Book picks similar to
Sideshow Concessions by Lucas Crawford
poetry
queer
canadian
lgbt
Jack the Modernist
Robert Glück - 1985
Bob is excited and lonely. He meets and pursues the elusive Jack, a director who is able to transform others without altering himself. Bob goes to the baths, gossips on the phone, goes to a bar, thinks about werewolves, has an orgasm, and discovers a number of truths about Jack. A paean to love and obsession, Glück's novel explores the everyday in a language that is both intimate and lush. "Robert Glück has found a new way of making fiction passionate. This novel is a strange, exhilarating love story rich with invention and observation." -Edmund White
Once a Girl, Always a Boy: A Family Memoir of a Transgender Journey
Jo Ivester - 2020
Thirty years ago, his parents welcomed him into the world as what they thought was their daughter. As a child, he preferred the toys and games our society views as masculine. He kept his hair short and wore boys’ clothing. They called him a tomboy. That’s what he called himself.By high school, when he showed no interest in flirting, his parents thought he might be lesbian. At twenty, he wondered if he was asexual. At twenty-three, he surgically removed his breasts. A year later, he began taking the hormones that would lower his voice and give him a beard—and he announced his new name and pronouns.Once a Girl, Always a Boy is Jeremy’s journey from childhood through coming out as transgender and eventually emerging as an advocate for the transgender community. This is not only Jeremy’s story but also that of his family, told from multiple perspectives—those of the siblings who struggled to understand the brother they once saw as a sister, and of the parents who ultimately joined him in the battle against discrimination. This is a story of acceptance in a world not quite ready to accept.
Fairest: A Memoir
Meredith Talusan - 2020
citizenship, Talusan found childhood comfort from her devoted grandmother, a grounding force as she was treated by others with special preference or public curiosity.As an immigrant to the United States, Talusan came to be perceived as white. An academic scholarship to Harvard provided access to elite circles of privilege but required Talusan to navigate through the complex spheres of race, class, sexuality, and her place within the gay community. She emerged as an artist and an activist questioning the boundaries of gender. Talusan realized she did not want to be confined to a prescribed role as a man, and transitioned to become a woman, despite the risk of losing a man she deeply loved.Throughout her journey, Talusan shares poignant and powerful episodes of desirability and love that will remind readers of works such as Call Me By Your Name and Giovanni's Room. Her evocative reflections will shift our own perceptions of love, identity, gender, and the fairness of life.
Hornito: My Lie Life
Mike Albo - 2000
From a typical suburban childhood to his perpetual search for true love, Albo evokes a poignant, nostalgic past and a vibrant, energetic present. By turns vulnerable and jaded, flamboyant and obsessive, Hornito is full of subversive humor and outrageous irony.
Underdog: #LoveOzYA Short Stories
Tobias MaddenK.M. Stamer-Squair - 2019
It has grown from a humble hashtag into a movement, reflecting the important role young-adult fiction plays in shaping our current generation of readers. This anthology collects, for the first time, some of the tremendous work from the #LoveOzYA community.Featuring a foreword by award-winning Australian novelist Fleur Ferris (Risk, Wreck, Black and Found), Underdog celebrates the diverse, dynamic and ever-changing nature of our nation's culture. From queer teen romance to dystopian comedy, from hard-hitting realism to gritty allegory, this brilliant, engrossing and inspiring collection of short stories will resonate with any teen reader, proving, yet again, why there is just so much to love about #LoveOzYA.
Sierra City
Gerri Hill - 2004
A loner by nature, she didn't mind the seclusion of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Jessie Stone, a successful but reclusive writer, is haunted by memories of her childhood and finally returns to Sierra City after sixteen years of estrangement from her mother. The odd assortment of residents of this small mountain town brings them together but it is Annie Stone, a woman Chris has grown to admire and a woman Jessie still feels hatred for, that binds the two. Through lies and deception, they still cannot deny the growing attraction that will brighten both their lives...if only they will allow it. As Chris fights for her life in a winter blizzard, Jessie comes to terms with her past and her mother, finally accepting the love that Chris willingly offers her.
Anybody: Poems
Ari Banias - 2016
Moving through iconic and imagined landscapes, Anybody confronts the strangeness of being alive and of being a restlessly gendered, queer, emotive body. Wherever the poet turns—the cruising spaces of Fire Island, a city lake, a Greek island, a bodega-turned-coffee-shop—he finds the charge of boundedness and signification, the implications of what it means to be a this instead of a that. Witty, tender, and original, these poems pierce the constructs that define our lives.
Beast
Brie Spangler - 2016
To make matters worse, on the day his school bans hats (his preferred camouflage), Dylan goes up on his roof only to fall and wake up in the hospital with a broken leg—and a mandate to attend group therapy for self-harmers.Dylan vows to say nothing and zones out at therapy—until he meets Jamie. She’s funny, smart, and so stunning, even his womanizing best friend, JP, would be jealous. She’s also the first person to ever call Dylan out on his self-pitying and superficiality. As Jamie’s humanity and wisdom begin to rub off on Dylan, they become more than just friends. But there is something Dylan doesn’t know about Jamie, something she shared with the group the day he wasn’t listening. Something that shouldn’t change a thing. She is who she’s always been—an amazing photographer and devoted friend, who also happens to be transgender. But will Dylan see it that way?
Playing Catch-Up
Zoey Lennox - 2020
When she meets LGBTQ youth counsellor Ramie Ramirez at a dinner party, sparks fly. But Ramie is still putting herself back together after an acrimonious split from her long-term girlfriend and is only looking for something casual. If living with the repercussions of her ex’s lies has taught her one thing, it’s to keep her heart locked up tight.As the two women begin to date, Alexis finds herself in a predicament. She’s never dated a woman before and is afraid Ramie will dump her sorry arse once she finds out.What’s a girl to do? A little lie can’t hurt, right? It’s no big deal. Just a way to even the playing field a little. What could possibly go wrong?
The Unintentional Time Traveler
Everett Maroon - 2014
Agreeing to participate in an experimental clinical trial to find new treatments for his disease, he finds himself in a completely different body—that of a girl his age, Jacqueline, who defies the expectations of her era. Since his seizures usually give him spazzed out visions, Jack presumes this is a hallucination. Feeling fearless, he steals a horse, expecting that at any moment he’ll wake back up in the clinical trial lab. When that doesn't happen, Jacqueline falls unexpectedly in love, even as the town in the past becomes swallowed in a fight for its survival. Jack/Jacqueline is caught between two lives and epochs, and must find a way to save everyone around him as well as himself. And all the while, he is losing time, even if he is getting out of algebra class.
Take Me There
Tristan TaorminoRachel Kramer Bussel - 2011
Take Me There is an erotica collection unlike any other that celebrates the pleasure, heat, and diversity of transgender and genderqueer sexualities. The power of seeing and being seen is a central theme in the anthology; it’s not simply about passing or not passing (an idea often explored with transgender characters), but about being acknowledged and desired in a sexual context.The book takes you from San Francisco to Israel, from heartache to lust, from stranger sex to a 10 year anniversary, from ballet shoes to butt plug bondage tables, from fumbling teenagers to leatherclad bears, from MTF and FTM—and in between and beyond.Featuring renowned authors Kate Bornstein (Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation), Patrick Califia (Speaking Sex to Power), S. Bear Bergman (Butch is a Noun), Ivan Coyote (Missed Her), Julia Serrano (Whipping Girl), Laura Antoniou (The Marketplace), Helen Boyd (My Husband Betty), Rachel Kramer Bussel (Gotta Have It), Toni Amato (Pinned Down by Pronouns), Alicia E. Goranson (Supervillianz), filmmaker Tobi Hill-Meyer, musician Rahne Alexander, songwriter Shawna Virago, bloggers Andrea Zanin and Sinclair Sexsmith, and more.
Everything We Never Wanted
Sienna Waters - 2020
The responsibility terrifies her, she never wanted this.In the course of a year, Kat Stein has gone from happily married second-grade teacher, to divorced, broke and hanging onto her job by a thread. The loss of her perfect life is devastating, she never wanted this.And when travel-crazed hippy meets disciplined, strait-laced teacher, it's hate at first sight. Alex and Kat couldn't be more different, and neither is exactly living her best life. Until a rigged school election, a painful accident in the woods, and the re-appearance of Libby's mysterious father mean that the two are reluctantly bound together...Getting everything you ever wanted is hard enough. But getting everything you never wanted? That's a whole lot trickier...Everything We Never Wanted is a new stand-alone lesbian romance from Sienna Waters, the author of the Oakview and Monday's Child lesfic series.
Trans Mission: My Quest to a Beard
Alex Bertie - 2017
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.
Now Is the Hour
Tom Spanbauer - 2006
Now Is the Hour is the wondrous story of how Rigby John got to this point. It traces his gradual emancipation from the repressions of a strictly religious farming family and from the small-minded, bigoted community in which he has grown up during a time of explosive cultural change. Transforming this familiar journey from American Graffiti to On the Road into something rich and strange and hilarious is the persona of Rigby John himself. Intimately in touch with his fears, hesitantly awakening to his own sexuality, and palpably open to life's mysteries, Rigby John is a protagonist whom readers will fall in love with, root for, and be moved by.Now Is the Hour is a powerful, vastly entertaining story of self-awakening, of the complex bonds of family, and ultimately of America during a period of tremendous upheaval.