Queering Anarchism: Addressing and Undressing Power and Desire


C.B. Daring - 2013
    These pieces are sure to raise the level of debate about sexuality, gender, and the ways that they tie in with struggles against our ruling institutions." - Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, "Outlaw Woman""Against the austerity of straight politics, "Queering Anarchism "sketches the connections between gender mutiny, queer sexualities, and anti-authoritarian desires. Through embodied histories and incendiary critique, the contributors gathered here show how we must not stop at smashing the state; rather normativity itself is the enemy of all radical possibility." - Eric A. Stanley, "Captive Genders"What does it mean to "queer" the world around us? How does the radical refusal of the mainstream codification of GLBT identity as a new gender norm come into focus in the context of anarchist theory and practice? How do our notions of orientation inform our politics - and vice versa? "Queering Anarchism "brings together a diverse set of writings ranging from the deeply theoretical to the playfully personal that explore the possibilities of the concept of "queering," turning the dominant, and largely heteronormative, structures of belief and identity entirely inside-out. Ranging in topic from the economy to disability, politics, social structures, sexual practice, interpersonal relationships, and beyond, the authors here suggest that queering might be more than a set of personal preferences - pointing toward the possibility of an entirely new way of viewing the world.Contributors include Jamie Heckert, Sandra Jeppesen, Ben Shepard, Ryan Conrad, Jerimarie Liesegang, Jason Lydon, Susan Song, Stephanie Grohmann, Liat Ben-Moshe, Anthony J. Nocella, A.J. Withers, and more.C.B. Daring, J. Rogue, Deric Shannon and Abbey Volcano are anarchists and activists who work in a wide variety of radical, feminist, and queer communities across the United States.

An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin


Gad Beck - 1995
    That he was a homosexual and a teenage leader in the resistance and yet survived is amazing. But that he endured the ongoing horror with an open heart, with love and without vitriol, and has written about it so beautifully is truly miraculous. This is Gad Beck’s story.

My Queer War


James Lord - 2010
    In 1942, a timid, inexperienced twenty-one-year-old Lord reports to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to enlist in the U.S. Army. His career in the armed forces takes him to Nevada and California, to Boston, to England, and eventually to France and Germany, where he witnesses firsthand the ravages of total war on Europe’s land and on its people. Along the way he comes to terms with his own sexuality, experiences the thrill of first love and the chill of disillusionment with his fellow man, and in a moment of great rashness makes the acquaintance of the world’s most renowned artist, who will show him the way to a new life. My Queer War is a rich and moving record of one man’s maturation in the crucible of the greatest war the world has known. If his war is queer, it is because each man’s experience is strange in its own way. His is a story of universal significance and appeal, told by a wry and eloquent observer of the world and of himself.

Art and Queer Culture


Catherine Lord - 2012
    Not a book exclusively about artists who identify themselves as gay or lesbian, Art and Queer Culture instead traces the shifting possibilities and constraints of sexual identity that have provided visual artists with a rich creative resource over the last 125 years.

Portrait of a Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson


Nigel Nicolson - 1973
    The story of Sackville-West's marriage to Harold Nicolson is one of intrigue and bewilderment. In Portrait of a Marriage, their son Nigel combines his mother's memoir with his own explanations and what he learned from their many letters. Even during her various love affairs with women, Vita maintained a loving marriage with Harold. Portrait of a Marriage presents an often misunderstood but always fascinating couple.

StoryCorps: Outloud


Ari Shapiro - 2015
    StoryCorps OutLoud is a multi-year initiative dedicated to recording and preserving LGBTQ stories across America."OutLoud" honors the stories of those who lived before the 1969 Stonewall uprisings, celebrates the lives of LGBTQ youth, and amplifies the voices of those most often excluded from the historical record. The end result is a diverse collection of stories that enriches our nation s history. StoryCorps OutLoud sets out across the country to record and preserve the stories of LGBT individuals, along with their families and friends. OutLoud is a project undertaken in the memory of Isay's father, psychiatrist Dr. Richard Isay. Professionally credited for helping to persuade the mental health community that homosexuality is not a mental disorder, Dr. Isay was himself a closeted gay man for many years. He came out to his son at the age of 52 and, in 2011, he married his partner of 31 years, Gordon Harrell, before passing away suddenly from cancer on June 28, 2012. On June 28, 2014, the 45th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, StoryCorps inaugurated OutLoud, a three-year project to capture the experiences of L.G.B.T.Q. people. In particular, the project will seek stories from young people, minorities and those who lived before the uprising, which was a response by gays to a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village and helped precipitate the gay rights movement.

Queer Sex: A Trans and Non-Binary Guide to Intimacy, Pleasure and Relationships


Juno Roche - 2018
    - Bitch MediaIn this frank, funny and poignant book, transgender activist Juno Roche discusses sex, desire and dating with leading figures from the trans and non-binary community. Calling out prejudices and inspiring readers to explore their own concepts of intimacy and sexuality, the first-hand accounts celebrate the wonder and potential of trans bodies and push at the boundaries of how society views gender, sexuality and relationships. Empowering and necessary, this collection shows all trans people deserve to feel brave, beautiful and sexy.

Revolutionary


Alex Myers - 2014
    Revolutionary, Alex Myers’s richly imagined and meticulously researched debut novel, brings the true story of Deborah’s struggle against a rigid colonial society back to life--and with it the courage, hope, fear, and heartbreak that shaped her journey through a country’s violent birth.After years as an indentured servant in a sleepy Massachusetts town, chafing under the oppressive norms of colonial America, Deborah can’t contain her discontent any longer. When a sudden crisis forces her hand, she decides to finally make her escape. Embracing the peril and promise of the unknown, she cuts her hair, binds her chest, and, stealing clothes from a neighbor, rechristens herself Robert Shurtliff. It’s a desperate, dangerous, and complicated deception, and becomes only more so when, as Robert, she enlists in the Continental Army.What follows is an inspiring, one-of-a-kind journey through an America torn apart by war: brutal winters and lethal battlefields, the trauma of combat and the cruelty of betrayal, the joy of true love and the tragedy of heartbreak. In his brilliant Revolutionary, Myers, who is a descendant of the historical Deborah, takes full advantage of this real-life heroine’s unique voice to celebrate the struggles for freedom, large and small, like never before.

Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa


Rigoberto González - 2006
    Losing his mother when he is twelve, González must then confront his father’s abandonment and an abiding sense of cultural estrangement, both from his adopted home in the United States and from a Mexican birthright. His only sense of connection gets forged in a violent relationship with an older man. By finding his calling as a writer, and by revisiting the relationship with his father during a trip to Mexico, González finally claims his identity at the intersection of race, class, and sexuality. The result is a leap of faith that every reader who ever felt like an outsider will immediately recognize. 2007 Finalist, Randy Shilts Awards for Gay Nonfiction, Publishing Triangle Winner, American Book Awards, Before Columbus Foundation

The Letter Q: Queer Writers' Notes to their Younger Selves


Sarah MoonDavid Levithan - 2012
    Through stories, in pictures, with bracing honesty, these are words of love and understanding, reasons to hold on for the better future ahead. They will tell you things about your favorite authors that you never knew before. And they will tell you about yourself.

Feminism is Queer: The Intimate Connection Between Queer and Feminist Theory


Mimi Marinucci - 2010
    While guiding the reader through complex theory, the author develops the original position of “queer feminism,” which presents queer theory as continuous with feminist theory. While there have been significant conceptual tensions between second wave feminism and traditional lesbian and gay studies, queer theory offers a paradigm for understanding gender, sex, and sexuality that avoids the conflict in order to develop solidarity among those interested in feminist theory and those interested in lesbian and gay rights. This accessible and comprehensive textbook carefully explains nuanced theoretical terminology and includes extensive suggested further reading to provide the reader with a full and thorough understanding of both disciplines.

Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America


Esther Newton - 1972
    Newton spent time in the noisy bars, the chaotic dressing rooms, and the cheap apartments and hotels that make up the lives of drag queens, interviewing informants whose trust she had earned and compiling a lively, first-hand ethnographic account of the culture of female impersonators. Mother Camp explores the distinctions that drag queens make among themselves as performers, the various kinds of night clubs and acts they depend on for a living, and the social organization of their work. A major part of the book deals with the symbolic geography of male and female styles, as enacted in the homosexual concept of "drag" (sex role transformation) and "camp," an important humor system cultivated by the drag queens themselves."Newton's fascinating book shows how study of the extraordinary can brilliantly illuminate the ordinary—that social-sexual division of personality, appearance, and activity we usually take for granted."—Jonathan Katz, author of Gay American History"A trenchant statement of the social force and arbitrary nature of gender roles."—Martin S. Weinberg, Contemporary Sociology

Who Was That Man?: A Present for Mr Oscar Wilde


Neil Bartlett - 1988
    Many books have been written about Oscar Wilde. Who Was That Man? is unique - the acting out of a love-hate relationship between Wilde and a gay Londoner of today. Neil Bartlett has grabbed history by the collar and made bitter love to it. I can think of no other way to describe this fantastic personal meditation on Oscar Wilde and the last hundred years of English homosexuality. At the very moment gay existence is endangered by disease and a renewed puritanism, Bartlett has embraced what was alien and criminal or merely clinical and loved it into poignant life - Edmund White

No Modernism Without Lesbians


Diana Souhami - 2020
    The portraits there, large and imposing, were of women: Ida Rubinstein, Una Troubridge, Gluck, Elisabeth de Gramont, Renata Borgatti, Bryher. Romaine's lover Natalie Barney said that Paris had been 'the Sapphic Centre of the Western World', and these women defined it. Capote himself called them 'the all-time ultimate gallery of famous dykes'. This book is about that gallery and celebrates the central role they played in the cultural revolution that was Modernism.Modernism happened in Paris, and these women were Paris. Shocking, free, blatant, they weren't just expats. They'd grouped together to create their own world, far from the restrictions of home. They were talented, often well-off, and lesbian. They answered to no one but themselves. Among them, for example, was Sylvia Beach, the American who set up the legendary Shakespeare & Co in 1919 and published Joyce's Ulysses when nobody else dared to, as well as Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness which was burned in Britain. The shop became the unofficial meeting place of the Modernists. Gertrude Stein, Beach's friend, bought the work of her friends – Matisse, Cézanne, Picasso, Gauguin – when they were young and unknown. Hemingway, Scott Fitzerald, Paul Bowles and others gravitated to the shop and to the world around these women.Told in the spirit of Stein's Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, or Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, this book is as colourful and exuberant as the women themselves.

The Sins of Jack Saul: The True Story of Dublin Jack and The Cleveland Street Scandal


Glenn Chandler - 2016
    This is the first full-length account of one of its key players, Jack Saul, a working class Irish Catholic rent boy who worked his way into the upper echelons of the aristocracy, and wrote the notorious pornographic memoir The Sins of the Cities of the Plain. Glenn Chandler, creator of Taggart, explores his colourful but tragic life and reveals for the first time the true story about what really went on behind the velvet curtains of Number 19 Cleveland Street.