One Big Happy Family: 18 Writers Talk About Polyamory, Open Adoption, Mixed Marriage, Househusbandry, Single Motherhood, and Other Realities of Truly Modern Love


Rebecca Walker - 2009
    Edited by bestselling author Rebecca Walker, this anthology invites us to step into the center of a range of different domestic arrangements and take a good look around. From gay adoption to absentee fathers, from open marriages to green-card marriages, the reality of the American household has altered dramatically over the last three decades. With changing values and expectations, fluid gender roles, and a shifting economy, along with increase in infertility, adoption, and the incidence of mixed-race couples, people across the country are redefining the standard arrangement of family life. In a collection of eighteen honest, personal, and deeply affecting essays from an array of writers, One Big Happy Family offers a fresh look at how contemporary families are adapting to this altering reality. Each writing from the perspective of his or her own unique domestic arrangements and priorities, the authors of these essays explore topics like transracial adoption, bicultural marriage and children, cohousing, equal parenting, and the creation of virtual families. Dan Savage writes about the unexpected responsibilities of open adoption. Jenny Block tells of the pros and cons of her own open marriage. ZZ Packer explores the ramifications of, and her own self-consciousness about, having a mixed-race child. asha bandele writes of her decision to have a child with a man in prison for life. And Min Jin Lee points to the intimacy shared by a mother and her child’s hired caregiver. All of these pieces smartly discuss the various cultural pressures, issues, and realities for families today, in a manner that is inviting and accessible—sometimes humorous, sometimes moving, sometimes shocking, but always fascinating.

The Gender Book


Mel Reiff Hill - 2011
    So we set out to make our own.the GENDER book is a fun, colorful, community-based resource, which illustrates the beautiful diversity of gender - a gender 101 for anyone and everyone.

We Don't Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists


Melody BergerShelby Knox - 2006
    Today’s young feminists are wary of being labeled. They are media-savvy, hyper-aware of being categorized and marginalized, and are here to tell the world that feminists are feminists — diverse in age and experience — and that it’s time to drop the labels in favor of proactive agendas and united goals.Topics that matter to young feminists range from lighter issues, such as DIY culture and craftivism, to heavy-hitting issues that feminists have struggled with for generations, including abuse, rape, shame, and self-hatred. The young writers in this collection band together under the banner of feminism to share the message that the F-word is a good thing, and that feminists are breaking new ground while still valuing the traditions and achievements of their sisters and foremothers.We Don’t Need Another Wave brings a message of unity and a message to get beyond subcategorizing a movement that needs cohesiveness and strives on strength in numbers.

Ask Me About Polyamory: The Best of Kimchi Cuddles


Tikva Wolf - 2016
    If your relationships or your gender are unconventional, you’ll find useful advice and plenty of laughs in this compilation of the wildly popular webcomic Kimchi Cuddles. Quirky, endearing and charmingly (and sometimes painfully) realistic characters, many based on real people, explore polyamory, queer and genderqueer issues. Covering practical matters like time management and serious topics like discrimination, this book unites the best of two years of Kimchi Cuddles comics, organized into a practical and entertaining guide to the real world of alternative relationships. Kimchi Cuddles is a rare mix: fearlessly true to the lives of the people it depicts yet relatable enough to entertain and inform anyone (maybe even your parents). Dealing with both lighthearted and serious subject matter, it avoids clichés and easy answers, choosing instead to give examples of different schools of thought and show the humanity behind each one. Wolf’s honesty and gift for clear explanation have made Kimchi Cuddles a hit with the most dedicated polyamorists as well as curious newcomers.

Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays


June Jordan - 2002
    The essays in this collection, which include her last writings and span the length of her extraordinary career, reveal Jordan as an incisive analyst of the personal and public costs of remaining committed to the ideal and practice of democracy. Willing to venture into the most painful contradictions of American culture and politics, Jordan comes back with lyrical honesty, wit, and wide-ranging intelligence in these accounts of her reckoning with life as a teacher, poet, activist, and citizen.

Body Horror: Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes


Anne Elizabeth Moore - 2017
    In Body Horror, Anne Elizabeth Moore explores the global toll of capitalism on women with thorough research, surprising humor, and ease—especially when examining her own experiences with disease and health care—to create a portrait of contemporary American culture that is gory and fascinating.Anne Elizabeth Moore is the author of Unmarketable and Cambodian Grrrl, co-editor and publisher of the now-defunct Punk Planet, a founding editor of Best American Comics, a Fulbright scholar, former UN Press Fellow, and USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellow.

Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day


Peter Ackroyd - 2017
    Then came the Emperor Constantine, with his bishops, monks and missionaries. And so began an endless loop of alternating permissiveness and censure.Ackroyd takes us right into the hidden history of the city; from the notorious Normans to the frenzy of executions for sodomy in the early nineteenth century. He journeys through the coffee bars of sixties Soho to Gay Liberation, disco music and the horror of AIDS.Today, we live in an era of openness and tolerance and Queer London has become part of the new norm. Ackroyd tells us the hidden story of how it got there, celebrating its diversity, thrills and energy on the one hand; but reminding us of its very real terrors, dangers and risks on the other.'Peter Ackroyd is the greatest living chronicler of London' Independent

Anarchism


Daniel Guérin - 1965
    “One of the ablest leaders and writers of the French New Left describes the two realms of ‘anarchism’—its intellectual substance, and its actual practice through the Bolshevik Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the Italian Factory Councils, and finally the role in workers’ self-management in Yugoslavia and Algeria… An important contemporary definition of New Left aims and their possible directions in the future.” —Publishers Weekly

Ask: Building Consent Culture


Kitty StrykerPorscha Coleman - 2017
    To resist rape culture, we need a consent culture—and one that is more than just reactionary. Left confined to intimate spaces, consent will atrophy as theory that is never put into practice. The multi-layered power disparities of today’s world require a response sensitive to a wide range of lived experiences.  In Ask, Kitty Stryker assembles a retinue of writers, journalists, and activists to examine how a cultural politic centered on consent can empower us outside the bedroom, whether it’s at the doctor’s office, interacting with law enforcement, or calling out financial abuse within radical communities. More than a collection of essays, Ask is a testimony and guide on the role that negated consent plays in our lives, examining how we can take those first steps to reclaim it from institutionalized power.

Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940


George Chauncey - 1994
    Drawing on a rich trove of diaries, legal records, and other unpublished documents, George Chauncey constructs a fascinating portrait of a vibrant, cohesive gay world that is not supposed to have existed. Called "monumental" (Washington Post), "unassailable" (Boston Globe), "brilliant" (The Nation), and "a first-rate book of history" (The New York Times), Gay New Yorkforever changed how we think about the history of gay life in New York City, and beyond.

First Person Queer: Who We Are (So Far)


Richard Labonté - 2007
    These are the stories of contemporary gay and lesbian life—and by definition, are funny, sad, hopeful, and truthful. Representing a diversity of genders, ages, races, and orientations, and edited by two acclaimed writers and anthologists (who between them have written or edited almost one hundred books), First Person Queer puts the “personal” back into “queer.”

Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice


Rudolf Rocker - 1938
    Within, Rocker offers an introduction to anarchist ideas, a history of the international workers’ movement, and an outline of the syndicalist strategies and tactics embraced at the time (direct action, sabotage and the general strike). Includes a lengthy introduction by Nicholas Walter and a Preface by Noam Chomsky.“[Rocker’s] approach is far from ‘utopian’; this is not an abstract discourse but a call to action.”—Noam ChomskyRudolf Rocker (1873–1958) was a leading figure in the international anarchist movement for over 60 years.In Oakland, California on March 24, 2015 a fire destroyed the AK Press warehouse along with several other businesses. Please consider visiting the AK Press website to learn more about the fundraiser to help them and their neighbors.