Michel Foucault offers an iconoclastic exploration of why we feel compelled to continually analyze and discuss sex, and of the social and mental mechanisms of power that cause us to direct the questions of what we are to what our sexuality is.

    Their relationship begins with mutual romantic passion, matures through stormy periods of enforced separation and competing interests, and warms into an enduring, encompassing friendship documented by 3300 letters. Set during the chaotic years of the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Second World War, Loving Eleanor reveals Eleanor Roosevelt as a complex, contradictory, and entirely human woman who is pulled in many directions by her obligations to her husband and family and her role as the nation's First Lady. Hick is revealed as an accomplished journalist, who, at the pinnacle of her career, gives it all up for the woman she loves. Then, as Eleanor is transformed into Eleanor Everywhere, First Lady of the World, Hick must create her own independent, productive life. Loving Eleanor is a profoundly moving novel that illuminates a relationship we are seldom privileged to see, celebrating the depth and durability of women's love.

    An essential element of self-realization, it is the unabashed acceptance of one's "outlaw" standing in a predominantly heterosexual world.These accounts -- sometimes heart-wrenching, often exhilarating -- encompass a wide breadth of backgrounds and experiences. From a teenager institutionalized for her passion for women to the mother who must come out to her young sons at the risk of losing them -- from the cautious academic to the raucous liberated femme -- each woman represented here tells of forging a unique path toward the difficult but emancipating recognition of herself. Extending from the 1940s to the present day, these intensely personal stories in turn reflect a unique history of the changing social mores that affected each woman's ability to determine the shape of her own life. Together they form an ornate tapestry of lesbian and bisexual experience in the United States over the past half-century. This song is dedicated to the one I love / Bertha Harris --Widows / Judy Grahn --Mad for her / Jill Johnston --First love / Karla Jay --Novelties / Joan Nestle --The secret agent / Jane DeLynn --My debut / Blanche McCrary Boyd --Red light, green light / Beatrix Gates --A vision / Rebecca Brown --Richard Nixon and me / Heather Lewis --Cherry picker / Chrystos --Born queer / Judith Katz --What comes first / Holly Hughes --House of corals / Cheryl Boyce Taylor --Bride of Christ / Mary Beth Caschetta --The coming out of a gay pride child / Elizabeth Lorde-Rollins --Easter Weekend / Minnie Bruce Pratt --Pot luck / Cynthia Bond --A letter to some lesbians who've been out for a long time / Mariana Romo-Carmona --Waking up / Jacquie Bishop --Banditos / Eileen Myles --Coming out--or going more deeply in? / Margaret Randall --Sequins in the mud : a cover girl comes out! / Karin Cook --Mind and body / Wendy W. Fairey --Always coming / Letta Neely --This girl is different / Tristam Taormino --Picture this / Cecilia Tan --Layers of the onion, spokes of the wheel / Pat Calafia --Freedom rings / Kanani Kauka --Together alone / Eva Kollisch --Diary of a mad lesbian / Lesléa Newman.

    To cover is to downplay a disfavored trait so as to blend into the mainstream. Because all of us possess stigmatized attributes, we all encounter pressure to cover in our daily lives. Given its pervasiveness, we may experience this pressure to be a simple fact of social life.Against conventional understanding, Kenji Yoshino argues that the demand to cover can pose a hidden threat to our civil rights. Though we have come to some consensus against penalizing people for differences based on race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, and disability, we still routinely deny equal treatment to people who refuse to downplay differences along these lines. Racial minorities are pressed to “act white” by changing their names, languages, or cultural practices. Women are told to “play like men” at work. Gays are asked not to engage in public displays of same-sex affection. The devout are instructed to minimize expressions of faith, and individuals with disabilities are urged to conceal the paraphernalia that permit them to function. In a wide-ranging analysis, Yoshino demonstrates that American civil rights law has generally ignored the threat posed by these covering demands. With passion and rigor, he shows that the work of civil rights will not be complete until it attends to the harms of coerced conformity. At the same time, Yoshino is responsive to the American exasperation with identity politics, which often seems like an endless parade of groups asking for state and social solicitude. He observes that the ubiquity of the covering demand provides an opportunity to lift civil rights into a higher, more universal register. Since we all experience the covering demand, we can all make common cause around a new civil rights paradigm based on our desire for authenticity–a desire that brings us together rather than driving us apart. Yoshino’s argument draws deeply on his personal experiences as a gay Asian American. He follows the Romantics in his belief that if a human life is described with enough particularity, the universal will speak through it. The result is a work that combines one of the most moving memoirs written in years with a landmark manifesto on the civil rights of the future. “This brilliantly argued and engaging book does two things at once, and it does them both astonishingly well. First, it's a finely grained memoir of young man’s struggles to come to terms with his sexuality, and second, it's a powerful argument for a whole new way of thinking about civil rights and how our society deals with difference. This book challenges us all to confront our own unacknowledged biases, and it demands that we take seriously the idea that there are many different ways to be human. Kenji Yoshino is the face and the voice of the new civil rights.” -Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed“Kenji Yoshino has not only given us an important, compelling new way to understand civil rights law, a major accomplishment in itself, but with great bravery and honesty, he has forged his argument from the cauldron of his own experience. In clear, lyrical prose, Covering quite literally brings the law to life. The result is a book about our public and private selves as convincing to the spirit as it is to the mind.” -Adam Haslett, author of You Are Not A Stranger Here“Kenji Yoshino's work is often moving and always clarifying. Covering elaborates an original, arresting account of identity and authenticity in American culture.”-Anthony Appiah, author of The Ethics of Identity and Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor Of Philosophy at Princeton University“This stunning book introduces three faces of the remarkable Kenji Yoshino: a writer of poetic beauty; a soul of rare reflectivity and decency; and a brilliant lawyer and scholar, passionately committed to uncovering human rights. Like W.E.B. DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, this book fearlessly blends gripping narrative with insightful analysis to further the cause of human emancipation. And like those classics, it should explode into America's consciousness.”-Harold Hongju Koh Dean, Yale Law School and former Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights“Covering is a magnificent work - so eloquently and powerfully written I literally could not put it down. Sweeping in breadth, brilliantly argued, and filled with insight, humor, and erudition, it offers a fundamentally new perspective on civil rights and discrimination law. This extraordinary book is many things at once: an intensely moving personal memoir; a breathtaking historical and cultural synthesis of assimilation and American equality law; an explosive new paradigm for transcending the morass of identity politics; and in parts, pure poetry. No one interested in civil rights, sexuality, discrimination - or simply human flourishing - can afford to miss it.” -Amy Chua, author of World on Fire“In this stunning, original book, Kenji Yoshino demonstrates that the struggle for gay rights is not only a struggle to liberate gays---it is a struggle to free all of us, straight and gay, male and female, white and black, from the pressures and temptations to cover vital aspects of ourselves and deprive ourselves and others of our full humanity. Yoshino is both poet and lawyer, and by joining an exquisitely observed personal memoir with a historical analysis of civil rights, he shows why gay rights is so controversial at present, why “covering” is the issue of contention, and why the “covering demand,” universal in application, is the civil rights issue of our time. This is a beautifully written, brilliant and hopeful book, offering a new understanding of what is at stake in our fight for human rights.” -Carol Gilligan, author of In a Different Voice

    Deeply researched and fully illustrated, this book demystifies an intensely personal—yet universal—facet of humanity. Illustrating a different concept on each spread, queer author and artist Iris Gottlieb touches on history, science, sociology, and her own experience. This book is an essential tool for understanding and contributing to a necessary cultural conversation, bringing clarity and reassurance to the sometimes confusing process of navigating ones' identity. Whether LGBTQ+, cisgender, or nonbinary, Seeing Gender is a must-read for intelligent, curious, want-to-be woke people who care about how we see and talk about gender and sexuality in the 21st century.