, Lemon digs deep, exposing his own history with wealth and lack, with family secrets and painful revelations--and explains how those painful early experiences shaped his ambitions and gave him the tools of empathy and fearlessness that he brings to his work. Then Lemon turns the same searing honesty on the news industry itself, taking the reader behind the scenes of September 11, 2001, the DC Snipers, the epidemic of AIDS in Africa, Hurricane Katrina, the election of Barack Obama, and the death of Michael Jackson among other events.
Queen of the Oddballs: And Other True Stories from a Life Unaccording to Plan
April 25th, 2006
ISBN 0060878835 (ISBN13: 9780060878832)
A hilariously offbeat memoir about an adventurous young woman’s escapades as she defies conventions and transforms an ordinary Los Angeles life into a star-studded, extraordinary miracle of self-discovery. Queen of the Oddballs forms a chronology of Hillary Carlip’s habitual straying from roads more traveled – from a wisecracking third- grader suspended from school for smoking (while imitating Holly Golightly) to a headline-making teen activist, juggler and fire eater, friend (NOT “fan”) of Carly Simon and Carole King, grand prize-winning Gong Show contestant, cult rock star, and seeker of spiritual and romantic truths that definitely defy expectations. Illustrated with ephemera – from diary entries and photographs to a handwritten letter from Carly Simon.
Out of Sync: A Memoir
October 23rd, 2007
ISBN 1416947884 (ISBN13: 9781416947882)
At sixteen, Lance Bass received a phone call from Justin Timberlake that would change his life forever. Soon after, he left his small-town home in Clinton, Mississippi, to join an emerging musical group called *NSYNC. Two years later *NSYNC was inspiring Beatles-esque mania around the world, becoming the face of the new MTV generation, and earning the all-time record for most album sales in a single day (more than one million) and in a single week for No Strings Attached.
Transparent: Love, Family, and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers
January 2nd, 2007
ISBN 0151011966 (ISBN13: 9780151011964)
When Cris Beam first moved to Los Angeles, she thought she might put in just a few hours volunteering at a school for transgender kids while she got settled. Instead she found herself drawn deeply into the pained and powerful group of transgirls she discovered. In Transparent she introduces four of them—Christina, Domineque, Foxxjazell, and Ariel—and shows us their world, a dizzying mix of familiar teenage cliques and crushes with far less familiar challenges like how to morph your body on a few dollars a day. Funny, heartbreaking, defiant, and sometimes defeated, the girls form a singular community. But they struggle valiantly to resolve the gap between the way they feel inside and the way the world sees them—a struggle we can all identify with.
Taking the Scenic Route to Manhood
January 5th, 2015
ISBN13 9781483557397
Jeremy shares his struggles and triumphs of transitioning from female to male. Take this entertaining and informative journey with him! Taking The Scenic Route To Manhood is a candid and heartfelt tale of growing up in a world where you don't seem to fit. From his birth as a girl, Jeremy chronicles the pain, depression and confusion of living in the wrong body and coming to terms with the changes needed so he could live a more authentic and happy life. Readers will come to understand all aspects of the transgender person's journey, including; What it's like to grow up questioning whether you are the right gender, How to come to terms with being transgender how to share that with others, The medical surgical processes that can aid in gender transition, How to deal with curious people and nosey questions, The importance of having a good sense of humor through it all, and much, much more!
Eating Fire: My Life as a Lesbian Avenger
March 1st, 2014
ISBN 0816691169 (ISBN13: 9780816691166)
When Kelly Cogswell plunged into New York’s East Village in 1992, she had just come out. An ex–Southern Baptist born in Kentucky, she was camping in an Avenue B loft, scribbling poems, and playing in an underground band, trying to figure out her next move. A couple of months later she was consumed by the Lesbian Avengers, instigating direct action campaigns, battling cops on Fifth Avenue, mobilizing 20,000 dykes for a march on Washington, D.C., and eating fire literally—in front of the White House.
The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman's Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster
October 2nd, 2017
ISBN 1250101204 (ISBN13: 9781250101204)
Husband, father, drag queen, sex worker, wife. Sarah Krasnostein's The Trauma Cleaner is a love letter to an extraordinary ordinary life. In Sandra Pankhurst she discovered a woman capable of taking a lifetime of hostility and transphobic abuse and using it to care for some of society's most in-need people. Sandra Pankhurst founded her trauma cleaning business to help people whose emotional scars are written on their houses. From the forgotten flat of a drug addict to the infested home of a hoarder, Sandra enters properties and lives at the same time. But few of the people she looks after know anything of the complexity of Sandra's own life. Raised in an uncaring home, Sandra's miraculous gift for warmth and humor in the face of unspeakable personal tragedy mark her out as a one-off.
Two or Three Things I Know for Sure
August 1, 1995
ISBN 0452273404 (ISBN13: 9780452273405)
Bastard Out of Carolina, nominated for the 1992 National Book Award for fiction, introduced Dorothy Allison as one of the most passionate and gifted writers of her generation. Now, in Two or Three Things I Know for Sure, she takes a probing look at her family's history to give us a lyrical, complex memoir that explores how the gossip of one generation can become legends for the next. Illustrated with photographs from the author's personal collection, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure tells the story of the Gibson women -- sisters, cousins, daughters, and aunts -- and the men who loved them, often abused them, and, nonetheless, shared their destinies. With luminous clarity, Allison explores how desire surprises and what power feels like to a young girl as she confronts abuse.
Confessions of a Transvestite Prostitute
October 2nd, 2010
ASIN B0045OUR64
My Father and Myself
October 1st, 1975
ISBN 0940322129 (ISBN13: 9780940322127)
When his father died, J. R. Ackerley was shocked to discover that he had led a secret life. And after Ackerley himself died, he left a surprise of his own–this coolly considered, unsparingly honest account of his quest to find out the whole truth about the man who had always eluded him in life. But Ackerley’s pursuit of his father is also an exploration of the self, making My Father and Myself a pioneering record, at once sexually explicit and emotionally charged, of life as a gay man. This witty, sorrowful, and beautiful book is a classic of twentieth-century memoir.
Bent
June 27th, 2014
ISBN 0692245065 (ISBN13: 9780692245064)
A memoir in her most personal voice, Teri Louise Kelly tells us what it is like to be born in the wrong body. A surreal, courageous, and compelling account of one person's realization, transition and reemergence, you will not soon forget Bent.
Paralian - Not just transgender
May 28th, 2016
ISBN 1785891200 (ISBN13: 9781785891205)
Curious and determined from the very beginning, I left the warm, flowing blanket of my mom’s amniotic fluid five weeks too early. There I was. Stranded in a body not quite my own, soon to be taken away from her to be handed over to a young couple who were just as lost in this world. It was the beginning of an incredible journey, which brought me to the surging rivers of my childhood in Germany and later to the deep, glacial lakes of Switzerland. Then, one day, on the shores of Lake Zurich, an epiphany amidst bags of aromatic popcorn helped me to grasp the entire truth about my gender identity.
Double Life: A Love Story from Broadway to Hollywood
October 1st, 2010
ISBN 1936833026 (ISBN13: 9781936833023)
Gay marriage is at the forefront of America's political battles. The human story at the center of this debate is told in Double Life: A Love Story, a dual memoir by a gay male couple in a 50 plus year relationship. With high profiles in the entertainment, advertising and art communities, the authors offer a virtual timeline of how gay relationships have gained acceptance in the last half-century. At the same time, they share inside stories from film, television and media featuring the likes of Marlon Brando, Katharine Hepburn, Rock Hudson, Barbra Streisand, Laurence Olivier, Truman Capote, Bette Davis, Robert Redford, Lee Radziwill and Frances Lear.
You Can't Buy Love Like That: Growing Up Gay in the Sixties
October 17th, 2017
ISBN 1631523147 (ISBN13: 9781631523144)
Carol Anderson grows up in a fundamentalist Christian home in the '60s, a time when being gay was in opposition to all social and religious mores and against the law in most states. Fearing the rejection of her parents, she hides the truth about her love orientation, creating emotional distance from them for years, as she desperately struggles to harness her powerful attractions to women while pursuing false efforts to be with men.The watershed point in Carol's journey comes when she returns to graduate school and discovers the feminist movement, which emboldens her sense of personal power and the freedom to love whom she chooses. But this sense of self-possession comes too late for honesty with her father.
You're Not from Around Here, Are You? A Lesbian in Small-Town America
March 13th, 2001
ISBN 0299170942 (ISBN13: 9780299170943)
This is a funny, moving story about life in a small town, from the point of view of a pregnant lesbian. Louise A. Blum, author of the critically acclaimed novel Amnesty, now tells the story of her own life and her decision to be out, loud, and pregnant. Mixing humor with memorable prose, Blum recounts how a quiet, conservative town in an impoverished stretch of Appalachia reacts as she and a local woman, Connie, fall in love, move in together, and determine to live their life together openly and truthfully. The town responds in radically different ways to the couple’s presence, from prayer vigils on the village green to a feature article in the family section of the local newspaper.
Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival
January 14th, 2014
ISBN 1451661975 (ISBN13: 9781451661972)
As a politics-obsessed Georgetown freshman, Sean Strub arrived in Washington, DC, from Iowa in 1976, with a plum part-time job running a Senate elevator in the US Capitol. He also harbored a terrifying secret: his attraction to men. As Strub explored the capital’s political and social circles, he discovered a parallel world where powerful men lived double lives shrouded in shame. When the AIDS epidemic hit in the early 1980s, Strub was living in New York and soon found himself attending “more funerals than birthday parties.” Scared and angry, he turned to radical activism to combat discrimination and demand research. Strub takes you through his own diagnosis and inside ACT UP, the organization that transformed a stigmatized cause into one of the defining political movements of our time.
She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders
July 1st, 2003
ISBN 0767914295 (ISBN13: 9780767914291)
The exuberant memoir of a man named James who became a woman named Jenny. She’s Not There is the story of a person changing genders, the story of a person bearing and finally revealing a complex secret; above all, it is a love story. By turns funny and deeply moving, Jennifer Finney Boylan explores the remarkable territory that lies between men and women, examines changing friendships, and rejoices in the redeeming power of family. She’s Not There is a portrait of a loving marriage—the love of James for his wife, Grace, and, against all odds, the enduring love of Grace for the woman who becomes her "sister," Jenny. To this extraordinary true story, Boylan brings the humorous, fresh voice that won her accolades as one of the best comic novelists of her generation.
Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States
March 1st, 2019
ASIN B07DC2X58S
Ten years ago, Samantha Allen was a suit-and-tie-wearing Mormon missionary. Now she’s a senior Daily Beast reporter happily married to another woman. A lot in her life has changed, but what hasn’t changed is her deep love of Red State America, and of queer people who stay in so-called “flyover country” rather than moving to the liberal coasts. In Real Queer America, Allen takes us on a cross-country road-trip stretching all the way from Provo, Utah to the Rio Grande Valley to the Bible Belt to the Deep South. Her motto for the trip: “Something gay every day.”
Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir
November 1, 2016
ISBN 0994047134 (ISBN13: 9780994047137)
Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir by Kai Cheng Thom is the highly sensational, ultra-exciting, sort-of true coming-of-age story of a young Asian trans girl, pathological liar, and kung-fu expert who runs away from her parents’ abusive home in a rainy city called Gloom. Striking off on her own, she finds her true family in a group of larger-than-life trans femmes who live in a mysterious pleasure district known only as the Street of Miracles. Under the wings of this fierce and fabulous flock, Dearly blossoms into the woman she has always dreamed of being, with a little help from the unscrupulous Doctor Crocodile. When one of their number is brutally murdered, the protagonist joins her sisters in forming a vigilante gang to fight back against the transphobes, violent johns, and cops that stalk the Street of Miracles.
Family Outing: What Happened When I Found Out My Mother Was Gay
June 16th, 2008
ISBN 1559708719 (ISBN13: 9781559708715)
Like most teenagers, Troy Johnson was obsessed with sex, but his coming of age took a sharp turn in the era before Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell he learned his mother was a lesbian. When he found out her secret (during a surprise visit from her ex-lover) his head spun. Does that mean Mom cruises schoolyards? Does that mean I have the gay gene? If I sleep with enough women, will it create an anti-gay force field around me? With searing wit and candor, FAMILY OUTING details the metamorphosis of an average American kid from mom-hating bigot to Pride-going breeder, taking head on the politics of sexual identity, the delusions of suburban delinquency, and the salvation of getting a clue. You won’t find a bowl of Chicken Soup for the Kids of Gays here just the truth, served up with a side of sarcasm and extra laughs.
As I Lay Frying: A Rehoboth Beach Memoir
May 20th, 2004
ISBN 0964664860 (ISBN13: 9780964664869)
Rehoboth Beach, Delaware has been called The Nation's Summer Capital ever since the families of U.S. Senators and Congressmen discovered its beauty and charm, spending summers in Rehoboth to escape the oppressive heat and humidity of Washington, DC. Later, Rehoboth became another kind of refuge, when the gay and lesbian communities of the Mid-Atlantic found a beach resort to call their own. In 1995, writer Fay Jacobs and her partner Bonnie literally cruised into town and discovered the unique charm of this seaside community. Almost immediately, Fay began chronicling her life as a Rehoboth weekender in a column that appeared in the magazine Letters from CAMP Rehoboth. In the years that followed, Fay's Rehoboth fans have followed her smart, witty columns as Fay & Bonnie made the transition from visitors to regulars to locals themselves.
Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir
February 12th, 2003
ISBN 0618128751 (ISBN13: 9780618128754)
Born in 1940, Lillian Faderman was the only child of an uneducated and unmarried immigrant Jewish woman. Her mother, whose family perished in the Holocaust, was racked by guilt at having come to America and left them behind; she suffered recurrent psychotic episodes. Her only escape from the brutal labor of her sweatshop job was her fiercely loved daughter, Lilly, whose poignant dream throughout an impoverished childhood was to become a movie star and “rescue” her mother.
The Best Little Boy in the World Grows Up
December 7th 1999
ISBN 0345423798 (ISBN13: 9780345423795)
John Reid's The Best Little Boy in the World was hailed as a classic memoir of growing up gay in a straight world. But "John Reid" didn't write it. Years would pass before the writer could reveal his true identity as Andrew Tobias, America's bestselling financial guru, author of The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need. Now, twenty-five years later, Tobias, proud to use his real name, brings his remarkable life story up to date. Writing with his customary charm and frank humor, Tobias tells of love affairs and heartbreak, hot New York parties and tough political battles, the excitement of genuine social change and the tragedy of seeing dear friends die young. Here too are the unforgettable scenes of Tobias revealing his sexual orientation not only to his parents but to the president of the United States.
You Can't Shave in a Minimart Bathroom
October 7th, 2009
ISBN 0557075556 (ISBN13: 9780557075553)
A more light-hearted look at what happens when you transition from your birth-sex to your true gender. And, no, you can't shave in a minimart bathroom - the soap isn't slippery enough!
Bent but Not Broken
March 15th, 2019
ASIN B07MLNK871
Bent but Not Broken is an unflinchingly honest memoir about the onset of Peyronie’s disease, a painful and sexually limiting condition that is estimated to affect more than 5% of the worldwide adult male population. Don Cummings writes humorously about the emotional and collateral damage brought on by a suddenly curved penis as he struggles to maintain his sense of sex and self. He openly details the doctor visits, the excruciating treatments, and the acute anxiety over the state of his long-term relationship with a man who is supportive but often helpless in the face of nature’s whims. Discordant domestic life, a harrowing kidnapping by a handsome stranger, and reminiscences of a hyper-active sexual past are woven into the single-minded quest to minimize the effects of this deforming disorder. Brace yourself for a daring, heartfelt and beautifully twisted story of love and survival.
And Then I Danced: Traveling the Road to LGBT Equality
October 6th, 2015
ISBN 1617753998 (ISBN13: 9781617753992)
On December 11, 1973, Mark Segal disrupted a live broadcast of the CBS Evening News when he sat on the desk directly between the camera and news anchor Walter Cronkite, yelling, "Gays protest CBS prejudice!" He was wrestled to the studio floor by the stagehands on live national television, thus ending LGBT invisibility. But this one victory left many more battles to fight, and creativity was required to find a way to challenge stereotypes surrounding the LGBT community. Mark Segal's job, as he saw it, was to show the nation who gay people are: our sons, daughters, fathers, and mothers. Because of activists like Mark Segal, whose life work is dramatically detailed in this poignant and important memoir, today there are openly LGBT people working in the White House and throughout corporate America.
My Trip Down the Pink Carpet
June 3rd, 2008
ISBN 1416955550 (ISBN13: 9781416955559)
Leslie Jordan is a small man with a giant propensity for scene stealing. Best known for his bravura recurring role as Karen’s nemesis, Beverley Leslie, on Will & Grace (for which he won a Best Guest Actor in a Comedy Series Emmy in 2006), he has also made memorable appearances on Ally McBeal, Boston Public, Monk, and Murphy Brown. Raised in a conservative family in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Leslie – who describes himself as “the gayest man I know” – boarded a Greyhound bus bound for LA with $1,200 sewn into his underpants and never looked back. His pocket-sized physique and inescapable talent for high camp paved the way to a lucrative and varied career in commercials and on television. Along the way he immersed himself in writing for the stage, and his one-man testimonials have become cult off- Broadway hits. But with success came dangerous temptations: a self-proclaimed former substance abuser and sexaholic, Leslie has spent time in jail and struggled to overcome his addictions and self-loathing.
Tennessee Williams Memoirs
January 1st, 1975
ISBN 0141189290 (ISBN13: 9780141189291)
When Memoirs was first published in 1975, it created quite a bit of turbulence in the media–though long self-identified as a gay man, Williams’ candour about his love life, sexual encounters, and drug use was found shocking in and of itself, and such revelations by America’s greatest living playwright were called “a raw display of private life” by The New York Times Book Review. As it turns out, more than thirty years later, Williams’ look back at his life is not quite so scandalous as it once seemed; he recalls his childhood in Mississippi and St. Louis, his prolonged struggle as a “starving artist,” the “overnight” success of The Glass Menagerie in 1945, the death of his long-time companion Frank Merlo in 1962, and his confinement to a psychiatric ward in 1969 and subsequent recovery from alcohol and drug addiction.
Real Man Adventures
October 9th, 2012
ISBN 1938073002 (ISBN13: 9781938073007)
Real Man Adventures is Cooper’s brash, wildly inventive, and often comic exploration of the paradoxes and pleasures of masculinity. He takes us through his transition into identifying as male, and how he went on to marry his wife and become an adoring stepfather of two children. Alternately bemused and exasperated when he feels compelled to explain all this, Cooper never loses his sense of humor. "Ten Things People Assume I Understand About Women But Actually Don’t,” reads one chapter title, while another proffers: "Sometimes I Think the Whole of Modern History Can Be Explained by Testosterone.”
Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity
May 14th, 2007
ISBN 1580056229 (ISBN13: 9781580056229)
Julia Serano, a transsexual woman whose supremely intelligent writing reflects her diverse background as a lesbian transgender activist and professional biologist, shares her powerful experiences and observations—both pre- and post- transition—to reveal the ways in which fear, suspicion, and dismissiveness toward femininity shape our societal attitudes toward trans women, as well as gender and sexuality as a whole.
Sex, Mom, and God: How the Bible’s Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics--and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway
May 26th, 2011
ISBN 0306819287 (ISBN13: 9780306819285)
The unforgettable central character in Sex, Mom, and God is the author’s far-from-prudish evangelical mother, Edith, who sweetly but bizarrely provides startling juxtapositions of the religious and the sensual thoughout Schaeffer’s childhood. She was, says Frank Schaeffer, “the greatest illustration of the Divine beauty of Paradox I’ve encountered … a fundamentalist living a double life as a lover of beauty who broke all her own judgmental rules in favor of creativity.”
Charlotte Gordon, the award-winning author of Mistress Bradstreet, calls Sex, Mom, and God “a tour de force . . . Sarah Palin, ‘The Family,’ Anne Hutchinson, adultery, abortion, homophobia, Uganda, Ronald Reagan, B. B. King, Billy Graham, Hugh Hefner—it’s all here. This is the kind of book I did not want to end.”
The Hurry-Up Song: A Memoir of Losing My Brother
December 1st, 1995
ISBN 0299166244 (ISBN13: 9780299166243)
Out of love, anger, and grief Clifford Chase has crafted a moving and brilliant memoir of loss and family bonds. With startling honesty, he evokes scenes of life in a suburban American family and illuminates the strong ties that are woven between two gay brothers as they become adults. Chase documents how, in turn, the family dynamics change forever when one brother—the elder, the admired, the feared, the loved—weathers AIDS-related illnesses and ultimately dies. This is a searching, unsentimental account of how AIDS steals away loved ones and how the wounds of loss come to be healed.
All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay D.C.
June 17th, 2008
ISBN 1416542051 (ISBN13: 9781416542056)
Ultimately coming clean about his secret identity, Seymour breaks through taboos and makes his way from booty-baring stripper to Ph.D.-bearing academic, taking a detour into celebrity journalism and memorably crossing paths with Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, and Mary J. Blige along the way.
The Other Side of Paradise
March 29th, 2009
ISBN 0743292901 (ISBN13: 9780743292900)
Staceyann Chin has appeared on television and radio, including The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, and PBS, discussing issues of race and sexuality. But it is her extraordinary voice that launched her career as a performer, poet, and activist. Here, she shares her unforgettable story of triumph against all odds in this brave and fiercely candid memoir...No one knew Staceyann’s mother was pregnant until a dangerously small baby was born on the floor of her grandmother’s house in Jamaica, on Christmas Day. Staceyann’s mother did not want her, and her father was not present. No one, except her grandmother, thought Staceyann would survive.
What Becomes You
April 24th, 2007
ISBN 0803210817 (ISBN13: 9780803210813)
“Being a man, like being a woman, is something you have to learn,” Aaron Raz Link remarks. Few would know this better than the coauthor of What Becomes You, who began life as a girl named Sarah and twenty-nine years later began life anew as a gay man. Turning from female to male and from teaching scientist to theatre performer, Link documents the extraordinary medical, social, legal, and personal process involved in a complete identity change. Hilda Raz, a well- known feminist writer and teacher, observes the process as both an “astonished” parent and as a professor who has studied gender issues. All these perspectives come into play in this collaborative memoir, which travels between women’s experience and men’s lives, explores the art and science of changing sex, maps uncharted family values, and journeys through a world transformed by surgery, hormones, love, and . . . clown school.
Dispatches From Lesbian America
February 28th, 2017
ISBN 1943837643 (ISBN13: 9781943837649)
Dispatches from Lesbian America is a collection of more than forty works of short fiction and memoir from contemporary writers, some newly emerging and some well-known. Unique in recent lesbian anthologies, these thoughtful stories address themes meaningful to us in the modern world.
Flying High, Diving Deep
June 21st, 2012
ISBN13 9781921879999
Flying High, Diving Deep provides a three-decade memoir of the gay portion of a male bisexual's awakening to, nearly unfettered enjoyment of, and sometimes bittersweet reflections on the active gay lifestyle on the international scene in the latter third of the twentieth century. The author was a male model and film actor who turned to international intelligence service during the Vietnam War era, a career that started off in the stratosphere as an SR71 photo- reconnaissance jet pilot and moved on to more earth-hugging intelligence and diplomatic service in Asia and the Middle East. Although coming late in his late twenties to the gay scene, the author's sexual encounters and experience blossomed quickly in the exotic, sexually free, risk taking, and pre-AIDS environment of Bangkok, Thailand.
My Lesbian Husband: Landscapes of a Marriage
August 1st 1999
ISBN 1555972926 (ISBN13: 9781555972929)
In My Lesbian Husband, Barrie Jean Borich asks a fascinating question: do the names we give our relationships change their meanings? Each chapter entertains an aspect of this question with prose that is spirited, artful, anything but pat. Here is an author who takes neither love nor the power of language for granted, and her book is as provocative and lively as the love it evokes.
Alice in Genderland
March 31st, 2005
ISBN 0595315623 (ISBN13: 9780595315628)
Alice in Genderland is the first ever memoir by a crossdresser who is not content to live behind closed doors and who takes it much further than his straighter, more circumspect peers might ever care to go. In contrast to the life he leads today, Rick Novic suffered since his sporty, nerdy boyhood with a secret, a desire he was in no way equipped to handle, but one that eventually burst through his denial, a few months before his wedding day. Just once, he felt, while he still could, he had to know how it felt to be a woman.
Evening Crowd at Kirmser's: A Gay Life in the 1940S
August 7th, 2001
ISBN 0816636222 (ISBN13: 9780816636228)
For many, it is often difficult to imagine gay gathering places in the decades before the Stonewall riots of the 1960s, and nearly impossible to think of such communities outside the nation's largest cities. Yet such places did exist, and their histories tell amazing stories of survival and the struggle for acceptance and self-respect. When Ricardo J. Brown died in 1999, he left a compelling memoir of his youth and experiences as a young gay man in St. Paul. After being discharged from the navy for revealing his sexual orientation to a commanding officer in 1945, Brown returned to his hometown with a new self-awareness and a desire to find a group of people like himself. He discovered such a place in Kirmser's.
Confessions of a Transsexual Physician
July 16th, 2012
ISBN 1468158694 (ISBN13: 9781468158694)
This story is in part about the metamorphosis of a man becoming a woman, but the transformation is more than a simple change of physical appearance; It's one of spiritual and emotional change as well. Along the way, I learned things about trust, friendship, love, and the infinite ways of being human. The transition taught me compassion for others in a way I never dreamed possible. Sex and gender can be difficult to write about because an element of erotica, an insatiable desire that drives us as a species to reproduce, must always be addressed. For some, that lack of control can feel like a weakness that lends itself to insecurity. But I dare say, being a post-operative transsexual allows me a certain amount of freedom to discuss this subject without trepidation.
Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me
June 13th, 2017
ISBN 1501145797 (ISBN13: 9781501145797)
Riveting, rousing, and utterly real, Surpassing Certainty is a portrait of a young woman searching for her purpose and place in the world—without a road map to guide her. The journey begins a few months before her twentieth birthday. Janet Mock is adjusting to her days as a first-generation college student at the University of Hawaii and her nights as a dancer at a strip club. Finally, content in her body, she vacillates between flaunting and concealing herself as she navigates dating and disclosure, sex and intimacy, and most important, letting herself be truly seen. Under the neon lights of Club Nu, Janet meets Troy, a yeoman stationed at Pearl Harbor naval base, who becomes her first. The pleasures and perils of their union serve as a backdrop for Janet’s progression through her early twenties with all the universal growing pains—falling in and out of love, living away from home, and figuring out what she wants to do with her life.
Sissy
March 5th 2019
ISBN 073521882X (ISBN13: 9780735218826)
From Jacob's Methodist childhood and the hallowed halls of Duke University to the portrait-laden parlors of the White House, Sissy takes you on a gender odyssey you won't soon forget. Writing with the fierce honesty, wildly irreverent humor, and wrenching vulnerability that have made them a media sensation, Jacob shatters the long-held notion that people are easily sortable into "men" and "women." Sissy guarantees that you'll never think about gender--both other people's people's and your own--the same way again.
A Wild and Precious Life: A Memoir
October 8th, 2019
ISBN 1250195136 (ISBN13: 9781250195135)
Edie Windsor became internationally famous when she sued the US government, seeking federal recognition for her marriage to Thea Spyer, her partner of more than four decades. The Supreme Court ruled in Edie's favor, a landmark victory that set the stage for full marriage equality in the US. Beloved by the LGBTQ community, Edie embraced her new role as an icon; she had already been living an extraordinary and groundbreaking life for decades.
Dress Codes: Of Three Girlhoods—My Mother's, My Father's, and Mine
November 21st, 2002
ISBN 0312422202 (ISBN13: 9780312422202)
Throughout her childhood in suburban Ohio, Noelle struggled to gain love and affection from her distant father. In compensating for her father's brusqueness, Noelle idolized her nurturing tomboy mother and her conservative grandma who tried to turn her into "a little lady." At age fourteen, Noelle's mom told her the family secret: "Dad likes to wear women's clothes." As Noelle copes with a turbulent adolescence, her father begins to metamorphose into the loving parent she had always longed for—only now outfitted in pedal pushers and pink lipstick.
Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey between Genders
March 15th, 2012
ISBN 0299287300 (ISBN13: 9780299287306)
After years of teaching literature at Yeshiva University, Professor Jay Ladin made headlines around the world by returning to the Orthodox Jewish campus as a woman: Joy Ladin. In Through the Door of Life, Joy Ladin takes readers inside her transition as she changed genders and, in the process, created a new self. With unsparing honesty and surprising humor, Ladin wrestles with both the practical problems of gender transition and the larger moral, spiritual, and philosophical questions that arise. Ladin recounts her struggle to reconcile the pain of her experience living as the “wrong” gender with the pain of her children in losing the father they love. We eavesdrop on her lifelong conversations with the God whom she sees both as the source of her agony and as her hope for transcending it.
Nina Here nor There: My Journey Beyond Gender
May 10th, 2011
ISBN 0807000922 (ISBN13: 9780807000922)
Ambitious, sporty, feminine “capital-L lesbians” had been Nina Krieger’s type, for friends that is. She hadn’t dated in seven years, a period of non-stop traveling—searching for what, or avoiding what, she didn’t know. When she lands in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood, her roommates introduce her to a whole new world, full of people who identify as queer, who modify their bodies and blur the line between woman and man, who defy everything Nina thought she knew about gender and identity. Despite herself, Nina is drawn to the people she once considered freaks, and before long, she is forging a path that is neither man nor woman, here nor there. This candid and humorous memoir of gender awakening brings readers into the world of the next generation of transgender warriors and tells a classic tale of first love and self-discovery.
That’s Mr. Faggot to You: Further Trials from My Queer Life
June 15th, 1999
ISBN 1555834965 (ISBN13: 9781555834968)
In That’s Mr. Faggot to You, Michael Thomas Ford continues his exploration of contemporary gay life. He does not shy away from personal revelations–he recalls his own traumatic high school experiences but recognizes that, years later, he’s happier and, more importantly, a great deal more attractive than his classmates–but also offers insight into more political issues such as religion and politics and Wynonna Judd. Never abandoning his caustic wit, Ford is honest to a fault and does not suffer fools or dog-haters lightly.
When We Were Outlaws: A Memoir of Love and Revolution
October 18th, 2011
ISBN 1935226517 (ISBN13: 9781935226512)
Brash and ambitious, activist Jeanne Córdova is living with one woman and falling in love with another, but her passionate beliefs tell her that her first duty is "to the revolution” to change the world and end discrimination against gays and lesbians. Trying to compartmentalize her sexual life, she becomes an investigative reporter for the famous, underground L.A. Free Press and finds herself involved with covering the Weather Underground and Angela Davis, exposing neo-Nazi bomber Captain Joe Tomassi, and befriending Emily Harris of the Symbionese Liberation Army. At the same time, she is creating what will be the center of her revolutionary lesbian world: her own newsmagazine, The Lesbian Tide, destined to become the voice of the national lesbian feminist movement.
Being
January 9th, 2014
ISBN13 9781892061720
Zach Ellis’s debut, Being, is a remarkable, lyrical memoir that works to put into words what it is to be transgender. It’s a book about relationships, about growing up, about the body and mind, about desire, about parenting, about how we adjust to huge changes, and about whom we know ourselves to be. It’s a funny book, an honest book, and a book that cuts deep into you.
Queerspawn in Love: A Memoir
May 3rd, 2016
ISBN 1631520202 (ISBN13: 9781631520204)
Despite growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area as the daughter of four lesbians, Kellen Kaiser envisioned her life working out, fairy tale–like, with a Prince Charming. When her possible prince did arrive, however, it was not without complications. Home on leave from the Israeli army, the man Kaiser picks doesn’t seem like a sure bet. Starting with some casual sex gone awry, they face a number of obstacles, not the least of which are war in the Middle East, long- distance romance, and differing views on sexuality and their approaching adulthood. But they find themselves most challenged by a more mundane concern: the upkeep of a relationship between two people. Funny and keenly observed, Queerspawn in Love is a story about identity, family, and figuring out, through loving someone else and failing, how to love yourself.
Don't Get Me Started
May 12th, 1998
ISBN 0345430166 (ISBN13: 9780345430168)
Let's get one thing straight. I'm not. I'm out and proud. When I'm out and it's raining, I carry an umbrella. I used to be in, but I hate the smell of mothballs. My closet was huge, complete with a foyer, turnstile, a few dead bolts, and a burglar alarm that had to be deactivated before I could even touch the door handle. And then there was the storm door. It wasn't until I had lived and slept with a woman for a year that it occurred to me to ask, "Do you think we're lesbians?" By the way, never come out to your father in a moving vehicle.
Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels
August 16th, 2011
ISBN 1558617477 (ISBN13: 9781558617476)
Bond recalls in vivid detail how it looked and felt to first discover Mom's lipstick (Iced Watermelon by Revlon), and how dreary it could be for a trans/queer kid to join the Cub Scouts. Always haunted by the knowledge of being "different," Bond began to create intimate friendships with girls, and to feel increasingly at risk with boys. But when the bully next door wanted to meet secretly, Bond couldn't resist. Their trysts went on for years, making Bond acutely aware of how sexual power and vulnerability can be experienced at the same time. With inimitable style, Bond raises issues about LBGTQ adolescence, parenting trans/queer children, and bullying, while being utterly entertaining.
She Looks Just Like You: A Memoir of (Nonbiological Lesbian) Motherhood
May 1st, 2010
ISBN 0807004693 (ISBN13: 9780807004692)
As a midwestern, station wagon-driving, stay-at-home mom and as a nonbiological lesbian mother Miller both defines and defies the norm. Like new parents everywhere, she wrestled with the anxieties and challenges of first-time parenthood-including neurotic convictions that her child was chronically ill and the muddled confusion of sleeplessness. But unlike most mothers, she experienced pregnancy and birth only vicariously. Unlike biological parents, she had to stand before a judge to adopt her own daughter. And unlike most straight parents, she wondered how to respond when strangers gushed, “I bet Daddy’s proud,” or “She has your eyes.” Miller began searching for a role that would fit her experience, somewhere in the unexplored zone between mother and father, gay and straight. Sometimes she felt like a dad in drag, other times like a lesbian June Cleaver. Through it all, she and her partner became something new even as the presence of a baby rattled the bones of their eighteen-year relationship.
The Road Home
May 20th, 2010
ISBN 0758218540 (ISBN13: 9780758218544)
When a car accident leaves photographer Burke Crenshaw in need of temporary full-time care, he finds himself back in the one place no forty-year-old chooses to be--his childhood bedroom. There, in the Vermont home where he grew up, Burke begins the long process of recuperation, and watches as his widowed father finds happiness in a new relationship that's a constant reminder of everything Burke wants and lacks.
Trans Mission: My Quest to a Beard
November 2nd, 2017
ISBN 1526360683 (ISBN13: 9781526360687)
Being a teenager is difficult enough but having to go through puberty whilst realizing you're in the wrong body means dealing with a whole new set of problems: bullying, self-doubt and in some cases facing a physical and medical transition. Alex is an ordinary teenager: he likes pugs, donuts, retro video games and he sleeps with his socks on. He's also transgender and was born female. He's been living as a male for the past few years and he has recently started his physical transition. Throughout this book, Alex will share what it means to be in his shoes, as well as his personal advice to other trans teens. Above all, he will show you that every step in his transition is another step towards happiness. This is an important and positive book, a heart-warming coming-of-age memoir with a broad appeal.
The Argonauts
May 5th 2015
ISBN 1555977073 (ISBN13: 9781555977078)
Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of "autotheory" offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. At its center is a romance: the story of the author's relationship with the artist Harry Dodge. This story, which includes Nelson's account of falling in love with Dodge, who is fluidly gendered, as well as her journey to and through a pregnancy, offers a firsthand account of the complexities and joys of (queer) family-making.
Frankly Kellie: Becoming a Woman in a Man’s World
June 25th, 2015
ASIN B00YCCQLX2
Exploring the highs and lows of an esteemed career in professional boxing, Frank's autobiography is truly enthralling and packed with wonderful insight and anecdotes about himself and the who's who of the boxing fraternity. But this is a story with another dimension - an identity kept secret for decades. With honesty and integrity, this is the story of how Frank Maloney overcame his inner turmoil to stop living as Frank and become Kellie. Insightful and astute, Kellie talks openly about the years of anguish and torment, recounting extracts from her diary and explaining in unflinching detail the emotional rollercoaster she endured over the years, from childhood through to telling loved ones the truth.
You're Doing It Wrong: A Mixtape Memoir
May 14th, 2019
ISBN13 9781795616669
From birth, Josh Gunderson was doing everything wrong. From a self-proclaimed tumor baby to questionable fashion choices, it was clear that he was going about life in all the wrong ways. You’d think he’d have gotten better at it as he got older, but you would be incorrect. It would turn out that creating his own path was the best thing for him to do, though not always the easiest. Josh details his journey from small-town California to globe-trotting professional speaker and everything in between offering up the lessons he has learned from a life gone wrong. In the brutally honest and painfully humorous You’re Doing It Wrong, Josh offers up the good, the bad, and the downright dirty of doing things his own way. From family and friends, mental health, sexual orientation to life after tragedy, You're Doing It Wrong is a fun, poignant, no-holds-barred look at a the little life lessons that no one really wants to talk about.
She’s Not the Man I Married: My Life with a Transgender Husband
January 25th, 2007
ISBN 1580051936 (ISBN13: 9781580051934)
Helen Boyd’s husband, who had long been open about being a cross-dresser, was considering living as a woman full time. Suddenly, Boyd was confronted with the reality of what it would mean if her husband were actually to become a woman — socially, legally, and medically. Would Boyd love and desire her partner the same way? Boyd’s first book, My Husband Betty, explored the relationships of cross-dressing men and their partners. Now, She’s Not the Man I Married is both a sequel and a more expansive examination of gender in relationships. It’s for couples who are homosexual or heterosexual, and for readers who fall anywhere along the gender continuum.
The New Girl: A Trans Girl Tells It Like It Is
April 6th, 2017
ISBN 1472242580 (ISBN13: 9781472242587)
In 2012, Ryan chose Rhyannon. At the age of thirty she began her transition, taking the first steps on the long road to her true self. Rhyannon holds nothing back in THE NEW GIRL, a heartbreakingly honest telling of her life. Through her catastrophic lows and incredible highs, she paints a glorious technicolor picture of what it's like to be transgender. From cabaret drag acts, brushes with celebrity and Parisian clown school, to struggles with addiction and crippling depression, Rhyannon's story is like nothing you've read before.
Squirrel Cage
August 3rd, 2006
ISBN 146810621X (ISBN13: 9781468106213)
What happens when you hold a secret your whole life that can never be shared? What happens when your faith abandons you to pray your problem away? What happens when you destroy a complete generation of your family? This is the story of David, born into the Mormon faith who faces the insurmountable to become Cindi. Her life crumbles before her as she is pushed into an untenable position. Her family is destroyed as well as her career. She manages to pull herself through these agonizing events to rebuild her life and reconnect with her family. "In this autobiography, at times whimsical and at times serious, Cindi continues to hold strong to her principles in the face of so much rejection from those around her: family, faith, friends. I believe this story can be a source of inspiration for others facing similar difficulties, by showing that acceptance from others must start with self-acceptance." .. Andrea James
Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness and Becoming a Man
September 9th, 2014
ISBN 0872866246 (ISBN13: 9780872866249)
In Man Alive, McBee asks, “What does it really mean to be a man?” by focusing on two of the most impactful men in his life – the father who abused him as a child, and a mugger who threatened his life and then released him in an odd moment of mercy. Standing at the brink of the life-changing decision to transition from female to male, McBee seeks to understand these fallen icons of manhood as he cobbles together his own identity. Man Alive engages an extraordinary personal story to tell a universal one – how we all struggle to create ourselves, and how this struggle often requires risks. Far from a titillating, transgender tell-all, Man Alive grapples with questions of legacy and forgiveness, love and violence, agency and invisibility. Written with the grace of a poet and the intensity of a thriller, McBee’s story will haunt and inspire.
Sex Changes: A Memoir of Marriage, Gender, and Moving On
November 13th, 2012
ISBN 0312649509 (ISBN13: 9780312649500)
Part memoir, part voyeur's look into a marriage, Sex Changes is a journey through the end of a marriage and out the other side. We see a woman, desperate to save her family and shelter her children, discover a well of strength and resilience she never knew she had. We learn what to tell the neighbors when your husband starts wearing heels with his shirts and ties. We see a woman open herself to a group of friends who travel with her through her darkest times, provide light and levity throughout—and who offer the opportunity to learn how to give as well as receive the love and support of true friendship. When she lost her husband to skirts and hormones, life made Chris a better woman.
Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More
February 4th, 2014
ISBN 1476709122 (ISBN13: 9781476709123)
In 2011, Marie Claire magazine published a profile of Janet Mock in which she stepped forward for the first time as a trans woman. Those twenty-three hundred words were life-altering for the People.com editor, turning her into an influential and outspoken public figure and a desperately needed voice for an often-voiceless community. In these pages, she offers a bold and inspiring perspective on being young, multicultural, economically challenged, and transgender in America. Welcomed into the world as her parents’ firstborn son, Mock decided early on that she would be her own person—no matter what. She struggled as the smart, determined child in a deeply loving yet ill-equipped family that lacked the money, education, and resources necessary to help her thrive.
Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir
June 1st, 1998
ISBN 0156005816 (ISBN13: 9780156005814)
In 1974, Paul Monette met Roger Horwitz, the man with whom he would share more than a decade of his life. In 1986, Roger died of complications from AIDS. Borrowed Time traces this love story from start to tragic finish. At a time when the medical community was just beginning to understand this mysterious and virulent disease, Monette and others like him were coming to terms with unfathomable loss. This personal account of the early days of the AIDS crisis tells the story of love in the face of death.
Where's My Wand? One Boy's Magical Triumph over Alienation and Shag Carpeting
May 27th, 2010
ISBN 0399156550 (ISBN13: 9780399156557)
From the age of eight through early adolescence, Poole sought refuge from his obsessive-compulsive mother, sadistic teachers, and sneering schoolyard thugs in the Scotchgarded basement of his family's suburban St. Louis tract house. There, emulating his favorite TV character, Endora from Bewitched, he wrapped himself in a makeshift caftan and cast magical spells in an effort to maintain control over the rapidly shifting ground beneath his feet. But when a series of tragic events tested Eric's longstanding belief that magic can vanquish evil, he began to question the efficacy of his incantations, embarking on a spiritual journey that led him to discover the magic that comes only from within.
Waiting in the Wings: Portrait of a Queer Motherhood
September 1st, 1997
ISBN 1563410923 (ISBN13: 9781563410925)
Cherrie Moraga, the celebrated Chicana lesbian writer, has crafted a jewel of a book in Waiting In The Wings: Portrait of a Queer Motherhood. This is the story of "one small human being's struggle for survival", the author's two-and-one-half pound premature baby boy. While the specifics belong to Moraga and her loved ones -- her large close-knit biological clan; her long-term partner; the child's father -- the tale is told in common with every woman who has experienced the wonder and terror of pregnancy, the trauma of a child's near-death. What is uncommon is that the mother is a lesbian, a writer, a Chicana -- all in the same breath of her storytelling.
Reflections of a Rock Lobster: A Story about Growing Up Gay
January 1, 1981
ISBN 1555836070 (ISBN13: 9781555836078)
Fricke made national news when he sued his school for the right to take a male date to the prom. Here is his story of growing up gay in America.
Trans: A Memoir
September 22nd, 2015
ISBN 1784781657 (ISBN13: 9781784781651)
In July 2012, aged thirty, Juliet Jacques underwent sex reassignment surgery—a process she chronicled with unflinching honesty in a serialised national newspaper column. Trans tells of her life to the present moment: a story of growing up, of defining yourself, and of the rapidly changing world of gender politics. Fresh from university, eager to escape a dead-end job, she launches a career as a writer in a publishing culture dominated by London cliques and still figuring out the impact of the Internet. She navigates the treacherous waters of a world where, even in the liberal and feminist media, transgender identities go unacknowledged, misunderstood or worse. Yet through art, film, music, politics and football, Jacques starts to become the person she had only imagined and begins the process of transition.
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal
October 25th, 2011
ISBN 0224093452 (ISBN13: 9780224093453)
In 1985 Jeanette Winterson's first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, was published. It tells the story of a young girl adopted by Pentecostal parents. The girl is supposed to grow up and be a missionary. Instead she falls in love with a woman. Disaster. Written when Jeanette was only twenty-five, her novel went on to win the Whitbread First Novel award, become an international bestseller and inspire an award-winning BBC television adaptation. Oranges was semi- autobiographical. Mrs Winterson, a thwarted giantess, loomed over that novel and its author's life. When Jeanette finally left her home, at sixteen, because she was in love with a woman, Mrs Winterson asked her: why be happy when you could be normal?
Sweet Tooth: A Memoir
March 11th, 2014
ISBN 1477818073 (ISBN13: 9781477818077)
What’s a sweets-loving young boy growing up gay in North Carolina in the eighties supposed to think when he’s diagnosed with type 1 diabetes? That God is punishing him, naturally. This was, after all, when gay-hating Jesse Helms was his senator, AIDS was still the boogeyman, and no one was saying, “It gets better.” And if stealing a copy of a gay porno magazine from the newsagent was a sin, then surely what the men inside were doing to one another was much worse.
Smiling in Slow Motion
June 27th, 2000
ISBN 0712680047 (ISBN13: 9780712680042)
Derek Jarman’s Smiling in Slow Motion concludes the journey started in Modern Nature; these previously unpublished journals stretch from May 1991 until two weeks before his death in February 1994. Part diary, part observation, part memoir, Jarman writes with his familiar honesty, wry humor and acuity. Friends, collaborators and enemies are catalogued as he races through his last year painting, film-making, gardening, and annoying his targets through his involvement in radical politics.
Memoirs written by LGBT writers in the United States
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At Your Own Risk
January 1st, 1992
ISBN 0879515384 (ISBN13: 9780879515386)
British filmmaker, author, AIDS activist, and all-around cultural upstart, Jarman has written a moving, visually evocative memoir of his life and times. One of the first filmmakers to project an unabashed gay sensibility onto screen, Jarman creates here a montage of autobiography, interviews, and social history that shifts back and forth through time, resulting in an intriguing portrait of his personal and artistic growth from the 1940s to the present. Jarman is able to distill the essence of an era with just a few well-chosen anecdotes. He is outraged at what he sees as the complicit passivity of the British government's response to the AIDS epidemic; throughout, he drops the uncaring words of government officials like deadly bombs.
The Other Mother: A Lesbian's Fight for Her Daughter
July 20th, 1999
ISBN 0299164942 (ISBN13: 9780299164942)
On a spring day in 1993, Nancy Abrams helped her daughter dress for day care, packed her lunch, and said good-bye. Next she drove to court, where she learned that in the eyes of the law she was nothing more than “a biological stranger” to the child she helped bring into the world and raise. That was the last time she would see her daughter or hear her voice for five years. In unprecedented depth, Abrams’s compelling narrative examines the social, legal, and political implications of gay and lesbian parenting. Her haunting memoir asks the question, “What makes a mother?” It is a question that biological parents, co-parents, adoptive parents, stepparents, and divorced parents must each answer in their own way.
Queerly Beloved: A Love Story Across Genders
May 13th, 2014
ISBN 1626390622 (ISBN13: 9781626390621)
Imagine if, after fifteen years as a lesbian couple, your partner turned to you and said, “I think I’m really a man.” What would you do? How would you respond? For Diane and Jacob (née Suzy) Anderson-Minshall this isn’t a hypothetical question. It’s what really happened. Eight years later, the couple not only remains together, they still identify as queer, still work in LGBT media, and remain part of the LGBT community. How did their relationship survive a gender transition? The authors explore this question and delve into their relationship to reveal the trials and tribulations they have faced along the way. In doing so, they paint a portrait of love, not only to each other, but to the San Francisco Bay Area, LGBT publishing, and the queer community.
My Husband Betty: Love, Sex, and Life with a Crossdresser
December 23rd, 2003
ISBN 1560255153 (ISBN13: 9781560255154)
Author Helen Boyd is a happily married woman whose husband enjoys sharing her wardrobe - and she has written the first book on transgendered men to focus on their relationships. Traditionally known as cross-dressers, transvestites, or drag queens, men like Helen's husband are a diverse lot who don't always conform to stereotype. Helen addresses every imaginable question concerning the probable and improbable reasons for behavior that still baffle not only "mental health professionals" but the practitioners themselves; the taxonomy of the transgendered and the distinct but overlapping societies of each group; coming out; bisexuality, and homophobia.
Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter: Growing Up with a Gay Dad
May 7th, 2013
ISBN 034580757X (ISBN13: 9780345807571)
A moving memoir about growing up with a gay father in the 1980s, and a tribute to the power of truth, humor, acceptance and familial love. Alison Wearing led a largely carefree childhood until she learned, at the age of 12, that her family was a little more complex than she had realized. Sure, her father had always been unusual compared to the other dads in the neighborhood he loved to bake croissants, wear silk pajamas around the house, and skip down the street singing songs from Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. But when he came out of the closet in the 1970s, when homosexuality was still a cardinal taboo, it was a shock to everyone in the quiet community of Peterborough, Ontario, especially to his wife and three children.
Bailey's Beads
August 9th, 1996
ISBN 0571198910 (ISBN13: 9780571198917)
As Bryn Redding lies in a coma following a car accident, her mother and her lover come together to care for her. Amidst the uncertainty and confusion over Bryn's chances for recovery, fragments of her life are revealed to the reader through the stories and memories of her mother Vera and the very different perceptions of her lover, Djuna Rifkin.
The Making of a Man: Notes on Transsexuality
February 1st, 2013
ISBN 1780234449 (ISBN13: 9781780234441)
In the autumn of 2012, Maxim Februari—known until then as writer and philosopher Marjolijn Februari—announced his intention to live as a man. The news was greeted with a diversity of reactions, from curiosity to unease. These responses made it absolutely clear to Februari that most of us don’t know how to think about transsexuality. The Making of a Man explores this lacuna through a deeply personal meditation on a profoundly universal aspect of our identities.
My Lives
September 5th, 2005
ISBN 0066213975 (ISBN13: 9780066213972)
No one has been more frank, lucid, rueful and entertaining about growing up gay in Middle America than Edmund White. Best known for his autobiographical novels, starting with A Boy’s Own Story, White here takes fiction out of his story and delivers the facts of his life in all their shocking and absorbing verity. From an adolescence in the 1950s, an era that tried to “cure his homosexuality” but found him “unsalvageable,” he emerged into a 1960s society that redesignated his orientation as “acceptable (nearly).” He describes a life touched by psychotherapy in every decade, starting with his flamboyant and demanding therapist mother, who considered him her own personal test case — and personal escort to cocktail lounges after her divorce. His father thought that even wearing a wristwatch was effeminate, though custodial visits to Dad in Cincinnati inadvertently initiated White into the culture of “hustlers and johns” that changed his life.
My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home
November 10th, 2000
ISBN 0822326191 (ISBN13: 9780822326199)
In looking at themes such as the relationship between activism and desire or how sexuality can be intimately tied to one’s class identity, Hollibaugh fiercely and fearlessly analyzes her own political development as a response to her unique personal history. She explores the concept of labeling and the associated issues of categories such as butch or femme, transgender, bisexual, top or bottom, drag queen, b-girl, or drag king. The volume includes conversations with other writers, such as Deirdre English, Gayle Rubin, Jewelle Gomez, and Cherríe Moraga. From the groundbreaking article “What We’re Rollin’ Around in Bed With” to the radical “Sex Work Notes: Some Tensions of a Former Whore and a Practicing Feminist,” Hollibaugh charges ahead to describe her reality, never flinching from the truth.
What the Other Half Don't Know: My Life as a Transvestite Escort
May 13th, 2010
ISBN 1449093892 (ISBN13: 9781449093891)
Have you ever wondered what sort of person visits a transvestite escort or what it is they get up to? Well this book provides an insight into some of Susie's encounters with her paying customers, people from all all walks of life and backgrounds each with their own games they like to play. In amongst this Susie's other half Peter tells his life story how Susie came to be and his struggles in life. Dealing with growing up as a TV in the fifties and sixties the, loss of the father he idolized and leaving home at fifteen to make his way in the world. At times sad but filled with funny moments as Peter and Susie open their emotions in this exposure of their lives. If you enjoy roller coaster rides then this book has that too as Peter (and Susie) experience highs and lows along the way.
Right Side Out: In-Tune Within, to Be in Harmony with the World
October 1st, 2006
ISBN 0595395236 (ISBN13: 9780595395231)
“I didn’t have the fortitude or the energy to try to keep that going anymore. I just wanted to find myself and be myself.” Far more than a transsexual memoir, “Right Side Out: In-tune Within, To Be In Harmony With The World” is a plunge into the core of what makes a person who they are-a journey into the brightest and darkest recesses of humanity and back through author Annah Moore’s unique and deeply passionate struggle for survival in a quest to find her true self. Through candid vignettes and vivid recollections, Moore shares with us some of the all-time lows and highs on her journey through life. Not only does Moore give you entertaining and thought-provoking glimpses into her experiences, she takes you one step further and explains exactly how each of these incredible events helped transform not only her outer self, but her entire being.
All-American Boy: A Memoir
March 1st, 1995
ISBN 0025953621 (ISBN13: 9780025953628)
In his 1993 testimony during congressional hearings on the proposal to rescind the ban on gays in the military, Colonel Fred Peck revealed that his own son, Scott, is gay. This compelling, heartfelt memoir offers Scott's account of coming to grips with his homosexuality.
Family Values: Two Moms and Their Son
May 4th, 1993
ISBN 0679421882 (ISBN13: 9780679421887)
A beautifully written memoir of the author's fight to legally co-parent her lesbian lover's child--an inspiring story of love, liberation, and family values. Set against the background of the San Francisco lesbian-gay civil rights struggle, Burke's uplifting portrait of her nontraditional family will deeply touch readers.
Naked
March 1st, 1997
isbn: 0316779490
isbn13: 9780316779494
Welcome to the hilarious, strange, elegiac, outrageous world of David Sedaris. In Naked, Sedaris turns the mania for memoir on its proverbial ear, mining the exceedingly rich terrain of his life, his family, and his unique worldview—a sensibility at once take-no-prisoners sharp and deeply charitable. A tart-tongued mother does dead-on imitations of her young son’s nervous tics, to the great amusement of his teachers; a stint of Kerouackian wandering is undertaken (of course!) with a quadriplegic companion; a family gathers for a wedding in the face of imminent death. Through it all is Sedaris’s unmistakable voice, without doubt one of the freshest in American writing.
Seriously… I’m Kidding
October 4th, 2011
ISBN 0446585025 (ISBN13: 9780446585026)
“Sometimes the greatest things are the most embarrassing.” Ellen Degeneres’ winning, upbeat candor has made her show one of the most popular, resilient and honored daytime shows on the air. (To date, it has won no fewer than 31 Emmys.) Seriously… I’m Kidding, Degeneres’ first book in eight years, brings us up to date about the life of a kindhearted woman who bowed out of American Idol because she didn’t want to be mean. Lively; hilarious; often sweetly poignant.
Welcome to My World
January 11th, 2011
ISBN 1451610289 (ISBN13: 9781451610284)
In a memoir as candid and unconventional as Johnny Weir himself, the three-time U.S. National Champion figure skater who electrified the 2010 Winter Olympics shares his glamorous, gritty, heartbreaking, hopeful, and just plain fabulous life story. How does a boy from rural Pennsylvania become an all-American original style icon on the ice and off, adored by fans around the world, and hailed as “The Lady Gaga of skating” (Salon.com)? The answers are here, in his invigorating and thoroughly entertaining chronicle of the emergence of his natural talents.
Bad Dyke: Salacious Stories from a Queer Life
December 2nd, 2014
ISBN 0983830975 (ISBN13: 9780983830979)
Furry-style fox hunts, breaking into waterparks, and masturbating in trees. It’s all just part of the queer life of author Allison Moon. This collection of 18 sexy, touching memoirs celebrates the humor and tenderness of falling in and out of love and in and out of bed. "Allison Moon is a queer woman with a bisexual boyfriend or a 'bad dyke'--an identity she’s settled on after stints as a 'greedy bisexual' and a garden-variety lesbian.
The Testosterone Files: My Hormonal and Social Transformation from Female to Male
April 13th, 2006
ISBN 1580051731 (ISBN13: 9781580051736)
Max Wolf Valerio crafts a raw, gripping, and poetic account of life before, during, and after injecting testosterone. Valerio's detailed observations about a lesbian transitioning from female to a heterosexual male highlights the physical and emotional differences between women and men, and alternately challenges and confirms readers' assumptions about gender.
Confessions of the Other Mother: Nonbiological Lesbian Moms Tell All!
May 1st, 2006
ISBN 0807079634 (ISBN13: 9780807079638)
After author Harlyn Aizley gave birth to her daughter, she watched in unanticipated horror as her partner scooped up the baby and said, "I'm your new mommy!" While they both had worked to find the perfect sperm donor, Aizley had spent nine months carrying the baby and hours in labor, so how could her partner claim to be their child's mommy? Many diapers later, Aizley began to appreciate the complexity of her partner's new role as the other mother. Together, they searched for stories about families like their own, in which a woman has chosen to forgo her own birth experience so that she might support her partner in hers. They found very few. Now, in Confessions of the Other Mother, Aizley has put together an exciting collection of personal stories by women like her partner who are creating new parenting roles, redefining motherhood, and reshaping our view of two-parent families.
Not Your Average American Girl
September 1st, 2011
ISBN 0963740628 (ISBN13: 9780963740625)
Christine Beatty’s memoir chronicles her odyssey from collegiate husband to transsexual prostitute, recovery from addiction, and the achievement of her most improbable dreams. Set mostly in the purgatory of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, her story guides readers on an intimate journey through worlds of hippies, strippers, soldiers, urban transsexuals, prostitutes, addicts, jail, skid row and finally recovery. Ascending against all odds in her career, she is also a pioneering rock musician, a controversial journalist and a survivor of the worst pandemic of the 1980s. Told with the unflinching honesty of someone with nothing left to hide, the humor of a survivor who discovers silver linings in the darkest clouds, and the spirit of a rebel who refuses to be broken, Beatty’s is a tale of sublime pathos and the triumph of the human spirit. She proves you can’t keep a good woman down.
Not My Father's Son
October 1st, 2014
ISBN 0062225073 (ISBN13: 9780062225078)
Dark, painful memories can be put away to be forgotten. Until one day they all flood back in horrible detail. When television producers approached Alan Cumming to appear on a popular celebrity genealogy show, he hoped to solve the mystery of his maternal grandfather's disappearance that had long cast a shadow over his family. But this was not the only mystery laid before Alan. Alan grew up in the grip of a man who held his family hostage, someone who meted out violence with a frightening ease, who waged a silent war with himself that sometimes spilled over onto everyone around him. That man was Alex Cumming, Alan's father, whom Alan had not seen or spoken to for more than a decade when he reconnected just before filming for Who Do You Think You Are? began. He had a secret he had to share, one that would shock his son to his very core and set into motion a journey that would change Alan's life forever.
Both Sides Now: One Man's Journey Through Womanhood
March 16th, 2006
ISBN 1585424722 (ISBN13: 9781585424726)
The courageous and heart-wrenching story of a man's decision to risk it all to be true to himself. Both Sides Now is a vivid and compelling account of how one man's search for wholeness led him through multiple, complex, and life- threatening surgeries that transformed him not only physically but emotionally and spiritually as well. Born with the body of a female, Dhillon Khosla never felt fully at ease in his own skin. He knew very early on that his true identity was male but spent nearly twenty years repressing this knowledge and trying to embrace his female form. Shortly after turning twenty-eight, he came across an article about men who were born with female bodies and had undergone surgeries to reclaim their male identity. As soon as he began reading their stories, Dhillon felt flashes of recognition stirring within and-for the first time-hope.
Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies
September 12th, 2017
ISBN 1501134965 (ISBN13: 9781501134968)
In this evocative and gorgeously wrought memoir reminiscent of Rob Sheffield’s Love Is a Mixtape and George Hodgman’s Bettyville, Michael Ausiello—a respected TV columnist and co-founder of TVLine.com—remembers his late husband, and the lessons, love, and laughter that they shared throughout their fourteen years together. For the past decade, TV fans of all stripes have counted upon Michael Ausiello’s insider knowledge to get the scoop on their favorite shows and stars. From his time at Soaps in Depth and Entertainment Tonight to his influential stints at TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly to his current role as co-founder of the wildly popular website TVLine.com, Michael has established himself as the go-to expert when it comes to our most popular form of entertainment.
Memoirs
Oscar of Between: A Memoir of Identity and Ideas
March 1st, 2016
ISBN 198791516X (ISBN13: 9781987915167)
In 2007, at the age of sixty, Betsy Warland finds herself single and without a sense of family. On an impulse, she decides to travel to London to celebrate her birthday, where she experiences an odd compulsion to see an exhibit on the invention of military camouflage. Within the first five minutes of her visit, her lifelong feeling of being aberrant reveals its source: she had never learned the art of camouflage.
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas Of Depression
June 12th, 2001
ISBN 068485466X (ISBN13: 9780684854663)
Sometimes, the legacy of depression includes a wisdom beyond one's years, a depth of passion unexperienced by those who haven't traveled to hell and back. Off the charts in its enlightening, comprehensive analysis of this pervasive yet misunderstood condition, The Noonday Demon forges a long, brambly path through the subject of depression--exposing all the discordant views and "answers" offered by science, philosophy, law, psychology, literature, art, and history. The result is a sprawling and thoroughly engrossing study, brilliantly synthesized by author Andrew Solomon. Deceptively simple chapter titles (including "Breakdowns," "Treatments," "Addiction," "Suicide") each sit modestly atop a virtual avalanche of Solomon's intellect. This is not a book to be skimmed. But Solomon commands the language--and his topic--with such grace and empathy that the constant flow of references, poems, and quotations in his paragraphs arrive like welcome dinner guests.
Sexual Metamorphosis: An Anthology of Transsexual Memoirs
April 12th, 2005
ISBN 1400030145 (ISBN13: 9781400030149)
But who could describe my fright when, on the next morning, I awoke and found myself feeling as if completely changed into a woman. — Case 129, Autobiography, from Psychopathia Sexualis, a Medico-Forensic Study by Richard Von Krafft-Ebing. At the time the passage above was written, people who felt trapped in the wrong gender automatically became case-studies. Today they become the men and women they always felt they were. Transsexuals test our notions of what it is to be male or female and, more provocatively, what it means to be one self as opposed to another. “Their stories,” says Jonathan Ames, “hold the appeal of an adventurer’s tale.”
Confessions of a Transsexual Porn Star
February 12th, 2007
ISBN 1425996825 (ISBN13: 9781425996826)
This is the true story of transsexual adult film superstar Meghan Chavalier as told by Meghan herself. Meghan will take you through her years as a stage performer, a dancer, and ultimately how she became the most famous transsexual adult film star in the world. It hasn't all been all fame and fortune, in fact, Meghan will walk you through the tumultuous steps in her life, growing up with an alcoholic abusive father, drug abuse, prostitution, the adult film industry, the failed relationships, the love she finally found that changed her life and a lifelong struggle with Bipolar Disorder and Manic Depression.
Cures: A Gay Man's Odyssey
April 1st, 1991
ISBN 0525249559 (ISBN13: 9780525249559)
Martin Duberman successfully recreates his painful and solitary but ultimately triumphant struggle to come to terms with his homosexuality. In Cures; A Gay Man's Odyssey, he tells of the anguish of his divided life: a distinguished college professor, a prize-winning historian; and a playwright; by night a lonely and tormented man cruising gay bars for the companionship he truly desired.
America's Boy: A Memoir
April 6th, 2006
ISBN 0525949348 (ISBN13: 9780525949343)
Wade didn’t quite fit in. While schoolmates had crewcuts and wore Wrangler jeans, Wade styled his hair in imitation of Robbie Benson circa Ice Castles and shopped in the Sears husky section. Wade’s father insisted on calling everyone “honey”—even male gas station attendants. His mother punctuated her conversations with “WHAT?!” and constantly answered herself as though she was being cross-examined. He goes to school with a pack of kids called goat ropers who make the boys from Deliverance look like honor students. And he both loved and hated his perfect older brother. While other families traveled to Florida and Hawaii for vacation, Wade’s family packed their clothes in garbage bags and drove to their log cabin on Sugar Creek in the Missouri Ozarks. And it is here that Wade found refuge from his everyday struggle to fit in—until a sudden, terrible accident on the Fourth of July took his brother’s life and changed everything.
The Clancys of Queens: A Memoir
October 11th 2016
ISBN 1101903112 (ISBN13: 9781101903117)
Fifth-generation New Yorker, third-generation bartender, and first-time author Tara Clancy was raised in three wildly divergent homes: a converted boat shed in working class Queens, a geriatric commune of feisty, Brooklyn-born Italians, and a sprawling Hamptons estate she visited every other weekend. This childhood triptych comes to life in The Clancys of Queens, an electric, one-of-a-kind memoir.
My Point… And I Do Have One
September 1st, 1995
ISBN 0553573616 (ISBN13: 9780553573619)
With the unpredictable wit and engaging warmth that has won her a loyal following, and the undeniable star quality that has made her television series an instant hit, Ellen DeGeneres brings her unique comic perspective to the page in a book of simple yet brilliant observations, outrageous dreams, and hilarious life stories.
My Razzle Dazzle: An Outsider’s True Story
April 8th, 2015
ASIN B00W9YDJOO
My Razzle Dazzle is an unforgettable trip of a lifetime. Beginning with a Wisconsin farm in the 1960s, Todd Peterson characterizes every outsider’s candid, moving, and often hilarious coming-out story that will take you apart and put you together again. His adventures are set against a backdrop of the cultural events of the sixties and seventies and a burgeoning gay Mecca that changed our world forever. Along this unusual journey Todd not only meets carnival freaks and murderers, but also lions, tigers and bears. . . oh my!
Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama
May 1st, 2012
ISBN 0618982507 (ISBN13: 9780618982509)
Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home was a pop culture and literary phenomenon. Now, a second thrilling tale of filial sleuthery, this time about her mother: voracious reader, music lover, passionate amateur actor. Also a woman, unhappily married to a closeted gay man, whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel's childhood . . . and who stopped touching or kissing her daughter good night, forever, when she was seven. Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf. It's a richly layered search that leads readers from the fascinating life and work of the iconic twentieth-century psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, to one explosively illuminating Dr. Seuss illustration, to Bechdel’s own (serially monogamous) adult love life.
The Funny Thing Is…
October 28th, 2003
ISBN 0743247639 (ISBN13: 9780743247634)
An indispensable reference for anyone who knows how to read—or wants to fool people into thinking they do—The Funny Thing Is… is sure to make you laugh. Ellen DeGeneres published her first book of comic essays, the #1 bestselling My Point…And I Do Have One, way back in 1996. Not one to rest on her laurels, the witty star of stage and screen has since dedicated her life to writing a hilarious new book. That book is this book.
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
January 1st, 1982
ISBN 0895941228 (ISBN13: 9780895941220)
ZAMI is a fast-moving chronicle. From the author's vivid childhood memories in Harlem to her coming of age in the late 1950s, the nature of Audre Lorde's work is cyclical. It especially relates the linkage of women who have shaped her . . . Lorde brings into play her craft of lush description and characterization. It keeps unfolding page after page.
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities
April 11th, 2017
ISBN 1942683332 (ISBN13: 9781942683339)
In this ferocious and tender debut, Chen Chen investigates inherited forms of love and family—the strained relationship between a mother and son, the cost of necessary goodbyes—all from Asian American, immigrant, and queer perspectives. Holding all accountable, this collection fully embraces the loss, grief, and abundant joy that come with charting one’s own path in identity, life, and love.
Riding Fury Home: A Memoir
April 3rd, 2012
ISBN 1580054323 (ISBN13: 9781580054324)
In 1958, when Chana Wilson was seven, her mother attempted suicide, holding a rifle to her own head and pulling the trigger. The gun jammed and she was taken away to a mental hospital. On her return, Chana became the caretaker of her heavily medicated, suicidal mother. It would be many years before she learned the secret of her mother’s anguish: her love affair with another married woman, and the psychiatric treatment aimed at curing her of her lesbianism.
White Dresses: A Memoir of Love and Secrets, Mothers and Daughters
September 15th, 2015
ISBN 0062386972 (ISBN13: 9780062386977)
After her mother’s sudden death in 2010, Mary digs deep to understand the events that led to Anne’s unraveling. At twenty-one, Anne entered a convent, committed to a life of prayer and helping others. But lengthy periods of enforced fasting, isolation from her beloved students, and constant humiliation eventually drove her to flee the convent almost a decade later. Hoping to find new purpose as a wife and mother, Anne instead married an abusive, closeted gay man their eventual divorce another sign of her failure. Anne retreats into chaos. By the time Mary is ten, their house is cluttered with broken appliances and stacks of unopened mail. Anne promises but fails to clean up for Mary’s high school graduation party, where Mary is being honored as her school’s valedictorian, causing her perfectionist daughter’s fear and shame to grow in tandem with the heaps upon heaps of junk.
The Tooth Fairy: Parents, Lovers, and Other Wayward Deities
February 6th, 2014
ISBN 1468306952 (ISBN13: 9781468306958)
In shimmering prose that weaves among intimate confessions, deadpan asides, and piercing observations on the fear and turmoil that defined the long decade after 9/11, Clifford Chase tells the stories that have shaped his adulthood. There are his aging parents, whose disagreements sharpen as their health declines; and his beloved brother, lost tragically to AIDS; and his long-term boyfriend—always present, but always kept at a distance. There is also the revelatory, joyful music of the B-52s, Chase’s sexual confusion in his twenties, and more recently, the mysterious appearance in his luggage of weird objects from Iran the year his mother died. In the midst of all this is Chase’s singular voice—incisive, wry, confiding, by turns cool or emotional, always engaging.
Boy Erased: A Memoir
May 10th, 2016
ISBN 1594633010 (ISBN13: 9781594633010)
The son of a Baptist pastor and deeply embedded in church life in small town Arkansas, as a young man Garrard Conley was terrified and conflicted about his sexuality. When Garrard was a nineteen-year-old college student, he was outed to his parents, and was forced to make a life-changing decision: either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy program that promised to “cure” him of homosexuality; or risk losing family, friends, and the God he had prayed to every day of his life. Through an institutionalized Twelve-Step Program heavy on Bible study, he was supposed to emerge heterosexual, ex-gay, cleansed of impure urges and stronger in his faith in God for his brush with sin.
Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever
May 13th, 2008
ISBN 0767924304 (ISBN13: 9780767924306)
Joel Derfner is gayer than you. Don’t feel too bad about it, though, because he has made being gayer than you his life’s work. At summer day camp, when he was six, Derfner tried to sign up for needlepoint and flower arranging, but the camp counselors wouldn’t let him, because, they said, those activities were for girls only. Derfner, just to be contrary, embarked that very day on a solemn and sacred quest: to become the gayest person ever. Along the way he has become a fierce knitter, an even fiercer musical theater composer, and so totally the fiercest step aerobics instructor (just ask him—he’ll tell you himself).
Palimpsest
September 28th, 1995
ISBN 0140260897 (ISBN13: 9780140260892)Published to celebrate his 70th birthday, the memoirs of the American writer, from his childhood as the grandson of a blind southern senator, through to the establishment of his literary career in 1964.
Girlish: Growing Up in a Lesbian Home
April 3rd, 2018
ISBN 1510723919 (ISBN13: 9781510723917
An honest, unfiltered memoir about a girl with an unconventional family. It won’t be long before readers realize that “unconventional” barely scratches the surface. In the early years, Girl’s feminist mother reluctantly allows her to play with her favorite Barbies while her stepmother refuses to comfort her when she wakes up from nightmares. She swims naked with her lesbian mother and stepmother in upstate New York. Girl and her brother travel four thousand miles— unaccompanied—to visit their father in rural Alaska, where they sleep in a locked cabin without running water, telephone, or electricity. Raised to be a free spirit by norm-defying parents, Girl has to define her own boundaries as she tries to fit into heteronormative suburban life, all while navigating her mother’s expectations, her stepmother’s mental illness, and her father’s serial divorces.
City Boy: My Life in New York in the 1960s and 70s
March 1, 2004
ISBN 1596914025 (ISBN13: 9781596914025)
In the New York of the 1970s, in the wake of Stonewall and in the midst of economic collapse, you might find the likes of Jasper Johns and William Burroughs at the next cocktail party, and you were as likely to be caught arguing Marx at the New York City Ballet as cruising for sex in the warehouses and parked trucks along the Hudson. This is the New York that Edmund White portrays in City Boy: a place of enormous intrigue and artistic tumult. Combining the no-holds-barred confession and yearning of A Boy’s Own Story with the easy erudition and sense of place of The Flaneur, this is the story of White’s years in 1970s New York, bouncing from intellectual encounters with Susan Sontag and Harold Brodkey to erotic entanglements downtown to the burgeoning gay scene of artists and writers.
Straight Boy Queer Girl: a Memoir
September 15th, 2014
ASIN B00NMXL3OE
Jonathan is just seven years old when his mother has a nervous breakdown and is hospitalized. He stands in the kitchen of a friend's house, where he will stay until his mother recovers, and examines his mind for anything he believes that can't be true. Jonathan feels like he should be girl, but girls don't have penises. It's time to learn how to be a boy. This insightful and entertaining memoir is both laugh-out-loud funny and heartbreaking. It follows Jonathan's story from early childhood into young adulthood, his struggles with his Catholic faith and internalized transphobia, and ultimately whether or not he will make a decision that will destroy his relationship with the only girl he ever loved.
Trans Figured: My Journey from Boy to Girl to Woman to Man
September 4th, 2018
ISBN 151072964X (ISBN13: 9781510729643)
Brian has the rare distinction of coming out three times: first as a queer teenager; second as a glamorous transgender woman named Tish, and later, Natalia Gervais; and finally, as an HIV-positive gay man surviving the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. From growing up in a barely-working-class first-generation immigrant family in Fall River, Massachusetts, to spinning across the disco dance floor of Studio 54 in New York City . . . from falling into military lock-step as the Army wife of a domineering GI in Germany to having a brush with fame as Natalia, high-flying downtown darling of the boozy and druggy pre-Giuliani New York nightclub scene, Brian escaped many near-death experiences.
No Way Renee: The Second Half of My Notorious Life
March 7th, 2006
ISBN 0743290135 (ISBN13: 9780743290135)
In 1975, at the age of forty, Richard Raskind, a renowned eye surgeon and highly ranked amateur tennis player, "died," and Renee Richards was "born," in what was to become the most public and highly scrutinized sex reassignment to date. It was not until Renee Richards was discovered playing in an amateur tennis tournament that the world took notice. Extensive media coverage and criticism thrust Renee reluctantly into the spotlight, sparking an intense public debate over her private life. Now, at seventy-two, Richards looks back and speaks frankly about all aspects of her complicated and often notorious life in this eye-opening, thought-provoking memoir.
Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir
August 26th, 2014
ISBN 1936976552 (ISBN13: 9781936976553)
Growing up, Liz Prince wasn't a girly girl, dressing in pink tutus or playing pretty princess like the other girls in her neighborhood. But she wasn't exactly one of the guys, either. She was somewhere in between. But with the forces of middle school, high school, parents, friendship, and romance pulling her this way and that, "the middle" wasn't exactly an easy place to be.
Crossing
November 10th, 1999
ISBN 0226556697 (ISBN13: 9780226556697)
We have read the stories of those who have "crossed" lines of race and class and culture. But few have written of crossing—completely and entirely—the gender line. Crossing is the story of Deirdre McCloskey (formerly Donald), once a golden boy of conservative economics and a child of 1950s and 1960s privilege, and her dramatic and poignant journey to becoming a woman. McCloskey's account of her painstaking efforts to learn to "be a woman" unearth fundamental questions about gender and identity, and hatreds and anxieties, revealing surprising answers.
Bad Kid: A Memoir on Growing Up Goth & Gay in Texas
May 19th, 2015
ISBN 0062371282 (ISBN13: 9780062371287)
In the summer of 1989, three Goth kids crossed a street in San Antonio. They had no idea that a deeply confused fourteen-year-old boy was watching. Their dyed hair, fishnets, and eyeliner were his first evidence of another world—a place he desperately wanted to go. He just had no idea how to get there. Somehow David Crabb had convinced himself that every guy preferred French-braiding his girlfriend’s hair to making out, and that the funny feelings he got watching Silver Spoons and Growing Pains had nothing to do with Ricky Schroeder or Kirk Cameron. But discovering George Michael’s Faith confirmed for David what every bully already knew: he was gay. Surviving high school, with its gym classes, locker rooms, and naked, glistening senior guys, would require impossible feats of denial.
My Transvestite Addictions: The Story of One Individual's Odyssey Through Crossdressing, Alcohol, Escorts, Strippers, Sex, and Money
March 1st, 2013
ISBN 1626463255 (ISBN13: 9781626463257)
A middle-aged transvestite presents his unusual life story in a fiction-inspired-by-fact account, describing his complex struggles with crossdressing and gender identity and his efforts to deal with various chronic addictions, including those involving alcohol, call girls, strippers, sex, and spending money. The diverse stories in the book range from serious to funny to outrageous and are written in an unflinchingly personal style that is also earthy, sexy, and sometimes politically incorrect.
Mommy Man: How I Went from Mild-Mannered Geek to Gay Superdad
May 8th, 2014
ISBN 1589799224 (ISBN13: 9781589799226)
As a teenager growing up in the 1980s, all Jerry Mahoney wanted was a nice, normal sham marriage: 2.5 kids and a frustrated, dissatisfied wife living in denial of her husband s sexuality. Hey, why not? It seemed much more attainable and fulfilling than the alternative coming out of the closet and making peace with the fact that he’d never have a family at all. Twenty years later, Jerry is living with his long-term boyfriend, Drew, and they’re ready to take the plunge into parenthood. But how? Adoption? Foster parenting? Kidnapping? What they want most of all is a great story to tell their future kid about where he or she came from. Their search leads them to gestational surrogacy, a road less traveled where they ll be borrowing a stranger’s lady parts for nine months.
What the L?
May 20th, 2005
ISBN 0786715448 (ISBN13: 9780786715442)
What the L? is a new collection of published and unpublished writings that showcases Kate Clinton's gifts as one of the all-time favorite lesbian comics. Like Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O'Donnell, Clinton is a nationally acclaimed quick- witted, laugh-out-loud funny comic whose hilarious takes on everything from gay marriage ("mad vow disease") and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, to gay Republicans and the War on Terrorism have earned her a devoted following. She has appeared on many television programs, including Good Morning America, Nightline, Entertainment Tonight, and writes monthly columns for Progressive and the Advocate.
Transman Bitesize: The Story of a Woman Who Became a Man
December 1st, 2005
ISBN 1425905765 (ISBN13: 9781425905767)
Transman - Bite size provides a brief, easy to read, insight into transsexualism for the general public, from the personal experience of a British female to male transman. This autobiography takes you the reader, step by step, through the journey of how a biological female, a mother of four, a wife twice over, and ex-model; a real woman in the eyes of society became a father, with a career as a Trainer & Counsellor, soon to be a husband. In short - a real man in the eyes of society. There are over 35 photographs capturing the life of the author and his transition process through to completion. These photos bring the text to life and help you the reader fully understand the mammoth task of changing gender roles within society.
My Life in Stolen Pantyhose, One man's journey into the closet
September 1st, 2013
ASIN B00FE731NM
David Marks has a secret life. At home he's a sharp-minded international consultant, a easy-going suburban dad and do- it-yourself home hobbyist. But when business calls and travels unfold David becomes his inner self, a woman named Evie. Travel with David and his better half, Evie, as they discover the comedy and trauma, the titillation and humiliation of becoming the same person.
Rapture Practice: A True Story About Growing Up Gay in an Evangelical Family
May 27th, 2014
ISBN 0316094641 (ISBN13: 9780316094641)
When Aaron Hartzler was little, he couldn’t wait for the The Rapture: that moment when Jesus would come down from the clouds to whisk him and his family up to heaven. But as he turns sixteen, Aaron grows more curious about all the things his family forsakes for the Lord. He begins to realize he doesn’t want Jesus to come back just yet—not before he has his first kiss, sees his first movie, or stars in the school play. In this funny and heartfelt coming-of-age memoir, debut author Aaron Hartzler recalls his teenage journey from devoted to doubtful, and the search to find his own truth without losing the fundamentalist family who loves him.
Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival
May 1st, 2006
ISBN 0061132381 (ISBN13: 9780061132384)
In 2005, two tragedies--the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina--turned CNN reporter Anderson Cooper into a media celebrity. Dispatches from the Edge, Cooper's memoir of "war, disasters and survival," is a brief but powerful chronicle of Cooper's ascent to stardom and his struggle with his own tragedies and demons. Cooper was 10 years old when his father, Wyatt Cooper, died during heart bypass surgery. He was 20 when his beloved older brother, Carter, committed suicide by jumping off his mother's penthouse balcony (his mother, by the way, being Gloria Vanderbilt). The losses profoundly affected Cooper, who fled home after college to work as a freelance journalist for Channel One, the classroom news service.
The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family
September 1st, 2005
ISBN 0452287634 (ISBN13: 9780452287631)
Dan Savage's mother wants him to get married. His boyfriend, Terry, says "no thanks" because he doesn't want to act like a straight person. Their six-year-old son DJ says his two dads aren't "allowed" to get married, but that he'd like to come to the reception and eat cake. Throw into the mix Dan's straight siblings, whose varied choices form a microcosm of how Americans are approaching marriage these days, and you get a rollicking family memoir that will have everyone- gay or straight, right or left, single or married-howling with laughter and rethinking their notions of marriage and all it entails. BACKCOVER: "Hilarious, heartfelt." -Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The Boy with the Thorn in His Side
May 3rd, 2000
ISBN 0688168396 (ISBN13: 9780688168391)
Keith Fleming had been a pretty ordinary Midwestern kid--Little League, Boy Scouts--but the year he turns twelve, his family is torn apart by divorce when he learns that his mother and his Uncle Ed are both gay. By the time Keith is fifteen he has become disfigured by severe acne and is so wild that his father and stepmother place him in a draconian adolescent mental institution. Here he meets Laura, a pretty Mexican girl with whom he begins a passionate love affair.
Keith's mother finally demands his release after a series of hospitalizations and sends him off to live with his uncle, Edmund White, in New York. Keith is soon transformed by his young uncle: He is sent to a dermatologist, to Barneys "Boy's Town" for new clothes, and to prep school. He receives a broad cultural education from Uncle Ed at home.
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