I Will Survive


Leow Yangfa - 2011
    Prefacing these stories are contributions from 5 local commentators who share their personal reflections on the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities in Singapore. They are: Mrs Juliana Toh, Executive Director of Counselling and Care Centre; Reverend Yap Kim Hao, former Methodist Bishop of Singapore; transgender activist Ms Leona Lo; and former Nominated Members of Parliament Ms Braema Mathi and Mr Siew Kum Hong. The book also contains a glossary of the common terms used to describe the diversity within the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities, and a listing of relevant community and professional resources in Singapore. The editor’s proceeds from sales of the ebook will be donated to Oogachaga, a counselling and support service.

The Berlin Stories


Christopher Isherwood - 1945
    Norris and Goodbye to Berlin, which make up The Berlin Stories are recognized today as classics of modern fiction.A charming city of avenues and cafés, a grotesque city of night-people and fantasts, a dangerous city of vice and intrigue, a powerful city of millionaires and mobs - all this was Berlin in 1931, the period when Hitler was beginning his move to power.Here are Mr. Norris, the improbable old debauchee mysteriously caught in the struggle between Nazis and Communists; plump Fräulein Schroeder, who thinks an operation to reduce the scale of her Büste might relieve her heart palpitations; the Landauers, a distinguished and doomed Jewish family; Sally Bowles, whose misadventures in the demimonde were popularized on the American stage and screen by Julie Harris in "I Am a Camera" and by Liza Minelli in "Cabaret."

Flashpoint


Katherine V. Forrest - 1994
    A political decision to be announced this weekend in California will signal far-reaching ramifications for America's lesbian and gay community.At a cabin in a Southern California mountain resort, three lesbians and a gay man wait in mutual antagonism for Donnelly, the woman who has summoned them here, the woman with whom they have all shared a part of their lives.Publisher Bradley Jones was once married to her. Cabin owner Pat Decker, a teacher nearing retirement, took her away from Bradley.Averill Calder Harmon, in the topmost rank of professional golfers on the LPGA tour, lured Donnelly away from Pat. Querida Quemada, a successful young Chicana professional, is Donnelly's current partner.Donnelly, an activist connected at the highest levels of the national scene, knows about the forthcoming political decision. In the certainty of her connection to these four people, she is convinced that the time is now for each of them to take vital and profoundly personal action.But even Donnelly cannot dream of the extent to which this weekend will be a watershed, with consequences reaching far beyond any of them.Published on the eve of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Stonewall Inn uprising and the birth of the modern gay rights movement, FLASHPOINT is the novel for our times.

Cobra Killer: Gay Porn, Murder, and the Manhunt to Bring the Killers to Justice


Andrew E. Stoner - 2012
    Stoner and Peter A. Conway tell for the first time in full detail the twisted story of a pair of young, aspiring gay adult film producers whose quest for fame at any cost leads to the gruesome murder of the man who stands in their way, gay porn entrepreneur Bryan Kocis.News of the killing of the forty-four-year-old (stabbed twenty-eight times, his throat slashed to near decapitation) in his suburban home sends shock waves through the bucolic Pennsylvania town. Neighbors were horrified to hear about the murder but equally astonished to learn that Kocis ran a small but thriving online porn operation from his home.The murder investigation leads police and prosecutors to the far reaches of the country, from Virginia to New York City, to Las Vegas, and ultimately to a nude beach in San Diego, where investigators facilitate an incredible clandestine suspect surveillance. The manhunt nets Harlow Cuadra and his lover Joseph Kerekes, both former military men, turned male models, turned hustlers, turned porn producers, who finally land at the bottom of a deadly conspiracy.Cobra Killer takes readers into the sometimes alluring, sometimes dangerous and often surprising world of gay porn and the deceit, schemes, and ultimate betrayals lying underneath the fantasy.

What Runs Over


Kayleb Rae Candrilli - 2017
    Unfurling and unrelenting in its delivery, Candrilli has painted “the mountain” in excruciating detail. They show readers a world of Borax cured bear hides and canned peaches, of urine-filled Gatorade bottles and the syringe and all the syringe may carry. They show a violent world and its many personas. What Runs Over, too, is a story of rural queerness, of a transgender boy almost lost to the forest. The miracle of What Runs Over is that Candrilli has lived to write it at all."When Roethke said 'energy is the soul of poetry,' he might have been anticipating a book like What Runs Over, which is so full of energy it practically vibrates in your hand. Here, Candrilli’s speaker sticks their tongue 'into the heads / of venus fly traps just to feel the bite,' then later, burns holy books in the backyard and rolls around in the ashes until they become 'a painted god.' This is the verve of an urgent new poetic voice announcing itself to the world. As Candrilli writes: 'This is what I look like / when I’m trying to save myself.'"-Kaveh Akbar

Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star


Rich Merritt - 2001
    . . Here's the story of Rich Merritt--the good son, teacher's pet, Southern gentleman, model Christian student at Bob Jones University, Marine officer, and the not-so-anonymous poster boy for a New York Times Magazine article on gays in the military--whose complicated sexual past caused an international scandal when The Advocate "outed" him as "The Marine Who Did Gay Porn," putting his life in a tailspin. It's the compelling, poignant story of how a boy who never listened to pop music, never cursed, and didn't have his first drink until he was eighteen exploded into a life of drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, prostitution, and pornography. And above all, it's a triumphant story of self-forgiveness and identity, of a man who refused to allow himself to be defined by the standards of anyone else--gay or straight. Along the way, Rich Merritt writes with humor, compassion, insight and naked truth about: What it's really like growing up behind the "Fortress of Fundamentalism" and how he ultimately came to despise their viewsThe harsh realities of military life under the "Don't ask, don't tell" Clinton policyA real insider's experience of working in the male porn industry--the good, the bad, and the extremely hotWhy he chose not to reveal his porn past to the New York Times journalistWhat it felt like to be the most notorious marine in the world and what it took to come through the fireBy turns harrowing and heartbreaking, angry and affirming, Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star is that rarest of memoirs--a fascinating slice of life that reads like the most absorbing fiction, but is all true. Rich Merritt has written an Op-Ed column for the Navy Times. He has been profiled for The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, and The Advocate. Stories about him have appeared in the London Times, The Washington Post and many other publications. He is now an attorney living in Atlanta."

Pray the Gay Away


Michael Zakar - 2017
     Coming out is hard. The struggle is ongoing, a daily part of life whether to a new friend, a co-worker, or most importantly yourself. Pray the Gay Away chronicles Michael and Zach as they face awkward sexual encounters, drug-fueled escapades, coming out to each other, and their biggest foe - Mom, a woman who not only gave birth to what she calls one regret - but two. The memoir hilariously and poignantly explores what it’s like growing up as gay, Iraqi twins in modern America. Pray the Gay Away was inspired the night Mom snuck into their bedroom and force fed them “holy grapes,” determined to “de-gay” them. The Zakar Twins are new voices speaking out against generations, particularly within the Iraqi culture, who look down on being gay. This book is not only for the LBGTQ community, but for young adults, looking to achieve normalcy.

Crossing


Deirdre Nansen McCloskey - 1999
    But few have written of crossing—completely and entirely—the gender line. Crossing is the story of Deirdre McCloskey (formerly Donald), once a golden boy of conservative economics and a child of 1950s and 1960s privilege, and her dramatic and poignant journey to becoming a woman. McCloskey's account of her painstaking efforts to learn to "be a woman" unearth fundamental questions about gender and identity, and hatreds and anxieties, revealing surprising answers.

Reflections of a Rock Lobster: A Story about Growing Up Gay


Aaron Fricke - 1981
    Here is his story of growing up gay in America.

Dancing with Demons: The Authorized Biography of Dusty Springfield


Penny Valentine - 2000
    Her signature voice made songs such as, "I Only Want to Be With You," "Son of A Preacher Man," and "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me," international hits. In Dancing With Demons, two of her closest friends, Valentine and Wickham, capture, with vivid memories and personal anecdotes, a Dusty most people never glimpsed in this no-holds-barred yet touching portrait of one of the world's true grand dames of popular music.

Gertrude and Alice


Diana Souhami - 1991
    They became a legendary couple, photographed by Stieglitz, Man Ray & Cecil Beaton, painted by Picasso, and written about in the works of Hemingway, Paul Bowles and Sylvia Beach. Gertrude and Alice is the highly acclaimed story of their remarkable life together. From letters, memoirs and their published writings and with rich illustrations, Whitbread Award-winner Diana Souhami brings their characters, beliefs,and achievements vividly to life: "so emphatically and uncompromisingly themselves, that the world could do nothing less than accept them as they were."

Finding Out: An Introduction to LGBT Studies


Deborah T. Meem - 2008
    By combining accessible introductory and explanatory material with primary texts and artifacts, this book explores the development and growth of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) identities and the interdisciplinary nature of LGBT studies.

Soldier of Change: From the Closet to the Forefront of the Gay Rights Movement


Stephen Snyder-Hill - 2014
    policy on gays serving in the military, was repealed in September 2011, soldier Stephen Snyder-Hill (then Captain Hill) was serving in Iraq. Having endured years of this policy, which passively encouraged a culture of fear and secrecy for gay soldiers, Snyder-Hill submitted a video to a Republican primary debate (held two days after the repeal). In the video he asked for the Republicans’ thoughts regarding the repeal and their plans, if any, to extend spousal benefits to legally married gay and lesbian soldiers. His video was booed by the audience on national television. Soldier of Change captures not only the media frenzy that followed that moment, placing Snyder-Hill at the forefront of this modern civil rights movement, but also his twenty-year journey as a gay man in the army: from self-loathing to self-acceptance, to the most important battle of his life–protecting the disenfranchised. Since that time, Snyder-Hill has traveled the country with his husband, giving interviews on major news networks and speaking at universities, community centers, and pride parades, a champion of LGBT equality.

Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry


Evan Wolfson - 2004
    It is the work of one of the most influential attorneys in America, who has dedicated his life to the protection of individuals' rights and our Constitution's commitment to equal justice under the law. Above all, it is a clear, straightforward book that brings into sharp focus the very human significance of the right to marry in America—not just for some couples, but for all. Why is the word marriage so important? Will marriage for same-sex couples hurt the "sanctity" of the institution? How can people of different faiths reconcile their beliefs with the idea of marriage for same-sex couples? How will allowing gay couples to marry affect children? In this quietly powerful volume, the most authoritative and fairly articulated book on the subject, Wolfson demonstrates why the right to marry is important—indeed necessary—for all couples and for America's promise of equality.

The Church and the Homosexual


John J. McNeill - 1976
    In this "brave and good book which shatters bad myths" (Commonweal), McNeill shows that the Bible does not condemn homosexuality, and argues that the Church must not continue its homophobic practices.