On the Down Low: A Journey into the Lives of 'Straight' Black Men Who Sleep with Men


J.L. King - 2004
    L. King exposes a closeted culture of sex between black men who lead "straight" lives. King explores his own past as a DL man, and the path that led him to let go of the lies and bring forth a message that can promote emotional healing and open discussions about relationships, sex, sexuality, and health in the black community. Providing a long-overdue wake-up call, J. L. King bravely puts the spotlight on a topic that has until now remained dangerously taboo. Drawn from hundreds of interviews, statistics, and the author's firsthand knowledge of DL behavior, "On the Down Low "reveals the warning signs African American women need to know. King also discusses the potential health consequences of having unprotected sex, as African American women represent an alarming 64 percent of new HIV infections. Volatile yet vital," On the Down Low "is sure to be one of the most talked-about books of the year.

Thinking Straight


Robin Reardon - 2008
    When he is shipped off to Straight to God, an institution devoted to ''deprogramming'' troubled teenagers, Taylor Adams learns valuable lessons in love, courage, rebellion, and betrayal in a place where piety is a mask for cruelty and the greatest crimes go.

Single, Gay, Christian: A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity


Gregory Coles - 2017
    Let's make a deal, you and me. Let's make promises to each other. I promise to tell you my story. The whole story. I'll tell you about a boy in love with Jesus who, at the fateful onset of puberty, realized his sexual attractions were persistently and exclusively for other guys. I'll tell you how I lay on my bed in the middle of the night and whispered to myself the words I've whispered a thousand times since: I'm gay. I'll show you the world through my eyes. I'll tell you what it's like to belong nowhere. To know that much of my Christian family will forever consider me unnatural, dangerous, because of something that feels as involuntary as my eye color. And to know that much of the LGBTQ community that shares my experience as a sexual minority will disagree with the way I've chosen to interpret the call of Jesus, believing I've bought into a tragic, archaic ritual of self-hatred. But I promise my story won't all be sadness and loneliness and struggle. I'll tell you good things too, hopeful things, funny things, like the time I accidentally came out to my best friend during his bachelor party. I'll tell you what it felt like the first time someone looked me in the eyes and said, You are not a mistake. I'll tell you that joy and sorrow are not opposites, that my life has never been more beautiful than when it was most brokenhearted. If you'll listen, I promise I'll tell you everything, and you can decide for yourself what you want to believe about me.

Unplayable Lies


Dan Jenkins - 2015
    Half of the essays are brand new, the others are all reworked and rewritten, based on pieces that were originally published in Golf Digest. Often biting, usually cranky, always hilarious and surprising—this is Dan Jenkins at his best, writing about the sport he loves the most.      "I've always wanted to do something for the golfer who has everything. I thought about a suede golf cart, or maybe a pair of cashmere Footjoys. Then I settled on writing this book." So begins Dan Jenkins's latest—and funniest—collection of golf essays. The book consists of thirty-eight essays, all of them, as Dan says in the first essay, are "literally throbbing with opinion."     In this book Dan delves into the greatest rounds of golf he's ever seen; the funniest things said on a golf course; the rivalries on tour and in the press box; the game's most magical moments—and its most absurd. Unplayable Lies is an ode to the game Jenkins loves. But it is Dan Jenkins, so nothing—even the game of golf—can escape his wrath, his critical eye, or his acerbic pen. The best way to describe it is to turn the book over to Mr. Jenkins:      In "Titanic and I"—probably the most hilarious and surprising essay in the book, telling true stories of Titanic Thompson: gambler, golf hustler, accused murderer, legendary storyteller—Dan explains how Titanic would win a wager by saying he could knock a bird off a telephone wire: "Titanic would drop a ball on the ground and take out his four-wood, waggle it, and pretend to aim at the bird on the wire. When some sucker would bet him he couldn't do it, Ti would pull out a gun he carried and shoot the bird off the wire."     In "The Greatest Rounds": "Show me a man who doesn't know what Arnold did in the last round of the '60 U.S. Open at Cherry Hills, and I'll show you a soccer fan in Paraguay."     This is a perfect follow up to His Ownself. It even has an Introduction by Sally Jenkins, one of the country's top sportswriters and Dan's own darling daughter.

The Meaning of Matthew: My Son's Murder in Laramie, and a World Transformed


Judy Shepard - 2009
    For the first time in book form, Judy Shepard speaks about her loss, sharing memories of Matthew, their life as a typical American family, and the pivotal event in the small college town that changed everything.The Meaning of Matthew follows the Shepard family in the days immediately after the crime, when Judy and her husband traveled to see their incapacitated son, kept alive by life support machines; how the Shepards learned of the incredible response from strangers all across America who held candlelit vigils and memorial services for their child; and finally, how they struggled to navigate the legal system as Matthew's murderers were on trial. Heart-wrenchingly honest, Judy Shepard confides with readers about how she handled the crippling loss of her child, why she became a gay rights activist, and the challenges and rewards of raising a gay child in America today.The Meaning of Matthew not only captures the historical significance and complicated civil rights issues surrounding one young man's life and death, but it also chronicles one ordinary woman's struggle to cope with the unthinkable.

Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School


C.J. Pascoe - 2007
    Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in a racially diverse working-class high school, Dude, You're a Fag sheds new light on masculinity both as a field of meaning and as a set of social practices. C. J. Pascoe's unorthodox approach analyzes masculinity as not only a gendered process but also a sexual one. She demonstrates how the "specter of the fag" becomes a disciplinary mechanism for regulating heterosexual as well as homosexual boys and how the "fag discourse" is as much tied to gender as it is to sexuality.

Love and Honor in the Himalayas: Coming to Know Another Culture


Ernestine McHugh - 2001
    It was in their steep Himalayan villages that McHugh came to know another culture, witnessing and learning the Buddhist appreciation for equanimity in moments of precious joy and inevitable sorrow.Love and Honor in the Himalayas is McHugh's gripping ethnographic memoir based on research among the Gurungs conducted over a span of fourteen years. As she chronicles the events of her fieldwork, she also tells a story that admits feeling and involvement, writing of the people who housed her in the terms in which they cast their relationship with her, that of family. Welcomed to call her host Ama and become a daughter in the household, McHugh engaged in a strong network of kin and friendship. She intimately describes, with a sure sense of comedy and pathos, the family's diverse experiences of life and loss, self and personhood, hope, knowledge, and affection. In mundane as well as dramatic rituals, the Gurungs ever emphasize the importance of love and honor in everyday life, regardless of circumstances, in all human relationships. Such was the lesson learned by McHugh, who arrived a young woman facing her own hardships and came to understand--and experience--the power of their ways of being.While it attends to a particular place and its inhabitants, Love and Honor in the Himalayas is, above all, about human possibility, about what people make of their lives. Through the compelling force of her narrative, McHugh lets her emotionally open fieldwork reveal insight into the privilege of joining a community and a culture. It is an invitation to sustain grace and kindness in the face of adversity, cultivate harmony and mutual support, and cherish life fully.

The Law of Higher Education


William A. Kaplin - 2006
    It also provides a guide for programs that help prepare higher education administrators for leadership roles. This important reference is organized into five main parts Perspectives and Foundations; The College and Its Governing Board and Staff; The College and Its Faculty; The College and Its Students; and The College and the Outside World. Each part includes the sections of the full fourth edition that most relate to student interests and are most suitable for classroom instruction, for example:The evolution and reach of higher education law The governance of higher education Legal planning and dispute resolution The interrelationships between law and policy The college and its employees Faculty employment and tenure Academic freedom Campus issues: student safety, racial and sexual harassment, affirmative action, computer networks, services for international students Student misconduct Freedom of speech, hate speech Student rights, responsibilities, and activities fees Athletics and Title IX Copyright

The Beloved Son


Jay Quinn - 2007
    Karl Preston, at fifty-two, certainly fits this image, as he lives an emotionally comfortable life with his wife and daughter in an affluent North Carolina suburb. But preparing for a weekend visit to his elderly parents' Florida home, Karl becomes increasingly aware of the pressing concerns of their faltering lives-realizing too it will be the first time in years he has seen his gay brother, Sven. Frank, Karl's father, is bellicose and bewildered, and Annike, his still beautiful mother, is increasingly isolated, despite her fluency in three languages. Then there is Sven: Harried, loving, and hopeful, he is a forty-year-old gay man who finds his life bound by the confines of his parents' needs, a situation that has taken over his life. In rich, lyrical prose, Jay Quinn charts what happens when responsibility outweighs love, when obligation turns to guilt, and when the walls come down and the truth unfolds. The Beloved Son marks a new chapter in Jay Quinn's remarkable career, as he paints both a loving and tortured portrait of the modern-day family.

Uncle Rudolf: A Novel


Paul Bailey - 2003
    Andre's father, in a desperate effort to save him from the coming holocaust, hands him over to his captivating uncle Rudolf, an internationally famous singer of popular operettas. Rudolf is a sublimely gifted lyric tenor, a dashing leading man who is the object of many women's affections-but also an artist who lives in the shadow of his own unachieved potential as an opera star. Rudolf takes the boy to back to London, renames him Andrew, turns all his attention and sardonic humor upon him, and gradually sculpts him into a gentleman.Vivid, often lighthearted scenes of Andrew's worldly life with Rudolf are intertwined with the unfolding secrets of his forgotten past as Andre, which have shadowed his otherwise happy life. Told in matchless prose, Uncle Rudolf captures in fine detail the mood of 1940s Europe--and reveals the emotions of a man whose achievement falls short of his brilliant promise. It is a wise, knowing, elegant story about the sacrifices we make for those we love.

A Fem's Playground


Shatika Turner - 2013
    After her father’s, mother’s, and lover’s selfishness prevented them from giving her what her heart desired, she said “The Hell w/them!” Patience began doing her own thing and that was breaking the hearts of many.... Will her hoeish ways cause her playground to crumble?A Fem's Playground is jaw dropping, heartbreaking, and drama filled. Are you ready to Play?

Unmarked Treasure: Poems


Cyril Wong - 2004
    The poet wonders at his own existence and struggles between actual living and the desire to die."Cyril Wong continues to explore the nuances of relationships, in language that is lyrical, beautifully crafted, and erotically charged. There are several fine love poems that reach out to embrace a common humanity. Wong swims into the undercurrents of family tensions, hidden desires, and the meaning of a self... as well as questioning our understanding of both life and death."- Rebecca Edwards, author of Scar Country and Holiday Coast Medusa"Reading Cyril Wong is always to encounter risk, the painful suturing of art and life, trials of faith and baptisms of fire. I have only the deepest respect for someone who has razed the walls between the private and the public, and in doing so, carved more space for all of us."- Alfian Sa'at, author of One Fierce Hour and A History of Amnesia

Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century


John Boswell - 1980
    The historical breadth of Boswell's research (from the Greeks to Aquinas) and the variety of sources consulted (legal, literary, theological, artistic, and scientific) make this one of the most extensive treatments of any single aspect of Western social history. The product of ten years of research and analysis of records in a dozen languages, this book opens up a new area of historical inquiry and helps elucidate the origins and operations of intolerance as a social force.

Devil's Harbor


Alex Gilly - 2015
    As Marine Interdiction Agents for Customs and Border Protection, the two hunt drug smugglers, human traffickers, and other criminals who hide in the vastness of the waters surrounding southern California.One night, Finn and Diego track a phantom boat off the Los Angeles coast, but it disappears before they can intercept it. They find a dead body in its wake, ravaged by sharks. Their investigation into the floater stalls when Finn is accused of using excessive force following the death of a suspected drug smuggler.Then Diego is murdered—and Finn is the number-one suspect. As he races to find the real killer and save his marriage, Finn is forced to partner with Linda Blake, the desperate captain of the Pacific Belle and mother of Lucy, a very sick little girl, to attempt the one thing he has devoted his life to stopping.In order to clear his name and save a child's life, Finn must smuggle narcotics by sea into the United States…and avoid the net that his CBP colleagues have cast for him.

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."