Book picks similar to
Homintern: How Gay Culture Liberated the Modern World by Gregory Woods
non-fiction
history
lgbt
queer
Valencia
Michelle Tea - 2000
Through a string of narrative moments, Tea records a year lived in a world of girls: there's knife-wielding Marta, who introduces Michelle to a new world of radical sex; Willa, Michelle's tormented poet-girlfriend; Iris, the beautiful boy-dyke who ran away from the South in a dust cloud of drama; and Iris's ex, Magdalena Squalor, to whom Michelle turns when Iris breaks her heart. Valencia conveys a blend of youthful urgency and apocalyptic apathy.
Homosexuality in Islam: Critical Reflection on Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims
Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle - 2010
The first English-language book length treatment to offer a detailed analysis of how Islamic scripture, jurisprudence, and hadith can accommodate homosexuality and transgenderism.
Global Gay: How Gay Culture Is Changing the World
Frédéric Martel - 2013
In Global Gay, Frédéric Martel visits more than fifty countries and documents a revolution underway around the world: the globalization of LGBT rights. From Saudi Arabia to South Africa, from Amsterdam to Tel Aviv, from Singapore to the United States, activists, culture warriors, and ordinary people are part of a movement. Martel interviews the proprietor of a "gay-friendly" café in Amman, Jordan; a Cuban-American television journalist in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; a South African jurist who worked with Nelson Mandela to enshrine gay rights in the country's constitution; an American lawyer who worked on the campaign for marriage equality; an Egyptian man who fled his country after escaping a raid on a gay club; and many others. He tells us that in China, homosexuality is neither prohibited nor permitted, and that much Chinese gay life takes place on social media; that in Iran, because of the strict separation of the sexes, it seems almost easier to be gay than heterosexual; and that Raul Castro's daughter, a gay rights icon in Cuba, expressed her lingering anti-American sentiments by calling for Pride celebrations in May rather than June. Ten countries maintain the death penalty for homosexuals. "Homophobia is what Arab governments give to Islamists to keep them calm," one activist tells Martel. Martel finds that although the "gay American way of life" has created a global template for gay activism and culture, each country offers distinctly local variations. And around the world, the status of gay rights has become a measure of a country's democracy and modernity. Global Gay has been adapted into an award-winning television documentary. This English edition has been thoroughly revised and updated.
Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha - 2015
This passionate and riveting memoir is a mixtape of dreams and nightmares, of immigration court lineups and queer South Asian dance nights; it reveals how a disabled queer woman of color and abuse survivor navigates the dirty river of the past and, as the subtitle suggests, "dreams her way home."Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's poetry book Love Cake won a Lambda Literary Award.
Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited: AIDS and Its Aftermath
Andrew Holleran - 2008
Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited features ten pieces never previously republished outside Christopher Street, as well as a new introduction keenly describing and evaluating a historical moment that still informs and defines today’s world-particularly its community of homosexuals, which, arguably, is still recovering from the devastation of AIDS.
Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969
William J. Mann - 2001
Much has been written about how gays have been portrayed in the movies but no book -- until now -- has looked at their influence behind the screen. Whether out of or in the closet, gays and lesbians have from the very beginning played a significant role in shaping Hollywood. Gay actors were among the earliest matinee idols and gay directors have long been among the most popular and commercially successful filmmakers. In fact, gay set and costume designers created the very look of Hollywood.With this landmark book, Mann fills a void in the Hollywood history archives. Written in the tradition of Neal Gabler's An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood and based on hundreds of hours of interviews with survivors of this golden age, Behind the Screen is destined to become a classic of film literature.
Brother to Brother: New Writing by Black Gay Men
Essex HemphillCalvin Glenn - 1991
African American Studies. LGBT Studies. Winner of a Lambda Literary Award. BROTHER TO BROTHER, begun by Joseph Beam and completed by Essex Hemphill after Beam's death in 1988, is a collection of now-classic literary work by black gay male writers. Originally published in 1991 and out of print for several years, BROTHER TO BROTHER is a community of voices, Hemphill writes. [It] tells a story that laughs and cries and sings and celebrates...it's a conversation intimate friends share for hours. These are truly words mined syllable by syllable from the harts of black gay men. You're invited to listen in because you're family, and these aren't secrets-not to us, so why should they be secrets to you? Just listen. Your brother is speaking. This new edition includes an introduction by Jafari Allen.
I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World
Kai Cheng Thom - 2019
With the author's characteristic eloquence and honesty, I Hope We Choose Love proposes heartfelt solutions on the topics of violence, complicity, family, vengeance, and forgiveness. Taking its cues from contemporary thought leaders in the transformative justice movement such as adrienne maree brown and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, this provocative book is a call for nuance in a time of political polarization, for healing in a time of justice, and for love in an apocalypse.
Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things
Ann Laura Stoler - 1995
It has had an enormous impact on cultural studies and work across many disciplines on gender, sexuality, and the body. Bringing a new set of questions to this key work, Ann Laura Stoler examines volume one of History of Sexuality in an unexplored light. She asks why there has been such a muted engagement with this work among students of colonialism for whom issues of sexuality and power are so essential. Why is the colonial context absent from Foucault’s history of a European sexual discourse that for him defined the bourgeois self? In Race and the Education of Desire, Stoler challenges Foucault’s tunnel vision of the West and his marginalization of empire. She also argues that this first volume of History of Sexuality contains a suggestive if not studied treatment of race.Drawing on Foucault’s little-known 1976 College de France lectures, Stoler addresses his treatment of the relationship between biopower, bourgeois sexuality, and what he identified as “racisms of the state.” In this critical and historically grounded analysis based on cultural theory and her own extensive research in Dutch and French colonial archives, Stoler suggests how Foucault’s insights have in the past constrained—and in the future may help shape—the ways we trace the genealogies of race.Race and the Education of Desire will revise current notions of the connections between European and colonial historiography and between the European bourgeois order and the colonial treatment of sexuality. Arguing that a history of European nineteenth-century sexuality must also be a history of race, it will change the way we think about Foucault.
Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People
Joan Roughgarden - 2004
A distinguished evolutionary biologist, Roughgarden takes on the medical establishment, the Bible, social science—and even Darwin himself. She leads the reader through a fascinating discussion of diversity in gender and sexuality among fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals, including primates. Evolution's Rainbow explains how this diversity develops from the action of genes and hormones and how people come to differ from each other in all aspects of body and behavior. Roughgarden reconstructs primary science in light of feminist, gay, and transgender criticism and redefines our understanding of sex, gender, and sexuality. Witty, playful, and daring, this book will revolutionize our understanding of sexuality.Roughgarden argues that principal elements of Darwinian sexual selection theory are false and suggests a new theory that emphasizes social inclusion and control of access to resources and mating opportunity. She disputes a range of scientific and medical concepts, including Wilson's genetic determinism of behavior, evolutionary psychology, the existence of a gay gene, the role of parenting in determining gender identity, and Dawkins's "selfish gene" as the driver of natural selection. She dares social science to respect the agency and rationality of diverse people; shows that many cultures across the world and throughout history accommodate people we label today as lesbian, gay, and transgendered; and calls on the Christian religion to acknowledge the Bible's many passages endorsing diversity in gender and sexuality. Evolution's Rainbow concludes with bold recommendations for improving education in biology, psychology, and medicine; for democratizing genetic engineering and medical practice; and for building a public monument to affirm diversity as one of our nation's defining principles.
Trans/Love: Radical Sex, Love & Relationships Beyond the Gender Binary
Morty Diamond - 2011
Rarely has a book about lust been full of so much love, conflict, and intelligence. If you think you already know what's in these stories, or you think you don't need to know, you're wrong."—Patrick Califa, author of Sex Changes: The Politics of TransgenderismExploring the crossroads of gender and sexuality, Trans/Love: Radical Sex, Love & Relationships Beyond the Gender Binary offers unusually engaging narratives that create a raw and honest depiction of dating, sex, love, and relationships among members of the gender variant community. FTM, MTF, thirdgender, genderqueer, and other non-traditional identities beyond the gender binary of traditional male and female are included in this often heartwarming, occasionally heartbreaking, always heartfelt groundbreaking anthology. From monogamous love and marriage to anonymous sex and one-night hook-ups (and everything in between), these stories offer readers insight into the precarious emotional and practical mechanics of intimacy among gender-variant experiences.Features contributions from award-winning authors including Julia Serano, Sassafras Lowery, and Max Valerio, alongside outstanding new writing by Tribe 8 guitarist and acclaimed film director Silas Howard, activist Joelle Ruby Ryan, filmmaker Ashley Altadonna, SisterSpit alum Cooper Lee Bombardier, and many other unique and talented voices.
The Glamour Boys: The Secret Story of the Rebels who Fought for Britain to Defeat Hitler
Chris Bryant - 2020
In the early 1930s, a group of young, queer British MPs visited Berlin on a series of trips that would change the course of the Second World War. As Hitler rose to power, they watched the Nazis arrest their gay and Jewish friends, send them to concentration camps and murder them. These men were some of the first to warn Britain about Hitler, repeatedly speaking out against their government's policy of appeasing him. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain hated them. Branding them 'the glamour boys', he had them followed, harassed, spied upon and derided in the press. They suffered abuse, innuendo and threats of de-selection. At a time when even the suggestion of homosexuality could land you in prison, the bravery these men were forced to show in their personal lives gave them extraordinary courage in public. Adept at hiding their true nature, some became talented spies, while others witnessed the brutality of Hitler's camps first hand. Four of them died in action. And without them, this country would never have faced down the Nazis. Based on years of archival research, this is a story of unsung bravery at a defining moment in Britain's history.
Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean
B.R. Burg - 1983
From Bluebeard to Captain Hook, they have been the subject of countless movies, books, children's tales, even a world-famous amusement park ride.In Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition, historian B. R. Burg investigates the social and sexual world of these sea rovers, a tightly bound brotherhood of men engaged in almost constant warfare. What, he asks, did these men, often on the high seas for years at a time, do for sexual fulfillment? Buccaneer sexuality differed widely from that of other all- male institutions such as prisons, for it existed not within a regimented structure of rule, regulations, and oppressive supervision, but instead operated in a society in which widespread toleration of homosexuality was the norm and conditions encouraged its practice.In his new introduction, Burg discusses the initial response to the book when it was published in 1983 and how our perspectives on all-male societies have since changed.
Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity
Micah RajunovNino Cipri - 2019
In this groundbreaking book, thirty authors highlight how our experiences are shaped by a deeply entrenched gender binary.The powerful first-person narratives of this collection show us a world where gender exists along a spectrum, a web, a multidimensional space. Nuanced storytellers break away from mainstream portrayals of gender diversity, cutting across lines of age, race, ethnicity, ability, class, religion, family, and relationships. From Suzi, who wonders whether she’ll ever “feel” like a woman after living fifty years as a man, to Aubri, who grew up in a cash-strapped fundamentalist household, to Sand, who must reconcile the dual roles of trans advocate and therapist, the writers’ conceptions of gender are inextricably intertwined with broader systemic issues. Labeled gender outlaws, gender rebels, genderqueer, or simply human, the voices in Nonbinary illustrate what life could be if we allowed the rigid categories of “man” and “woman” to loosen and bend. They speak to everyone who has questioned gender or has paused to wonder, What does it mean to be a man or a woman—and why do we care so much?
Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister
Anne Choma - 2019
This is her remarkable, true story.Anne Lister was extraordinary. Fearless, charismatic and determined to explore her lesbian sexuality, she forged her own path in a society that had no language to define her. She was a landowner, an industrialist and a prolific diarist, whose output has secured her legacy as one of the most fascinating figures of the 19th century. Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister follows Anne from her crumbling ancestral home in Yorkshire to the glittering courts of Denmark as she resolves to put past heartbreak behind her and find herself a wife. This biographical portrait introduces the real Gentleman Jack, featuring unpublished journal extracts decrypted for the first time by series creator Sally Wainwright and historian Anne Choma.