Book picks similar to
Heroic Desire: Lesbian Identities and Cultural Space by Sally R. Munt
lgbtq
gay
lesbian
lgbt-culture
Straight People: A Spotter's Guide to the Fascinating World of Heterosexuals
Jeffery Self - 2013
Modeled after popular bird spotters’ guides, Straight People is an affectionate and humorous guide to the varied species and subspecies of the sexual majority: the heterosexual. In this hilarious and easy-to-use field guide, actor and author Jeffery Self compiles everything you’ve ever wanted to know about heteros including their nesting behavior, feeding and mating habits, migration patterns, key identification features, and more. Complemented with fun two-color illustrations, interactive charts, graphs, and quizzes throughout, Straight People is sure entertain readers for all walks of life.
Binding Devotion
Kiki Archer - 2013
the bond of marriage or the pull of desire?" "But what's more powerful?" Andi Armstrong is the 29-year-old CEO of the UK's largest LGBT campaigning organisation, Proud Unity. She's a public figure, an empowering speaker, a devoted boss and a loyal wife. Or so she thought. Having spent the past seven years fighting for the marriage rights of same-sex couples, she can't imagine that her own civil partnership might actually be failing. She committed for life. She's bound by law. She's an example of how it works ... Andi Armstrong knows that she has to make it work. She wants it to work. But what happens when desire takes over ... when the pull is too strong? Should Andi sacrifice everything, her beliefs and her loyalty ... for desire, for excitement, for happiness ... for love? For someone who isn't her wife? "Binding Devotion" is a saucy and topical lesbian fiction novel that will leave you questioning the intricacies of commitment in the face of unexpected infidelity.
The Sum of My Parts
James Sanford - 2011
At first I tried to deny my condition (trying to treat a tumor with hot baths and ice packs). Eventually, I decided I would learn as much about my illness as possible while trying to keep my emotions on hold.What followed was an experience that finally forced me to deal with issues about my body that I had tried to ignore for decades. Along the way I dealt with a physician who gave me ridiculous advice and acquaintances who asked unbelievable questions. But I was also fortunate to be surrounded by people who supported me and doctors who helped me through the process.
A Little Gay History: Desire and Diversity Around the World
R.B. Parkinson - 2013
Explored are the issues behind forty artefacts from ancient times to the present, and from cultures across the world, to ask a question that concerns us all: how easily can we recognize love in history? Concise and beautifully illustrated with objects from the British Museum’s far-ranging collection, A Little Gay History provides an intriguing and valuable insight into the range, diversity and complexity of same-sex experiences. It has been named a Stonewall Book Award-Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award Honor Book for 2014.AuthorR. B. Parkinson is internationally known as a specialist in Ancient Egyptian texts and a curator of ancient Egyptian culture at the British Museum. His books for the British Museum Press include Voices from Ancient Egypt, The Tomb-Chapel of Nebamun, and (for children) The Pocket Guide to Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs.
Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown
Michael Cunningham - 2002
Provincetown, eccentric, physically remote, and heartbreakingly beautiful, has been amenable and intriguing to outsiders for as long as it has existed. "It is the only small town I know of where those who live unconventionally seem to outnumber those who live within the prescribed bounds of home and licensed marriage, respectable job, and biological children," says Cunningham. "It is one of the places in the world you can disappear into. It is the Morocco of North America, the New Orleans of the north."He first came to the place more than twenty years ago, falling in love with the haunted beauty of its seascape and the rambunctious charm of its denizens. Although Provincetown is primarily known as a summer mecca of stunning beaches, quirky shops, and wild nightlife, as well as a popular destination for gay men and lesbians, it is also a place of deep and enduring history, artistic and otherwise. Few towns have attracted such an impressive array of artists and writers—from Tennessee Williams to Eugene O'Neill, Mark Rothko to Robert Motherwell—who, like Cunningham, were attracted to this finger of land because it was . . . different, nonjudgmental, the perfect place to escape to; to be rescued, healed, reborn, or simply to live in peace. As we follow Cunningham on his various excursions through Provincetown and its surrounding landscape, we are drawn into its history, its mysteries, its peculiarities—places you won't read about in any conventional travel guide.
Eagle Ridge
Brooklyn Graham - 2018
For one of these adventurers, the trip will hold consequences that may well shape the rest of her life. Allison Stern, an executive with a New York financial firm, finds her world turned upside down, when her manager puts her in charge of a character-building adventure, and things go terribly wrong. Cynthia Brooks, a ranger with the forestry service finds herself thrown in with Allison, as she attempts a rescue. Allison is floundering in a loveless marriage and Cynthia wants nothing to do with any sort of relationship, having left her heart on a mountainside in Colorado, years before. Can a city girl with an affinity for nature, find love with a devout mountain girl with a broken heart? Read Eagle Ridge, and find out if opposites really do attract.(Author's note: 2nd Edition of this book contains various corrections of grammatical and ease of reading problems that had been brought to my attention following the publication of the original manuscript.)
Spinning
Tillie Walden - 2017
Wake up, grab the ice skates, and head to the rink while the world was still dark.Weekends were spent in glitter and tights at competitions. Perform. Smile. And do it again.She was good. She won. And she hated it.For ten years, figure skating was Tillie Walden's life. She woke before dawn for morning lessons, went straight to group practice after school, and spent weekends competing at ice rinks across the state. It was a central piece of her identity, her safe haven from the stress of school, bullies, and family. But over time, as she switched schools, got into art, and fell in love with her first girlfriend, she began to question how the close-minded world of figure skating fit in with the rest of her life, and whether all the work was worth it given the reality: that she, and her friends on the figure skating team, were nowhere close to Olympic hopefuls. It all led to one question: What was the point? The more Tillie thought about it, the more Tillie realized she'd outgrown her passion--and she finally needed to find her own voice.
Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West: Love Letters
Virginia Woolf - 1926
I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone. I just miss you...'
At a dinner party in 1922, Virginia Woolf met the renowned author, aristocrat - and sapphist - Vita Sackville-West. Virginia wrote in her diary that she didn't think much of Vita's conversation, but she did think very highly of her legs. It was to be the start of almost twenty years of flirtation, friendship, and literary collaboration. Their correspondence ended only with Virginia's tragic death in 1941.Intimate and playful, these selected letters and diary entries allow us to hear these women's constantly changing feelings for each other in their own words. Eavesdrop on the affair that inspired Virginia to write her most fantastical novel, Orlando, and glimpse into their extraordinary lives: from Vita's travels across the globe, to Virginia's parties with the Bloomsbury set; from their shared love of dogs and nature, to their grief at the beginning of the Second World War. Discover a relationship that - even a hundred years later - feels radical and relatable.WITH AN ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION FROM ALISON BECHDEL, AUTHOR OF FUN HOME AND CREATOR OF THE BECHDEL TEST.
Pennsylvania Station
Patrick E. Horrigan - 2018
Frederick Bailey is a quiet, cultured, closeted architect reluctantly drawn into the effort to save Pennsylvania Station from being demolished. But when he meets Curt, a vibrant, immature gay activist more than half his age, he is overtaken by passions he hasn't felt in years, putting everything he cares about--his friends, his family, his career and reputation--at risk. As the elegant old train station is dismantled piece by piece to make way for the crass new Madison Square Garden sports arena, Frederick must undergo a reckoning he has dreaded all his life. Award-winning author Patrick E. Horrigan delves into the fractured psyches of mid-twentieth-century gay men, conjuring a picture of New York City and the nation on the brink of explosive cultural change.
Ask a Queer Chick: A Guide to Sex, Love, and Life for Girls Who Dig Girls
Lindsay King-Miller - 2016
Based on the long-running and popular advice column for The Hairpin, but featuring entirely new content, Ask a Queer Chick cuts through all of the bizarre conditioning imparted by parents, romantic comedies, and The L Word to help queer readers and their straight/cis friends navigate this changing world. Offering advice on everything from coming out to getting your first gay haircut to walking down the aisle, Ask a Queer Chick is a positive, down-to-earth guide that will resonate with readers of Dan Savage and Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things.
Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns
David Margolick - 2013
Burns was born in Massachusetts, graduated from Andover and Harvard, and went on to teach English at the Loomis School, a boarding school for boys in Windsor, Connecticut. During World War II, he was stationed in Africa and Italy, and worked mainly in military intelligence. His first novel, The Gallery (1947), based on his wartime experiences, is a critically acclaimed novel and one of the first to unflinchingly depict gay life in the military. The Gallery sold half a million copies upon publication, but never again would Burns receive that kind of critical or popular attention. Dreadful follows Burns, from his education at the best schools to his final years of drinking and depression in Italy. With intelligence and insight, David Margolick examines Burns’s moral ambivalence toward the behavior of American soldiers stationed with him in Naples, and the scandal surrounding his second novel, Lucifer with a Book, an unflattering portrayal of his experiences at Loomis.
The Iron Princess (The Twilight Empress, #1)
Niall Teasdale - 2018
Thus has it been since before the physical and spirit worlds divided. There are five martial Forms inspired by the elements and humans have learned them, using them to defend themselves, for thousands of years. Ever since the Empire of Iron began using the Metal Form for conquest, the secrets of each Form have been guarded more closely. Few people learn more than one Form as they did in the past. In Avrilatha – an ordinary village in the Western Plains – lives Ayah. Daughter of the village healer, Ayah’s only genuinely remarkable features are a stubborn streak and a desire to master all five Elemental Forms. When she is forced to leave her village, Ayah sets out on her quest to find teachers. Accompanied by a fox with a secret, Ayah’s journey will take her all over the continent and involve her in politics, intrigue, and war. The Empire of Iron is on the move, and the only thing in its way is one stubborn girl.
Searching for Sappho: The Lost Songs and World of the First Woman Poet
Philip Freeman - 2016
Yet those meager remains showed such power and genius that they captured the imagination of readers through the ages. But within the last century, dozens of new pieces of her poetry have been found written on crumbling papyrus or carved on broken pottery buried in the sands of Egypt. As recently as 2014, yet another discovery of a missing poem created a media stir around the world.The poems of Sappho reveal a remarkable woman who lived on the Greek island of Lesbos during the vibrant age of the birth of western science, art, and philosophy. Sappho was the daughter of an aristocratic family, a wife, a devoted mother, a lover of women, and one of the greatest writers of her own or any age. Nonetheless, although most people have heard of Sappho, the story of her lost poems and the lives of the ancient women they celebrate has never been told for a general audience.Searching for Sappho is the exciting tale of the rediscovery of Sappho’s poetry and of the woman and world they reveal.
Read Between the Lines
Rachel Lacey - 2021
And ever since she took over her mother’s beloved Manhattan bookstore, they’ve become her home too. The only thing missing is her own real-life romance like the ones she loves to read about, and Rosie has an idea of who she might like to sweep her off her feet. She’s struck up a flirty online friendship with lesbian romance author Brie, and what could be more romantic than falling in love with her favorite author?Jane Breslin works hard to keep her professional and personal lives neatly separated. By day, she works for the family property development business. By night, she puts her steamier side on paper under her pen name: Brie. Jane hasn’t had much luck with her own love life, but her online connection with a loyal reader makes Jane wonder if she could be the one.When Rosie learns that her bookstore’s lease has been terminated by Jane’s family’s business, romance moves to the back burner. Even though they’re at odds, there’s no denying the sparks that fly every time they’re together. When their online identities are revealed, will Jane be able to write her way to a happy ending, or is Rosie’s heart a closed book?
Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present
Neil Miller - 1995
Miller accompanies his narrative with essays and excerpts from contemporary and historical writings, and the text is illustrated with photos and line drawings.Neil Miller is the author of Sex-Crime Panic and winner of the 2003 Randy Shilts Award for nonfiction and an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book. He is also the author of In Search of Gay America, winner of the 1990 American Library Association prize for gay and lesbian literature. He teaches journalism and nonfiction writing at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.