In the Dream House


Carmen Maria Machado - 2019
    In this extraordinarily candid and radically inventive memoir, Machado tackles a dark and difficult subject with wit, inventiveness and an inquiring spirit, as she uses a series of narrative tropes—including classic horror themes—to create an entirely unique piece of work which is destined to become an instant classic.

Eyes Too Dry: A Graphic Memoir About Heavy Feelings


Alice Chipkin - 2017
    And from Alice’s perspective as a primary support person in particular, there was almost nothing at all. In a world that tells us to 'keep calm and carry on' the authors are offering a narrative that is vulnerable, honest and uncertain. They hope to add new ways to talk about, visualise and relate to these complex emotions.

Wild Girls: Paris, Sappho, and Art: The Lives and Loves of Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks


Diana Souhami - 2004
    They met in Paris in 1915, and their relationship lasted more than fifty years despite infidelity, separation, and temperamental differences.Told by Diana Souhami, the critically acclaimed author of Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter, Wild Girls is the story of two audacious women and the world they inhabited.Natalie Barney believed that living was "the first of all arts." She published memoirs and collections of poems and aphorisms, but her passion was for seduction and love. She liked lavish displays, lots of sex, and love unbounded by rules. At her Friday afternoon salons, in the Grecian Temple of Friendship in the garden of her Paris home, "one met lesbians." Lovers and friends circled the Amazon, as she was called. She aspired to make her temple the Sapphic center of the western world.Romaine Brooks's prime interests, on the other hand, were herself and her painting. She produced many self-portraits and portraits of her own and Natalie's lovers and friends. She endured an unhappy childhood and a fraught relationship with her mother. She trusted no one but Natalie.Natalie and Romaine are at the center of this "Sapphic Idyll." Included, too, are their lovers and friends before and after they met: Liane de Pougy, the exquisite courtesan and lover of princes; Renee Vivien, poet of melancholy and death, who died of anorexia at age thirty-two; Dolly Wilde, niece of Oscar, who ran up huge bills and died of a drug overdose; the prima ballerina Ida Rubinstein; the writer Gabriele D'Annunzio - and many others.Natalie's salon, attended by Gertrude Stein, and Colette and Edith Sitwell, was a magnet for social introductions and cultural innovations. Drawing from letters, papers, and paintings, Diana Souhami re-creates the lives and loves of this pair of dazzling and wild women.

First Year Out: A Transition Story


Sabrina Symington - 2017
    Depicting her experiences from coming out right through to gender reassignment surgery, Lily's story provides vital advice on the social, emotional and medical aspects of transitioning and will empower anyone questioning their gender.

秘めごとあそび 1 [Himegoto Asobi 1]


Yaya Sakuragi - 2012
    Though the doctor has one majime looking face but deep within he's a gentle soul. Not to mention he isn't afraid of showing his love or the fact that he's gay.The game of “trick-or-love” between the happy-go-lucky father and the scary but popular pediatrician! Normally the paths of a shrewd man and a stoic man would never cross…

The Times I Knew I Was Gay


Eleanor Crewes - 2020
    As a girl, she wore black, obsessed over Willow in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and found dating boys much more confusing than many of her friends did. As she grew older, so did her fears and a deep sense of unbelonging. From her first communion to her first girlfriend via a swathe of self-denial, awkward encounters, and everyday courage, Ellie tells her story through gorgeous illustrations—a fresh and funny self-portrait of a young woman becoming herself. The Times I Knew I Was Gay reminds us that people sometimes come out not just once but again and again; that identity is not necessarily about falling in love with others, but about coming to terms with oneself. Full of vitality and humor, it will ring true for anyone who has taken the time to discover who they truly are.

Heartstopper: Volume One


Alice Oseman - 2018
    Friendship blooms quickly, but could there be something more...?Charlie Spring is in Year 10 at Truham Grammar School for Boys. The past year hasn't been too great, but at least he's not being bullied anymore. Nick Nelson is in Year 11 and on the school rugby team. He's heard a little about Charlie - the kid who was outed last year and bullied for a few months - but he's never had the opportunity to talk to him.They quickly become friends, and soon Charlie is falling hard for Nick, even though he doesn't think he has a chance. But love works in surprising ways, and sometimes good things are waiting just around the corner...

Missed Her


Ivan E. Coyote - 2010
    Coyote is a master storyteller and performer; their beautiful, funny stories about growing up a lesbian butch in the Canadian north have attracted big audiences whether gay, straight, or otherwise. Missed Her is Ivan's fifth story collection, following 2008's Lambda-nominated The Slow Fix and Bow Grip, their novel that was named a Stonewall Honor Book by the American Library Association. Whether discussing the politics of being a butch with a pet lapdog or berating a gay newspaper for considering butches and trans people as "extreme," Ivan traverses issues of gender and identity with a wistful, perceptive eye.

Fire Shut Up in My Bones


Charles M. Blow - 2014
    Blow mines the compelling poetry of the out-of-time African-American Louisiana town where he grew up -- a place where slavery's legacy felt astonishingly close, reverberating in the elders' stories and in the near-constant wash of violence.Blow's attachment to his mother -- a fiercely driven woman with five sons, brass knuckles in her glove box, a job plucking poultry at a nearby factory, a soon-to-be-ex husband, and a love of newspapers and learning -- cannot protect him from secret abuse at the hands of an older cousin. It's damage that triggers years of anger and searing self-questioning.Finally, Blow escapes to a nearby state university, where he joins a black fraternity after a passage of brutal hazing, and then enters a world of racial and sexual privilege that feels like everything he's ever needed and wanted, until he's called upon, himself, to become the one perpetuating the shocking abuse.A powerfully redemptive memoir that both fits the tradition of African-American storytelling from the South, and gives it an indelible new slant.

Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371


M.K. Czerwiec - 2017
    Taking Turns pulls back the curtain on life in the ward.A shining example of excellence in the treatment and care of patients, Unit 371 was a community for thousands of patients and families affected by HIV and AIDS and the people who cared for them. This graphic novel combines Czerwiec’s memories with the oral histories of patients, family members, and staff. It depicts life and death in the ward, the ways the unit affected and informed those who passed through it, and how many look back on their time there today. Czerwiec joined Unit 371 at a pivotal time in the history of AIDS: deaths from the syndrome in the Midwest peaked in 1995 and then dropped drastically in the following years, with the release of antiretroviral protease inhibitors. This positive turn of events led to a decline in patient populations and, ultimately, to the closure of Unit 371. Czerwiec’s restrained, inviting drawing style and carefully considered narrative examine individual, institutional, and community responses to the AIDS epidemic—as well as the role that art can play in the grieving process.Deeply personal yet made up of many voices, this history of daily life in a unique AIDS care unit is an open, honest look at suffering, grief, and hope among a community of medical professionals and patients at the heart of the epidemic.

Pregnant Butch: Nine Long Months Spent in Drag


A.K. Summers - 2014
    Teek wonders, “Can butches even get pregnant?”Of course, as she and her pragmatic femme girlfriend Vee discover, they can. But what happens when they do? Written and illustrated by A.K. Summers, and based on her own pregnancy, Pregnant Butch strives to depict this increasingly common, but still underrepresented experience of queer pregnancy with humor and complexity—from the question of whether suspenders count as legitimate maternity wear to the strains created by different views of pregnancy within a couple and finally to a culturally critical and compassionate interrogation of gender in pregnancy. Offering smart, ambitious art, this graphic memoir is a must-read for would-be pregnant butches and anyone interested in the intersection of birth and gender, as well as a perfect queer baby shower gift and conversation starter for those who always assumed they “got” being pregnant.

Just Kids


Patti Smith - 2010
    An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.

Brother


Yuzuha Ougi - 2004
    Since then, Yui has avoided Asuka at all costs, going so far as to leave Japan and study in America.

The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard


Stephen Jimenez - 2013
    Eighteen hours later, Matthew was found tied to a log fence on the outskirts of town, unconscious and barely alive. He had been pistol-whipped so severely that the mountain biker who discovered his battered frame mistook him for a Halloween scarecrow. Overnight, a politically expedient myth took the place of important facts. By the time Matthew died a few days later, his name was synonymous with anti-gay hate. Stephen Jimenez went to Laramie to research the story of Matthew Shepard’s murder in 2000, after the two men convicted of killing him had gone to prison, and after the national media had moved on. His aim was to write a screenplay on what he, and the rest of the nation, believed to be an open-and-shut case of bigoted violence. As a gay man, he felt an added moral imperative to tell Matthew’s story. But what Jimenez eventually found in Wyoming was a tangled web of secrets. His exhaustive investigation also plunged him deep into the deadly underworld of drug trafficking. Over the course of a thirteen-year investigation, Jimenez traveled to twenty states and Washington DC, and interviewed more than a hundred named sources. The Book of Matt is sure to stir passions and inspire dialogue as it re-frames this misconstrued crime and its cast of characters, proving irrefutably that Matthew Shepard was not killed for being gay but for reasons far more complicated — and daunting.

No Walls and the Recurring Dream: A Memoir


Ani DiFranco - 2019
    In these frank, honest, passionate, and often funny pages is the tale of one woman's eventful and radical journey to the age of thirty. Ani's coming of age story is defined by her ethos of fierce independence--from being an emancipated minor sleeping in a Buffalo bus station, to unwaveringly building a career through appearances at small clubs and festivals, to releasing her first album at the age of 18, to consciously rejecting the mainstream recording industry and creating her own label, Righteous Babe Records. In these pages, as in life, she never hesitates to challenge established rules and expectations, maintaining a level of artistic integrity that has impressed many and antagonized more than a few. Ani continues to be a major touring and recording artist as well as a celebrated activist and feminist, standing as living proof that you can overcome all personal and societal obstacles to be who you are and to follow your dreams.