Me, Myself, They: Life Beyond the Binary


Joshua M. Ferguson - 2019
    Ferguson, comes a work of memoir and critical analysis that embraces an inclusive understanding of sex and gender.Me, Myself, They: Life Beyond the Binary chronicles Luna M. Ferguson’s extraordinary story of transformation to become a celebrated non-binary filmmaker, writer, and advocate for trans rights. Beginning with their birth and early childhood of gender creativity, Ferguson recounts the complex and often challenging evolution of their identity, including traumatizing experiences with gender conversion therapy, bullying, depression, sexual assault, and violence. Above all, Ferguson’s story is about survival, empathy, and self-acceptance. By combining personal reflections on what it feels like to never truly fit into prescribed roles of male and female, and using an informed analysis of the ongoing shifts in contemporary attitudes towards sex and gender, Ferguson calls for an inclusive understanding of diverse human identity and respect for trans, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people. Through their honest and impassioned storytelling, we learn what it means to reclaim one’s identity and to live beyond the binary.

The Chronology of Water


Lidia Yuknavitch - 2011
    In The Chronology of Water, Lidia Yuknavitch expertly moves the reader through issues of gender, sexuality, violence, and the family from the point of view of a lifelong swimmer turned artist. In writing that explores the nature of memoir itself, her story traces the effect of extreme grief on a young woman’s developing sexuality that some define as untraditional because of her attraction to both men and women. Her emergence as a writer evolves at the same time and takes the narrator on a journey of addiction, self-destruction, and ultimately survival that finally comes in the shape of love and motherhood.

Beautiful on the Outside


Adam Rippon - 2019
    Well, then she was never a competitive figure skater. Olympic medalist Adam Rippon has been making it pretty for the judges even when, just below the surface, everything was an absolute mess. From traveling to practices on the Greyhound bus next to ex convicts to being so poor he could only afford to eat the free apples at his gym, Rippon got through the toughest times with a smile on his face, a glint in his eye, and quip ready for anyone listening. Beautiful on the Outside looks at his journey from a homeschooled kid in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to a self-professed American sweetheart on the world stage and all the disasters and self-delusions it took to get him there. Yeah, it may be what's on the inside that counts, but life is so much better when it's beautiful on the outside.

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.

Real Man Adventures


T. Cooper - 2012
    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.”A brilliant collage of letters, essays, interviews (with his brother, with his wife, with the parents of other transgender children), artwork, and sharp evocations of difficult conversations with old friends and puzzled bureaucrats, Real Man Adventures will forever change what you think about what it means to be a man.

Be Gay, Do Comics


Matt BorsDelta Vasquez - 2020
    The life of a gay and Jewish Nazi-fighter. A gender reveal party that tears apart reality. These are the just some of the comics you'll find in this massive queer comics anthology from The Nib.Be Gay, Do Comics is filled with dozens of comics about LGBTQIA experiences, ranging from personal stories to queer history to cutting satire about pronoun panic and brands desperate to co-opt pride. Brimming with resilience, inspiration, and humor, an incredible lineup of top indie cartoonists takes you from the American Revolution through Stonewall to today's fights for equality and representation.Featuring more than 30 cartoonists including Hazel Newlevant, Joey Alison Sayers, Maia Kobabe, Matt Lubchansky, Breena Nuñez, Sasha Velour, Shing Yin Khor, Levi Hastings, Mady G, Bianca Xunise, Kazimir Lee, and many, many more!

All Men Want to Know


Nina Bouraoui - 2018
    I cross the Seine, I walk with men and women who are anonymous and yet who are my reflection. We make up a single heart, a single cell. We are alive...'In All Men Naturally Want to Know the author traces her blissful childhood in Algeria, a sun-soaked paradise, recalling long trips across the desert with her mother and sister and hazy summer afternoons spent on the beach with her friend Ali. But Nina's mother is French - moving to Algeria for love at a time when most Europeans were desperate to leave - and as civil war approaches, their sunny idyll gives way to increasingly hostile and violent outbreaks. When something unspeakable happens to her mother, the family flee to Paris.In Paris, Nina lives alone. She is eighteen years old. It's the 1980s. Four nights a week she walks across Paris to a legendary women-only nightclub, the Katmandou. She sits alone at the bar, afraid of her own desires, of her sudden and intoxicating freedom. There she meets the glamorous, deeply troubled Ely, her volatile friends Lizz and Laurence, and the beautiful Julia, with whom she falls desperately in love. And, most importantly, she starts to write.

Parenting: Illustrated with Crappy Pictures


Amber Dusick - 2013
    But sometimes, it just sucks. I know. I'm Amber Dusick and I started my blog Parenting: Illustrated with Crappy Pictures because I needed a place to vent about the funny (and frustrating) day-to-day things that happened to me as a parent. Turns out, poop is hilarious! At least when you're not the one wiping it up.This book won't make your frustrating moments any less crappy. But these stories about my Crappy Baby, Crappy Boy and my husband, Crappy Papa, will hopefully make you laugh. Because you're not alone. And sometimes the crappiest moments make the best memories. Parenting is wonderful! And also, well, you know.

Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man


Chaz Bono - 2011
    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.

The Marble Faun of Grey Gardens: A Memoir of the Beales, the Maysles Brothers, and Jacqueline Kennedy


Jerry Torre - 2018
    The book is a behind-the-scenes look at “Big Edie” and “Little Edie” and their bizarre and reclusive life of squalor amidst the tremendous wealth of East Hampton, the family bond that developed between Jerry and them, and the afternoon everything was turned upside down forever with the arrival of documentary filmmakers Albert and David Maysles.What begins as a teenager coming upon what he assumed was an old, abandoned house takes on new dimensions when suddenly Edie appeared on the porch draped in a shower curtain with an apron tied around her head. “You must be the Marble Faun,” she told the stunned Jerry. Rather than chasing him away as he at first feared, she invited Jerry to meet her mother upstairs.So begins a strange and unusually close friendship with the two women as Jerry takes on the task of volunteer gardener of their estate, often sleeping nights in their living room and staying out of the way of mother-daughter arguments. The Marble Faun of Grey Gardens is Jerry’s look back on the filming of Grey Gardens but also how the notoriety the movie achieved changed his life along with the Beales’s as their private world was shared with audiences everywhere.

I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This


Nadja Spiegelman - 2016
     For a long time, Nadja Spiegelman believed her mother was a fairy. More than her famous father, Maus creator Art Spiegelman, and even more than most mothers, hers—French-born New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly—exerted a force over reality that was both dazzling and daunting. As Nadja’s body changed and “began to whisper to the adults around me in a language I did not understand,” their relationship grew tense. Unwittingly, they were replaying a drama from her mother’s past, a drama Nadja sensed but had never been told. Then, after college, her mother suddenly opened up to her. Françoise recounted her turbulent adolescence caught between a volatile mother and a playboy father, one of the first plastic surgeons in France. The weight of the difficult stories she told her daughter shifted the balance between them.  It had taken an ocean to allow Françoise the distance to become her own person. At about the same age, Nadja made the journey in reverse, moving to Paris determined to get to know the woman her mother had fled.  Her grandmother’s memories contradicted her mother’s at nearly every turn, but beneath them lay a difficult history of her own. Nadja emerged with a deeper understanding of how each generation reshapes the past in order forge ahead, their narratives both weapon and defense, eternally in conflict. Every reader will recognize herself and her family in this gorgeous and heartbreaking memoir, which helps us to see why sometimes those who love us best hurt us most.

Spit and Passion


Cristy C. Road - 2012
    Road is a bad ass. She has a list of published work that leaves me awed and inspired."—Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day"Road's writing has long brought to vivid life the experiences of a queer-identified Latina punk rocker."—Bitch magazineAt its core, Spit and Passion is about the transformative moment when music crashes into a stifling adolescent bedroom and saves you. Suddenly, you belong. At twelve years old, Cristy C. Road is struggling to balance tradition in a Cuban Catholic family with her newfound queer identity, and begins a chronic obsession with the punk band Green Day. In this stunning graphic biography, Road renders the clash between her rich inner world of fantasy and the numbing suburban conformity she is surrounded by. She finds solace in the closet—where she lets her deep excitement about punk rock foment, and finds in that angst and euphoria a path to self-acceptance.Cristy C. Road is a twenty-nine-year-old Cuban American artist and writer from Miami; she currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. She has reached cult status for work that captures the beauty of the imperfect. Her career began with Greenzine, a punk rock zine, which she made for ten years. She has since published Indestructible, an illustrated novel about high school; Distance Makes the Heart Grow Sick, a postcard book; and Bad Habits, a love story about self-destruction and healing. She has also illustrated countless record album covers, book covers, political organization propaganda, and magazine articles.

Trans Like Me: A Journey for All of Us


C.N. Lester - 2017
    Lester, academic and activist, takes us on a journey through some of the most pressing issues concerning the trans debate: from pronouns to Caitlyn Jenner; from feminist and LGBTQ activists, to the rise in referrals for gender variant children -- all by way of insightful and moving passages about the author's own experience. Trans Like Me shows us how to strive for authenticity in a world which often seeks to limit us by way of labels.

What Would Frida Do?: A Guide to Living Boldly


Arianna Davis - 2020
    She was a woman ahead of her time whose paintings have earned her generations of admirers around the globe. But perhaps her greatest work of art was her own life.What Would Frida Do? explores the feminist icon's signature style, outspoken politics, and boldness in love and art, even in the face of pain and heartbreak. The book celebrates her larger than life persona as a woman who loved passionately and lived ambitiously, refusing to remain in her husband's shadow. Each chapter shares intimate stories from her life, revealing how she overcame obstacles by embracing her own ideals.In this charming read, author Arianna Davis conjures Frida's brave spirit, encouraging women to persevere, to create fearlessly, and to stand by their own truths.

Pride Over Pity


Kailyn Lowry - 2014
    Through the breakup with the father of her child and the ensuing custody battles, her struggle to come to terms with her troubled childhood, her diagnosis with bipolar disorder, and relentless online bullying, Kailyn has faced it all with her head held high and her spirit intact.But there is more to her story than what has been seen on television... In a moving effort to finally put the past behind her, Kailyn shares her troubled, often painful story and, for the first time, reveals the dark secrets she has so closely guarded.