The Creamsickle
Rhiannon Argo - 2009
Georgie--a hopeless romantic with a weakness for punk-rock-girls even if they consistently trample her heart. Cruzer--a Mexican-American photographer, the tough kid, who chases love all the way to the East Coast. Soda--a gender queer heartthrob from the Midwest, who dreams of pirate ships, moustaches and femme foxes. Welcome to The Creamsickle, the ultimate bachelor pad, a lopsided Victorian in the Mission District, home to this rascally crew of charming skater bois who hop from one bed to another in pursuit of sex, love or just the next new thrill. This is a San Francisco you have never seen, an eclectic landscape of dyke clubs and dyke havens, along with the exotic Minxy, a wonderland where baby butch Georgie enters the femme-centric world of strippers for the most comical gender-bending education of all. Discover today's world of young queers, a world where personal identity is in constant flux, where gender exploration can be performance--or a life saving transition. Beneath the sex, music, drugs and drama, you'll find something true and timeless: a search for love, for queer family, for meaning, for connection, and affirmation.
Spent
Antonia Crane - 2014
She gets drugged, does enema shows, and unionizes the club. When she tries to quit and go to graduate school, her mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Broke and broken, she returns to sex work, which leads to her arrest and a new resilience. Spent is a memoir about a woman’s journey through the sex industry, but it’s also a story of family, community, and our constant struggle against loneliness.
The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse
Lonely Christopher - 2011
Lonely Christopher combines a striking emotional grammar, reminiscent of Gertrude Stein's Three Lives, with an unyielding imagination in the lovely/ugly architecture of his stories.Lonely Christopher is the author of several poetry chapbooks and is a contributor to the poetry volume Into (Seven Circles Press). His plays have been published, staged in New York City and internationally, and released in Mandarin translation. His fiction received Pratt Institute's 2009 Thesis Award. He is a founding member of the small press The Corresponding Society and an editor of its biannual journal Correspondence. He lives in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.
playtime
Andrew McMillan - 2018
Examining our teenage rites of passage: those dilemmas and traumas that shape us – eating disorders, masturbation, loss of virginity – the poet examines how we use bodies, both our own and other people’s, to chart our progress towards selfhood.McMillan’s award-winning debut collection, physical, was praised for a poetry that was tight and powerful, raw and tender, and playtime expands that narrative frame and widens the gaze. Alongside poems in praise of the naivety of youth, there are those that explore the troubling intersections of violence, masculinity, class and sexuality, always taking the reader with them towards a better understanding of our own physicality. ‘isn’t this what human kind was made for’, McMillan asks in one poem, ‘telling stories learning where the skin/is most in need of touch’. These humane and vital poems are confessions, both in the spiritual and personal sense; they tell us stories that some of us, perhaps, have never found the courage to read before.
Continental Divide
Alex Myers - 2019
His parents reject him. His girlfriend rejects him. Feeling trapped and miserable, Ron decides to leave Harvard and travel west to work on a Wyoming ranch to prove to his parents, his ex, and himself that he can live unequivocally as a man. As he embarks on this journey of independence, Ron must deal with the constant fear and anxiety of being discovered as a trans man as he enters a world more dangerous than he ever imagined.
She of the Mountains
Vivek Shraya - 2014
There is no she.Two cells make up one cell. This is the mathematics behind creation. One plus one makes one. Life begets life. We are the period to a sentence, the effect to a cause, always belonging to someone. We are never our own.This is why we are so lonely.She of the Mountains is a beautifully rendered illustrated novel by Vivek Shraya, the author of the Lambda Literary Award finalist God Loves Hair. Shraya weaves a passionate, contemporary love story between a man and his body, with a re-imagining of Hindu mythology. Both narratives explore the complexities of embodiment and the damaging effects that policing gender and sexuality can have on the human heart.Illustrations are by Raymond Biesinger, whose work has appeared in such publications as The New Yorker and the New York Times.Vivek Shraya is a multimedia artist, working in the mediums of music, performance, literature, and film. Her most recent film, What I LOVE about Being QUEER, has been expanded to include an online project and book with contributions from around the world. She is also author of God Loves Hairand Even This Page Is White.
I Shimmer Sometimes, Too
Porsha Olayiwola - 2019
These poems dip their hands deep into the fabric of black womanhood, pulling out all of its threads. This book establishes Porsha O firmly in the lineage of black queer poetics, pulling equally from Audre Lorde and Danez Smith. This is a book of gentle breaking and inventive reconstruction. This is a book of self-care, and community-care--the pursuit of building a world that will keep you alive.
Dress Codes: Of Three Girlhoods—My Mother's, My Father's, and Mine
Noelle Howey - 2002
In compensating for her father's brusqueness, Noelle idolized her nurturing tomboy mother and her conservative grandma who tried to turn her into "a little lady." At age fourteen, Noelle's mom told her the family secret: "Dad likes to wear women's clothes." As Noelle copes with a turbulent adolescence, her father begins to metamorphose into the loving parent she had always longed for—only now outfitted in pedal pushers and pink lipstick.
Outline of My Lover
Douglas A. Martin - 2000
In the sleepy town of Athens, Georgia, a young man goes off to a college miseducation and is drawn into a world of rich vicarious living. The unspoken relationship between this adolescent and his luminous rock star boyfriend fast becomes the marking tale of world tours and plush continental hotel rooms. However, the relationship falters under celebrity's harsh, shape-shifting light. Real life fills in the outline of the boy's expectations.
Everything Is Beautiful, and I'm Not Afraid: A Baopu Collection
Yao Xiao - 2020
Baopu is a monthly serialized comic on Autostraddle, and this book includes beloved fan favorites plus new, never-before-seen comics.This one-of-a-kind graphic novel explores the poetics of searching for connection, belonging, and identity through the fictional life of a young, queer immigrant. Inspired by the creator's own experiences as a queer, China-born illustrator living in the United States, Everything Is Beautiful, and I'm Not Afraid has an undeniable memoir quality to its recollection and thought-provoking accounts of what it's like to navigate the complexities of seeking belonging—mentally and geographically.
So Much Synth
Brenda Shaughnessy - 2016
. . is utterly poetic, but essayistic in scope."—The New Yorker"Brenda Shaughnessy's work is a good place to start for any passionate woman feeling daunted by poetry." —Cosmopolitan"Shaughnessy's voice is smart, sexy, self-aware, hip . . . consistently wry, and ever savvy."—Harvard ReviewSubversions of idiom and cliché punctuate Shaughnessy's fourth collection as she approaches middle age and revisits the memories, romances, and music of adolescence. So Much Synth is a brave and ferocious collection composed of equal parts femininity, pain, pleasure, and synthesizer. While Shaughnessy tenderly winces at her youthful excesses, we humbly catch glimpses of our own.From "Never Ever":Late is a synonym for dead which is a euphemismfor ever. Ever is a double-edged word,at once itself and its own opposite: alwaysand always some other time. In the category of cleave, then. To cut and to cling to,somewhat mournfully…Brenda Shaughnessy was born in Okinawa, Japan and grew up in Southern California. She is the author of three books of poetry, including Human Dark with Sugar, winner of the James Laughlin Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Our Andromeda, which was a New York Times Book Review "100 Notable Books of 2013." She is an assistant professor of English at Rutgers University, Newark, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Boys Like Her: Transfictions
Taste This - 1998
Kate Bornstein provides an introduction. Boys Like Her is a road movie of young queer life. Four distinct voices come together in a tag-team dialogue, interwoven with disturbingly beautiful photographs that echo their transformative energy.Reading this book is like watching a circus troupe juggle a chainsaw, a grapefruit, a beach ball and a pocket watch without dropping a beat, With identities ranging from boy-girl to power-femme to borderline testosterone-enhanced, these talented upstarts explore and explode gender, sex and family. Gentleness is mixed with harsh honesty, as grandmother's good advice jostles with hormone therapy, surviving the psych ward, rough play and lost love. Each piece stands alone, together they are a conversation, a road movie of young queer life, rolling with the punches and taking the reader along for a ride to remember!
Anything But Real
Alex West - 2017
Good at hiding the truth. So when Ben and Reid find each other again after years apart, they're surprised when the last thing they want to say is goodbye. And when Ben's sister gets engaged, asking Reid to be his wedding date feels like the right thing to do. In fact, everything about being with Reid feels right.But when an unexpected announcement turns them from second chance boyfriends to fake fiancés, their relationship ignites in lies. Soon, both Ben and Reid are faced with the ultimate decision, one that will define their lives forever. Is their accidental engagement worth losing a future together? Because even though a wedding may be easy to fake, Ben and Reid are beginning to realize their hearts don't lie as easily. Get ready to fall in love with Anything But Real, the perfect summer beach read with the perfect happily ever after.
You and Your Gender Identity: A Guide to Discovery
Dara Hoffman-Fox - 2016
Are you wrestling with questions surrounding your gender that just don't seem to go away? Do you want answers to questions about your gender identity, but aren't sure how to get started?In this groundbreaking guide, Dara Hoffman-Fox, LPC--accomplished gender therapist and thought leader whose articles, blogs, and videos have empowered thousands worldwide--helps you navigate your journey of self-discovery in three approachable stages: preparation, reflection, and exploration.In You and Your Gender Identity, you will learn: Why understanding your gender identity is core to embracing your full beingHow to sustain the highs and lows of your journey with resources, connection, and self-careHow to uncover and move through your feelings of fear, loneliness, and doubtWhy it's important to examine your past through the lens of gender explorationHow to discover and begin living as your authentic selfWhat options you have after making your discoveries about your gender identity
