Best of
Gender-And-Sexuality

2016

Tomboy Survival Guide


Ivan E. Coyote - 2016
    Tomboy Survival Guide is a funny and moving memoir told in stories, in which Ivan recounts the pleasures and difficulties of growing up a tomboy in Canada’s Yukon, and how they learned to embrace their tomboy past while carving out a space for those of us who don’t fit neatly into boxes or identities or labels.Ivan writes movingly about many firsts: the first time they were mistaken for a boy; the first time they purposely discarded their bikini top so they could join the boys at the local swimming pool; and the first time they were chastised for using the women’s washroom. Ivan also explores their years as a young butch, dealing with new infatuations and old baggage, and life as a gender-box-defying adult, in which they offer advice to young people while seeking guidance from others. (And for tomboys in training, there are even directions on building your very own unicorn trap.)Tomboy Survival Guide warmly recounts Ivan’s adventures and mishaps as a diffident yet free-spirited tomboy, and maps their journey through treacherous gender landscapes and a maze of labels that don’t quite stick, to a place of self-acceptance and an authentic and personal strength. These heartfelt, funny, and moving stories are about the culture of difference—a “guide” to being true to one’s self.

The ABC's of LGBT+


Ashley Mardell - 2016
    Ashley Mardell, one of the most trusted voices on YouTube presents a detailed look at all things LGBT+. Along with in-depth written definitions, personal anecdotes, helpful infographics, links to online videos, and more, Mardell aims to provide a friendly voice to a community looking for information.Beyond those searching for a label, this book is also for allies and LGBT+ people simply looking to pack in some extra knowledge! Knowledge is a critical part of acceptance, learning about new identities broadens our understanding of humanity, heightens our empathy, and allows us different, valuable perspectives. These words also provide greater precision when describing attractions and identities. There is never anything wrong with having and efficient, expansive vocabulary!

Darling Days: A Memoir


iO Tillett Wright - 2016
    This was a world of self-invented characters, glamorous superstars, and strung-out sufferers—ground zero of drag and performance art. Still, no personality was more vibrant and formidable than iO's mother's. Rhonna, a showgirl and young widow, was a mercurial, erratic Glamazon and iO's fiercest defender, her only authority in a world with few boundaries and even fewer indicators of normal life. At the center of Darling Days is the remarkable relationship between a fiery kid and her domineering Ma—a bond defined by freedom and control, excess and sacrifice; by heartbreaking deprivation, agonizing rupture, and, ultimately, forgiveness.Darling Days is also a provocative examination of culture and identity, and of the cour­age and resilience of a child listening closely to her deepest self. When a group of boys refuse to let six-year-old iO play ball, she instantly adopts a new persona, becoming a boy named Ricky—a choice her parents support and celebrate. It is the start of a profound exploration of gender and identity through the tenderest years, and the beginning of a life invented and reinvented at every step.

UnClobber


Colby Martin - 2016
    Armed with only six passages in the Bible often known as the clobber passages the conservative Christian position has been one that stands against the full inclusion of our LGBT brothers and sisters. Unclobber reexamines each of those frequently quoted passages of Scripture, alternating with author Colby Martin's own story of being fired from an evangelical megachurch when they discovered his stance on sexuality.UnClobber reexamines what the Bible says (and does not say) about homosexuality in such a way that breathes fresh life into outdated and inaccurate assumptions and interpretations.

The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care


Zena Sharman - 2016
    This anthology is a diverse collection of real-life stories from queer and trans people on their own health-care experiences and challenges, from gay men living with HIV who remember the systemic resistance to their health-care needs, to a lesbian couple dealing with the experience of cancer, to young trans people who struggle to find health-care providers who treat them with dignity and respect. The book also includes essays by health-care providers, activists and leaders with something to say about the challenges, politics, and opportunities surrounding LGBTQ health issues.Both exceptionally moving and an incendiary call-to-arms, The Remedy is a must-read for anyone--gay, straight, trans, and otherwise--passionately concerned about the right to proper health care for all.Contributors include Amber Dawn, Sinclair Sexsmith, Francisco Ibanez-Carrasco, Cooper Lee Bombardier, Kara Sievewright, and Kelli Dunham.Zena Sharman is a passionate advocate for queer and trans health. She has over a decade's experience in health research; currently she is Director of Strategy at the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. Zena is also co-editor of Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The Doctor Will See You Now: Recognizing and Treating Endometriosis


Tamer Seckin - 2016
    Instead, it grows outside of the uterus, spreading to organs and nerves in and around the pelvic region. The resulting pain is so physically and emotionally insufferable that it can mercilessly dominate a woman's life. The average woman with endometriosis is twenty-seven years old before she is diagnosed. It is one of the top three causes of female infertility. The pain it emits can affect a woman's career, social life, relationships, sexual activity, sleep, and diet. It is incurable, but highly treatable. Unfortunately, though, it is rarely treated in a timely manner, if at all, because of misdiagnoses and/or a lack of education among those in the medical community.This book gives hope to everyone connected to endometriosis. That includes every woman and young girl who has it, and the women and men in their lives - the mothers, fathers, husbands, children, and friends - who know something is wrong, but do not know what it is or what to do about it. This book is written at a level that everyone with ties to this disease can relate to and understand, but it is also for doctors with good intentions who lack the knowledge of how to diagnose or treat it."The Doctor Will See You Now" is for women determined to let the world know their stories so that every woman with this disease - from the thirteen-year-old girl who is being told that her pain is "part of becoming a woman" to the woman who has been misdiagnosed for decades - knows she is not alone.Yes, her pain is real.No, she is not crazy.Yes, there is hope.

Balls: It Takes Some to Get Some


Chris Edwards - 2016
    And if you’re going to do it in front of 500 coworkers at one of the top ad agencies in the country, you better have a pretty big set! At a time when the term “transgender” didn’t really exist, and with support from family, friends, and a great therapist, Chris Edwards endured 28 surgeries to become the man he always knew he was meant to be. He used what he learned working in advertising along with his ever-present sense of humor to rebrand himself and orchestrate what was quite possibly the most widely accepted and embraced gender transition of its kind. He’s a pioneer who changed the perception of an entire community, and his memoir, BALLS, will touch readers’ hearts and open their minds. ​Edwards is funny, brazen, and endearing, and BALLS is the hilarious and moving story about family, friends, and the courage to be your true self. It boldly and fearlessly goes where other trans memoirs haven’t. If you’ve ever felt uncomfortable in your own skin, for whatever reason, you will be inspired and empowered by this book.

No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity


Sarah Haley - 2016
    Subjugated as convict laborers and forced to serve additional time as domestic workers before they were allowed their freedom, black women faced a pitiless system of violence, terror, and debasement. Drawing upon black feminist criticism and a diverse array of archival materials, Sarah Haley uncovers imprisoned women’s brutalization in local, county, and state convict labor systems, while also illuminating the prisoners’ acts of resistance and sabotage, challenging ideologies of racial capitalism and patriarchy and offering alternative conceptions of social and political life.A landmark history of black women’s imprisonment in the South, this book recovers stories of the captivity and punishment of black women to demonstrate how the system of incarceration was crucial to organizing the logics of gender and race, and constructing Jim Crow modernity.

Kerry James Marshall: Mastry


Elizabeth Alexander - 2016
    This long-awaited volume celebrates the work of Kerry James Marshall, one of America's greatest living painters. Born before the passage of the Civil Rights Act, in Birmingham, Alabama, and witness to the Watts riots in 1965, Marshall has long been an inspired and imaginative chronicler of the African American experience. Best known for large-scale interiors, landscapes, and portraits featuring powerful black figures, Marshall explores narratives of African American history from slave ships to the present and draws upon his deep knowledge of art history from the Renaissance to twentieth-century abstraction, as well as other sources such as the comic book and the muralist tradition. With luscious color and brushstrokes and highly detailed patterning, his direct and intimate scenes of black middle-class life conjure a wide range of emotions, resulting in powerful paintings that confront the position of African Americans throughout American history. Richly illustrated, this monumental book features essays by noted curators as well as the artist, and more than 100 paintings from throughout the artist's career arranged thematically by subject: history painting; beauty, as expressed through the nude, portraiture, and self-portraiture; landscape; religion; and the politics of black nationalism.

The Gender Creative Child: Pathways for Nurturing and Supporting Children Who Live Outside Gender Boxes


Diane Ehrensaft - 2016
    Diane Ehrensaft coined the term gender creative to describe children whose unique gender expression or sense of identity is not defined by a checkbox on their birth certificate. Now, with The Gender Creative Child, she returns to guide parents and professionals through the rapidly changing cultural, medical, and legal landscape of gender and identity.   In this up-to-date, comprehensive resource, Dr. Ehrensaft explains the interconnected effects of biology, nurture, and culture to explore why gender can be fluid, rather than binary. As an advocate for the gender affirmative model and with the expertise she has gained over three decades of pioneering work with children and families, she encourages caregivers to listen to each child, learn their particular needs, and support their quest for a true gender self.The Gender Creative Child unlocks the door to a gender-expansive world, revealing pathways for positive change in our schools, our communities, and the world.

See Red Women's Workshop: Feminist Posters 1974-1990


Prue Stevenson - 2016
    Women from different backgrounds came together to make posters and calendars that tackled issues of sexuality, identity and oppression. With humor and bold, colorful graphics, See Red expressed the personal experiences of women as well as their role in wider struggles for change.Written by See Red members, detailing the group's history up until the closure of the workshop in 1990, and with a foreword by celebrated feminist historian Sheila Rowbotham, See Red Women's Workshop features all of the collective's original screenprints and posters. Confronting negative stereotypes, questioning the role of women in society, and promoting women's self-determination, the power and energy of these images reflect an important and dynamic era of women's liberation--with continued relevance for today.

To Live Freely in This World: Sex Worker Activism in Africa


Chi Adanna Mgbako - 2016
    To Live Freely in This World is the first book to tell the story of the brave activists at the beating heart of the sex workers’ rights movement in Africa—the newest and most vibrant face of the global sex workers’ rights struggle. African sex worker activists are proving that communities facing human rights abuses are not bereft of agency. They’re challenging politicians, religious fundamentalists, and anti-prostitution advocates; confronting the multiple stigmas that affect the diverse members of their communities; engaging in intersectional movement building with similarly marginalized groups; and participating in the larger global sex workers’ rights struggle in order to determine their social and political fate. By locating this counter-narrative in Africa, To Live Freely in This World challenges disempowering and one-dimensional depictions of “degraded Third World prostitutes” and helps fill what has been a gaping hole in feminist scholarship regarding sex work in the African context. Based on original fieldwork in seven African countries, including Botswana, Kenya, Mauritius, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Uganda, Chi Adanna Mgbako draws on extensive interviews with over 160 African female and male (cisgender and transgender) sex worker activists, and weaves their voices and experiences into a fascinating, richly-detailed, and powerful examination of the history and continuing activism of this young movement.

Burn My Shadow: A Selective Memory of an X-Rated Life


Tyler Knight - 2016
    A star that breaks all stereotypes and barriers, Knight's story is one of race and sexuality that pushes the boundaries of what is thought of porn and porn stars. Tyler Knight is a one of a kind star, and this is his story.

Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage


Sowande M. Mustakeem - 2016
    This book reveals for the first time how it took critical shape at sea. Expanding the gaze even more deeply, the book centers how the oceanic transport of human cargoes--infamously known as the Middle Passage--comprised a violently regulated process foundational to the institution of bondage. Sowande' Mustakeem's groundbreaking study goes inside the Atlantic slave trade to explore the social conditions and human costs embedded in the world of maritime slavery. Mining ship logs, records and personal documents, Mustakeem teases out the social histories produced between those on traveling ships: slaves, captains, sailors, and surgeons. As she shows, crewmen manufactured captives through enforced dependency, relentless cycles of physical, psychological terror, and pain that led to the the making--and unmaking--of enslaved Africans held and transported onboard slave ships. Mustakeem relates how this process, and related power struggles, played out not just for adult men, but also for women, children, teens, infants, nursing mothers, the elderly, diseased, ailing, and dying. Mustakeem offers provocative new insights into how gender, health, age, illness, and medical treatment intersected with trauma and violence transformed human beings into the world's most commercially sought commodity for over four centuries.

Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860-1900


Frederick C. Beiser - 2016
    Pessimism was essentially the theory that life is not worth living. This theory was introduced into German philosophy by Schopenhauer, whose philosophy became very fashionable in the 1860s. Frederick C. Beiser examines the intense and long controversy that arose from Schopenhauer's pessimism, which changed the agenda of philosophy in Germany away from the logic of the sciences and toward an examination of the value of life. He examines the major defenders of pessimism (Philipp Mainlander, Eduard von Hartmann and Julius Bahnsen) and its chief critics, especially Eugen Duhring and the neo-Kantians. The pessimism dispute of the second half of the century has been largely ignored in secondary literature and this book is a first attempt since the 1880s to re-examine it and to analyze the important philosophical issues raised by it. The dispute concerned the most fundamental philosophical issue of them all: whether life is worth living.

Journey to Same-Sex Parenthood: Firsthand Advice, Tips and Stories from Lesbian and Gay Couples


Eric Rosswood - 2016
    In Journey to Same-Sex Parenthood, author, activist and father Eric Rosswood guides and helps prospective LGBT parents to explore these five popular options: Adoption, Foster Care, Assisted Reproduction, Surrogacy and Co-Parenting.Each section includes a description of the specific family-building approach, followed by personal stories from same-sex couples and individuals who have chosen and gone through that particular journey. The appendix contains important legal issues to consider and questions to ask before deciding to move forward, along with a list of reasons why people may choose each of the five family-building paths and the challenges they may encounter.Journey to Same-Sex Parenthood provides a unique combination of inspirational firsthand accounts combined with the critical information, tips and advice needed to help couples successfully navigate the complex road toparenthood.

Mama Can't Raise No Man


Robyn Travis - 2016
    Brimming with intelligent and thought provoking ideas, it cleverly challenges different definitions of manhood, whilst remaining an engaging, witty and at times laugh-out-loud-funny novel.The novel unfolds through a series of letters between a colorful cast of characters and the main protagonist, Duane, who despite his efforts to turn his life around, once again finds himself in prison. This time it’s on charges of intent to supply drugs and domestic violence, but things are not as clear-cut as they seem.

Out for Blood: Essays on Menstruation and Resistance


Breanne Fahs - 2016
    Fusing together gender and feminist theory, critical body studies, political activism, and menstrual anarchy, Breanne Fahs illuminates the troubling omissions of menstrual coming-of-age narratives in the museum, the outdated terminology of "feminine hygiene," and the moral panics about blood that erupts from in and outside of our bathrooms, classrooms, and cell phones. Borrowing from a multitude of voices--single moms, trans teenagers, zine makers, menstrual artists, college students, tour guides, French philosophers, and culture jammers--Fahs forcefully argues for a new culture of menstruation, one where the joys, rhythms, and controversies of menstrual cycles collides with the defiant, shameless, and bold new possibilities of menstrual resistance.

A Return to Arms


Sheree L. Greer - 2016
    Folami’s sensuality and her passion for social justice leave Toya feeling that, at last, she’s met someone she can share all parts of her life with. But when a controversial police shooting blurs the lines between the personal and the political, Toya is forced to examine her identity, her passions, and her allegiances.Folami, a mature and dedicated activist, challenges Toya’s commitment to the struggle while threatening to pull her back into the closet to maintain the intense connection they share. How ever, Nina, a young, free-spirited artist, invites Toya to explore the intersections between sexual and political freedom.With the mounting tensions and social unrest threatening to tear the community apart, can Toya find a safe place to live and love while working to uplift her people?

Queer Virtue: What LGBTQ People Know About Life and Love and How It Can Revitalize Christianity


Elizabeth M. Edman - 2016
    After deep reflection on her tradition, Edman is struck by the realization that her queer identity has taught her more about how to be a good Christian than the church.In Queer Virtue: What LGBTQ People Know About Life and Love and Why Christians Should Care, Edman posits that Christianity, at its scriptural core, incessantly challenges its adherents to rupture false binaries, to “queer” lines that pit people against one another. Thus, Edman asserts that Christianity, far from being hostile to queer people, is itself inherently queer. Arguing from the heart of scripture, she reveals how queering Christianity—that is, disrupting simplistic ways of thinking about self and other—can illuminate contemporary Christian faith. Pushing well past the notion that “Christian love = tolerance,” Edman offers a bold alternative: the recognition that queer people can help Christians better understand their fundamental calling, and the creation of sacred space where LGBTQ Christians are seen as gifts to the church.By bringing queer ethics and Christian theology into conversation, Edman also shows how the realities of queer life demand a lived response of high moral caliber—one that resonates with the ethical path laid down by Christianity. Lively and impassioned, Edman proposes that queer experience be celebrated as inherently valuable, ethically virtuous, and as illuminating the sacred.A rich and nuanced exploration, Queer Virtue mines the depths of Christianity’s history, mission, and core theological premises to call all Christians to a more authentic and robust understanding of their faith.

You're Not Going That Way


RoAnna Sylver - 2016
    They've traveled almost three thousand miles, pursued by old enemies and new dangers to meet the brilliant Dr. Maureen Cole, who promises she holds not only the key to saving Parole, but weathering the toxic storms of the deadly wasteland called the Tartarus Zone. On the way, they keep an eye out for everything and everyone they lost in the collapse - like Regan, who was last seen leaving Parole by himself, under very suspicious circumstances, and Zilch's precious organ jars, stolen by Eye in the Sky when Parole fell. There's no telling what or who they might find out here in this strange new world, or what lies deeper in its heart.But a lot of road lies between them and their goal. And Parole isn't the only place filled with ghosts. In Tartarus, they're a lot more real than anywhere else.

Relationship


Zackary Drucker - 2016
    Male becomes female. Female becomes male. Life becomes art. Private becomes public. A major feature of the 2014 Whitney Biennial, this series of photographs that the New York Times called extremely provocative explores ideas of transformation both physical and psychological. It s the story of two people in love, in a culture where the notion of gender has become more fluid and at a time when trans people have never been more accepted. As both subjects and creators of these images, Drucker and Ernst, both of whom transitioned gender, represent themselves in the midst of shifting subjectivities and identities. Collectively, these photographs, which have been compared to the work of Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, and Cindy Sherman, document the story of their romantic and creative collaboration over a period of six years. Simultaneously narrative and documentary, they touch on a host of dynamics, offering autobiography as ambiguity and unraveling identity as a construction."

Queer


David J. Getsy - 2016
    Beginning in the 1980s, “queer” was reappropriated and embraced as a badge of honor. While queer draws its politics and affective force from the history of non-normative, gay, lesbian, and bisexual communities, it is not equivalent to these categories, nor is it an identity. Rather, it offers a strategic undercutting of the stability of identity and of the dispensation of power that shadows the assignment of categories and taxonomies. Artists who identify their practices as queer today call forth utopian and dystopian alternatives to the ordinary, adopt outlaw stances, embrace criminality and opacity, and forge unprecedented kinships, relationships, loves, and communities.Rather than a book of queer theory for artists, this is a book of artists' queer tactics and infectious concepts. By definition, there can be no singular “queer art.” Here, in the first Documents of Contemporary Art anthology to be centered on artists' writings, numerous conversations about queer practice are brought together from diverse individual, social and cultural contexts. Together these texts describe and examine the ways in which artists have used the concept of queer as a site of political and institutional critique, as a framework to develop new families and histories, as a spur to action, and as a basis from which to declare inassimilable difference.

Oscar of Between: A Memoir of Identity and Ideas


Betsy Warland - 2016
    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. This marked the beginning of Oscar of Between: A Memoir of Identity and Ideas. Taking the name Oscar, she embarks on an intimate, nine-year quest by telling her story as “a person of between.” As Oscar, she is able to make sense of her self and the culture that shaped her. She traces this experience of in-betweenness from her childhood in the rural Midwest, through to her first queer kiss in 1978, divorce, coming out, writing life. In 1984, she and her lover wrote lesbian erotic love poetry collections in dialogue with one another, the first and only tandem collections on this subject in English Canada. After the two split, she experienced years of unacknowledged exclusion from a community in which she thought she belonged. In the process of writing Oscar’s story, Warland considers our culture’s rigid, even violent demarcations as she becomes at ease with never knowing what gender she will be addressed as: “In Oscar’s daily life, when encountering someone, it goes like this: some address her as a male; some address her as a female; some begin with one and then switch (sometimes apologetically) to the other; some identify Oscar as lesbian and their faces harden, or open into a momentary glance of arousal; some know they don’t know and openly scrutinize; some decide female but stare perplexedly at her now-sans-breast chest; some are bemused by or drawn to or relate to her androgyny; and for some none of this matters.” A contemporary Orlando, Oscar of Between extends beyond the author’s personal narrative, pushing the boundaries of form, and by doing so, invents new ways to see ourselves.

Alice: Memoirs of a Barbary Coast Prostitute


Ivy Anderson - 2016
    “A Voice from the Underworld” detailed Alice’s humble Midwestern upbringing and her struggle to find aboveboard work, and candidly related the harrowing events she endured after entering “the life.” While prostitute narratives had been published before, never had they been as frank in their discussion of the underworld, including topics such as abortion, police corruption, and the unwritten laws of the brothel. Throughout the series, Alice strongly criticized the society that failed her and so many other women, but, just as acutely, she longed to be welcomed back from the margins. The response to Alice’s story was unprecedented: four thousand letters poured into the Bulletin, many of which were written by other prostitutes ready to share their own stories; and it inspired what may have been the first sex worker rights protest in modern history.For the first time in print since 1913, Alice: Memoirs of a Barbary Coast Prostitute presents the memoirs of Alice Smith and a selection of letters responding to her story. An introduction contextualizes “A Voice from the Underworld” amid Progressive Era sensationalistic journalism and shifting ideas of gender roles, and reveals themes in Alice’s story that extend to issues facing sex workers today.

Self Styled: Dare to be Different


Anthony Lycett - 2016
    Showcasing photographic diptychs of a select group of fabulous urbanites, each double-page spread illustrates a unique personal choice while implicitly exploring themes such as gender, colour, body shape and taste.The concept behind Self-Styled is simple: each person is asked to choose two outfits - one that represents daywear and a second that represents nightwear. Then, through a dual photographic portrait, author Anthony Lycett encapsulates their distinctive personalities in a stylist-free zone as they are: self-styled.Since embarking on the project in 2008, Anthony has photographed people from all walks of life. His ever-growing body of work provides a fascinating overview of the multifaceted vibrancy of urban cultures and subcultures.

On Christopher Street: Transgender Stories


Mark Seliger - 2016
    This street nestled in the middle of New York City's Greenwich Village is heralded as the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ rights movement. Today, the intersection at Christopher and Hudson Streets has been renamed "Sylvia Rivera Way," after the pioneering trans-activist and the annual LGBTQ pride parade ends its procession on Christopher Street, where the revolution began at the Stonewall Inn.Renowned photographer Mark Seliger, best known for his portraits of celebrities, musicians, and artists, has called the West Village home for nearly two decades. For his latest book, On Christopher Street: Transgender Stories, his curiosity inspired him to shoot a handful of portraits--documentary style--in hopes of capturing the color, flamboyant characters, and theatre of a famous, but vanishing neighborhood.What Seliger discovered was a nightly carnival of personalities that open up the visual discourse about sexuality and the constant ebb and flow of the transgender world we all inhabit today. The end result is a collection of 74 beautiful, black and white portraits, all taken with Seliger's Hasselblad camera, and never-before-published.These forthcoming portraits of trans people on Christopher Street combined with their moving and deeply personal stories remind us of our need for sanctuary, for a space to call our own. Their presence challenges us to redefine home, community, and ownership. Their presence challenges us to stop and reflect. No longer will we remain idle and pass by them in fear and prejudice. We will stand with them, recognize them, and see them. These are our streets, and these are our people. On Christopher Street: Transgender Stories stands out as some of Seliger's most powerful work.

TRUNKY (transgender junky): A Memoir of Institutionalization & Southern Hospitality


Samuel Peterson - 2016
    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. As Trunky navigates his path from addition to recovery and female to manhood in this cast of characters, he find himself on an unexpected journey into the depths of the human soul where he discovers its fundamental flaws and the redemption we experience from honest vulnerability when we have the courage to take the plunge.

Outside the XY: Queer Black and Brown Masculinity


Morgan Mann Willis - 2016
    Read these passionate, complex autobiographical glimpses into the many layers of identity as the authors offer olive branches to old and new lovers.This anthology is designed to be uplifting, as it considers and explores our masculine identities as non cis-gendered males, or those traditionally born with the "XY" chromosome. It is a radical act of self-love and affirmation. Outside the XY is a labor of love.

Top Surgery: Unbound: An Insider's Guide to Chest Masculinization Surgery


Drake Cameron Sterling - 2016
    This book is a must-read for anyone considering top surgery. With clear and accessible language, Drake Cameron Sterling has created a blueprint to guide you through this process. You’ll learn how to interview surgeons, plan and pay for the procedure, make sound decisions, decrease your anxiety, and ready yourself before, during, and after your top surgery. You’ll be empowered to: * Survive the mental health assessment without losing your mind * Improve your chances of hiring the best surgeon for you * Understand top surgery types and techniques * Know what to expect on the day of surgery * Manage drains, binders, and scar therapies * Prepare yourself and your home for optimum physical and emotional recovery With practical tips in every chapter, you and your caregiver will be ready for your big day.

Women Who Launched the Computer Age: Ready-to-Read Level 3


Laurie Calkhoven - 2016
    They learned to program without any programming languages or tools, and by the time they were finished, the ENIAC could run a complicated calculus equation in seconds. But when the ENIAC was presented to the press and public, the women were never introduced or given credit for their work. Learn all about what they did and how their invention still matters today in this story of six amazing young women everyone should meet! A special section at the back of the book includes extras on subjects like history and math, plus interesting trivia facts about how computers have changed over time. With the You Should Meet series, learning about historical figures has never been so much fun!

Inventing the Mathematician: Gender, Race, and Our Cultural Understanding of Mathematics


Sara N Hottinger - 2016
    Hottinger uses a cultural studies approach to address how our ideas about mathematics shape our individual and cultural relationship to the field. She considers four locations in which representations of mathematics contribute to our cultural understanding of mathematics: mathematics textbooks, the history of mathematics, portraits of mathematicians, and the field of ethnomathematics. Hottinger examines how these discourses shape mathematical subjectivity by limiting the way some groups--including women and people of color--are able to see themselves as practitioners of math. Inventing the Mathematician provides a blueprint for how to engage in a deconstructive project, revealing the limited and problematic nature of the normative construction of mathematical subjectivity.

Epitaphs of the Great War: The Somme


Sarah Wearne - 2016
    By the time the fighting in the region finally ended on November 18, 141 days later, the British and French had pushed the German lines back six miles—at a cost for all sides of more than 1 million soldiers killed or wounded. The Battle of the Somme was thus one of the bloodiest in human history, and it has occupied a central place in the tragic story of World War I for a century.         This book brings together one hundred epitaphs from headstones marking the graves of British soldiers who died in the battle. The Imperial War Graves Commission limited epitaphs to sixty-six letters, including spaces, a constraint that left little room for flowery sentiment and rendered these commemorations stark and unforgettable. Lieutenant Dillwyn Parrish Starr’s epitaph reads merely “Of Philadelphia, U.S.A.,” while Lieutenant Richard Roy Lewer’s reads “For England.” The headstone of South African Private John Paul however, asks “Did He Die in Vain?” Sarah Wearne has selected epitaphs that cover a range of approaches and emotions, from soldiers famous and forgotten, each one simultaneously a personal tribute to an individual and a marker of the era, the culture, and the sacrifices it expected. As the centennial commemorations of World War I continue, this book brilliantly reminds us that its staggering costs, while marked in the millions, ultimately reduce down to the individual.

Affirmative Counseling and Psychological Practice with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Clients


Anneliese A. Singh - 2016
    This timely volume provides mental health practitioners with theory-driven strategies for affirmative practice with TGNC clients of different ages, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and religious backgrounds. Affirmative care entails a collaborative, client-guided partnership in which clinicians advocate for the client's needs. Chapters cover an array of complex issues, including ethical and legal concerns, working with trauma survivors, and interdisciplinary care.

An Anthology of Fiction by Trans Women of Color


Ellyn PeñaLibby White - 2016
    The stories in this anthology confront major themes and issues in the lives of trans women of color with profound honesty and attention toward helping one another heal. A story like “The Girl and the Apple,” by Jasmine Kabale Moore, not only unflinchingly describes the sense of ever-present danger that many of us feel in public spaces (including the hyper-vigilant condition of trauma that results from repeated exposure to intense scrutiny and violence) it also provides invaluable emotional support to other trans women of color by accurately reflecting, and therefore validating, our experiences and our perceptions of reality.A number of other stories explore their own kinds of traumas and begin to show us a way to survive them, a day at a time. In contrast, there are also stories in our anthology that take up a completely different subject matter – genre fantasies, memories and the past, self-acceptance, relationships with family and friends, romance and intimacy, and language itself – but they do so in the specific context of our lives as trans women of color.

The Marauders' Island


Tristan J. Tarwater - 2016
    TarwaterAzria is a mage of Miz, born with magic in her blood. When her mother, alleged pirate Apzana, offers to take her away on the HEN & CHICK, Azria jumps at the chance for adventure. But their first family outing proves to be more than Azria bargained for. Joined by a ragtag crew from all over the Floating Chain, Azria must do the impossible: raise The Marauders' Island, an island sunk generations ago, from the bottom of the sea. But the mage who sunk the island, Iyzani, wants the island and all the secrets it contains to remain under the waves. Can Azria figure out the mystery of her country's past and be the mage her mother needs?It's high seas adventure full of magic, secrets and feelings!

Petticoat Heroes: Gender, Culture and Popular Protest in the Rebecca Riots


Rhian E. Jones - 2016
    The story is remembered in vivid and compelling images: attacks on tollgates and other symbols of perceived injustice by farmers and workers, outlandishly dressed in bonnets and petticoats and led by the iconic anonymous figure of Rebecca herself. The events form a core part of historical study and remembrance in Wales, and frequently appear in broader work on British radicalism and Victorian protest movements. This book draws on cultural history, gender studies and symbolic anthropology to present fresh and alternative arguments on the meaning of Rebeccaite costume and ritual; the significance of the feminine in protest; the links between protest and popular culture; the use of Rebecca’s image in Victorian press and political discourse; and the ways in which the events and the image of Rebecca herself were integrated into politics, culture and popular memory in Wales and beyond. All these aspects repay greater consideration than they have yet been accorded, and highlight the relevance of Rebeccaism to British and European popular protest – up to and including the present day.

The Liberators of Willow Run


Marianne K. Martin - 2016
    And, with more than nine million Americans on the front lines, there is only one way for the assembly plants to produce enough planes to meet the demand—and that is to recruit women by the thousands into the work force.Audrey Draper is committed to the war effort, and beyond that, to finding her own personal and financial independence. And she is not alone. Ruth Evans also chooses to seek employment. As a waitress living on her own, she not only searches for freedom, but also a way to fulfill an important promise. And then there's young Amelia, a fifteen-year-old rape victim who is being forced to return to a dark and dangerous home. Audrey, Ruth, and a handful of these newly independent women must risk everything they have fought so hard to achieve to give one of their own a fighting chance to survive. Set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing world, these women capture the spirit of the times through their determination, ingenuity, and enduring courage.Marianne K. Martin is one of the most popular lesbian romance authors in the genre. She is the author of ten novels, including four Lambda Literary Award finalists. She has been honored with the Trailblazer Award from the Golden Crown Literary Society, and she was inducted into the Saints & Sinners Literary Hall of Fame in 2013.

Nietzsche and Dostoevsky: Philosophy, Morality, Tragedy


Jeff Love - 2016
    Nietzsche explicitly acknowledged Dostoevsky’s relevance to his work, noting its affinities as well as its points of opposition. Both of them are credited with laying much of the foundation for what came to be called existentialist thought. The essays in this volume bring a fresh perspective to a relationship that illuminates a great deal of twentieth-century intellectual history. Among the questions taken up by contributors are the possibility of morality in a godless world, the function of philosophy if reason is not the highest expression of our humanity, the nature of tragedy when performed for a bourgeois audience, and the justification of suffering if it is not divinely sanctioned. Above all, these essays remind us of the supreme value of the questioning itself that pervades the work of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche.

Obesity in Canada: Critical Perspectives


Jenny Ellison - 2016
    Conceptualizing obesity as a biological condition, these experts insist that it needs to be "prevented" and "managed."Obesity in Canada takes a broader, critical perspective of our supposed epidemic. Examining obesity in its cultural and historical context, the book's contributors ask how we measure health and wellness, where our attitudes to obesity develop from, and what the consequences are of naming and targeting as "obese" those whose body weights do not match our expectations. A broad survey of the issues surrounding the obesity panic in Canada, it is the first collection of fat studies and critical obesity studies from a distinctly Canadian perspective.

BLESSED BODY: The Secret Lives of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Nigerians


Unoma Azuah - 2016
    These stories span the arduous lives of contemporary LGBT Nigerians at home and in diaspora, both men and women, all courageous narrators who attempt to put a name on their attraction, consulting dictionaries, Internet sites, social media networks, and to place their outing moment in all-girl schools, Universities, Churches, nighttime trading haunts. While the stories boldly sketch the kama sutra of same-sex desire and love in West Africa, lined with the dark specter of AIDS and prostitution, they also draw us into a web of online friendships while a beneficent God amiably eavesdrops on his dissident flock.”

Defining Myself: Transmasculine Experience Through Poetry


Michael Eric Brown - 2016
    Over seventy poems putting a voice to the process of living authentically in one's gender. Words which have come from the depths of their beings-from the ache of depression, the fiery pits of anger, darkness of their fears, and the deep wells of loss; as well as from their journeys of change to their passions of joy and acceptance.All are transmasculine, meaning they identify somewhere on the masculine side of the gender spectrum. Some may be fully transitioned female-to-male (FTM) while others may be non-binary, gender fluid or simply transmasculine, with or without having gone through a physical transition. It is not the physical that makes the person-it is the self-identification, the self-love and self-acceptance-and it is all these experiences in each of these individuals that help create our diverse community of transmasculine folks.Authors: I.A. Avery, Shaun B., Isaac Oscar Bainbridge, Grayson Barnes, Michael Eric Brown, Will P. Craig, Al Cusack, Emrys Fevre, Tygh Lawrence-Clark, Joshua Daniel Hunt, TJ Isaacs, Mitch Kellaway, Noah Mendez, Max Andeo Meyer, Para Modha, kaleb morrison, Casey O., Johnny W. Payne, Marval A Rex, S, Oliver Robertson, Noah S., Aaron Schmidt, Kai Schweizer, Liam J. Smietanski, Maverick Smith, Emrys Sparks, Dane Trotti, Char Utton, Jesse W., Joshua "Tygerwolfe" Ward, C. T. Whitley, Howie Wielandt, Dexter J Wiseman, Gavin Wyer, Caden Rocker, Owen Paul Karcher, Eugene SG Massey

'The World' and Other Unpublished Works by Radclyffe Hall


Jana Funke - 2016
    These important new materials significantly broaden and complicate critical views of Hall's writing, and offer vital new perspectives on this often misunderstood writer. Hall is well-known as the author of the lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness (1928), but the diversity of her literary work and the complexity of her ideological perspectives remain underappreciated. The writings made available here for the first time correct such narrow approaches, demonstrating the stylistic and thematic reach of Hall's writing, and covering such diverse topics as outsiderism, gender, sexuality, race, class, religion and the supernatural, and World War I. Together, these texts shed a new light on unrecognised or misunderstood aspects of Hall's intellectual world. The book includes Hall's unfinished novel The World, nine short stories, and radically different early drafts of 'Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself' and a section of The Well of Loneliness. These materials are published together with a substantial 20,000-word introduction, which situates Hall's unpublished writings in the broader context of her life and work. Overall, the volume invites a critical reassessment of Hall's place in early twentieth-century literature and culture, offering rich possibilities for teaching and future research. It will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of English literature, modernism, women's writing, and gender and sexuality studies, as well as to general readers.

Undoing Monogamy: The Politics of Science and the Possibilities of Biology


Angela Willey - 2016
    science and culture, propelled by queer feminist desires for new modes of conceptualization and new forms of belonging. She approaches the politics and materiality of monogamy as intertwined with one another such that disciplinary ways of knowing themselves become an object of critical inquiry. Refusing to answer the naturalization of monogamy with a naturalization of nonmonogamy, Willey demands a critical reorientation toward the monogamy question in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The book examines colonial sexual science, monogamous voles, polyamory, and the work of Alison Bechdel and Audre Lorde to show how challenging the lens through which human nature is seen as monogamous or nonmonogamous forces us to reconsider our investments in coupling and in disciplinary notions of biological bodies.

Queer: A Reader for Writers


Jason Schneiderman - 2016
    It provides students with the rhetorical knowledge and analytical strategies required to participate effectively in discussions about queer theory and culture. Chapters include numerous pedagogical features and are organized thematically around a range of issues and topics that fall under the queer umbrella.Queer: A Reader for Writers is part of a series of brief, single-topic readers from Oxford University Press designed for today's college writing courses. Each reader in this series approaches a topic of contemporary conversation from multiple perspectives.

Us Versus Us: The Untold Story of Religion and the LGBT Community


Andrew Marin - 2016
    Good news: there is no them. Our culture war has been a civil war: Us versus Us. And there is a path toward meaningful peace.Andrew Marin brings the startling findings of his largest-ever scientific survey of the religious history, practices, and beliefs of the LGBT community. Marin's findings offer clear direction for both sides of a long cultural battle to meet in the middle, sacrificing neither conviction nor integrity as they rediscover the things they have in common and the hope found in Christ alone.Original, groundbreaking research into the religious lives and beliefs of the LGBT community.

Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatches on Influenza, Agribusiness, and the Nature of Science


Rob Wallace - 2016
    There is no shortage of news items on hundreds of thousands of hybrid poultry--each animal genetically identical to the next--packed together in megabarns, grown out in a matter of months, then slaughtered, processed and shipped to the other side of the globe. Less well known are the deadly pathogens mutating in, and emerging out of, these specialized agro-environments. In fact, many of the most dangerous new diseases in humans can be traced back to such food systems, among them Campylobacter, Nipah virus, Q fever, hepatitis E, and a variety of novel influenza variants.Agribusiness has known for decades that packing thousands of birds or livestock together results in a monoculture that selects for such disease. But market economics doesn't punish the companies for growing Big Flu--it punishes animals, the environment, consumers, and contract farmers. Alongside growing profits, diseases are permitted to emerge, evolve, and spread with little check. "That is," writes evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace, "it pays to produce a pathogen that could kill a billion people."In Big Farms Make Big Flu, a collection of dispatches by turns harrowing and thought-provoking, Wallace tracks the ways influenza and other pathogens emerge from an agriculture controlled by multinational corporations. Wallace details, with a precise and radical wit, the latest in the science of agricultural epidemiology, while at the same time juxtaposing ghastly phenomena such as attempts at producing featherless chickens, microbial time travel, and neoliberal Ebola. Wallace also offers sensible alternatives to lethal agribusiness. Some, such as farming cooperatives, integrated pathogen management, and mixed crop-livestock systems, are already in practice off the agribusiness grid.While many books cover facets of food or outbreaks, Wallace's collection appears the first to explore infectious disease, agriculture, economics and the nature of science together. Big Farms Make Big Flu integrates the political economies of disease and science to derive a new understanding of the evolution of infections. Highly capitalized agriculture may be farming pathogens as much as chickens or corn.

Women and Leadership in Islamic Law: A Critical Analysis of Classical Legal Texts


David Solomon Jalajel - 2016
    A small number of Muslims today are beginning to challenge this stance, but they face considerable opposition from the broader Muslim community.'Women and Leadership in Islamic Law' examines the assumption within much existing feminist scholarship that the patriarchal nature of pre-Islamic and early Muslim Near Eastern Society is the primary reason for the development of Islamic legal rulings prohibiting women from leadership positions. It claims that the evolution of Islamic law was a complex process, shaped by numerous cultural, historical, political and social factors, as well as scriptural sources whose importance cannot be dismissed. Therefore, the book critically examines a broad survey of legal works from the four canonical Sunni schools of law to determine the factors that influenced the development of the legal rulings prohibiting women from assuming various leadership roles. The passages that elaborate rulings about women's leadership are presented in translation as an appendix to the research, and are then subjected to a variety of critical analyses to identify the reasons, influences, and assumptions underlying those rulings.This is the first time works of all four schools of law have been subjected to this kind of analysis for the express purpose of determining the extent to which gender attitudes have influenced and determined the rulings. This book will therefore be a vital resource for students and scholars of Islamic Studies, Religious Studies and Gender Studies.