Disgusted by an overabundance of phallocratic narratives and Freytag’s pyramid, she turns to a subcultural canon of resistance and failure. Wryly riffing on feminist literary tropes, it documents the survival of a demonized single mother figuring things out.

    I suddenly feel very differently about my forthcoming operation.”In July 2012, aged thirty, Juliet Jacques underwent sex reassignment surgery—a process she chronicled with unflinching honesty in a serialised national newspaper column. Trans tells of her life to the present moment: a story of growing up, of defining yourself, and of the rapidly changing world of gender politics.Fresh from university, eager to escape a dead-end job, she launches a career as a writer in a publishing culture dominated by London cliques and still figuring out the impact of the Internet. She navigates the treacherous waters of a world where, even in the liberal and feminist media, transgender identities go unacknowledged, misunderstood or worse. Yet through art, film, music, politics and football, Jacques starts to become the person she had only imagined, and begins the process of transition. Interweaving the personal with the political, her memoir is a powerful exploration of debates that comprise trans politics, issues which promise to redefine our understanding of what it means to be alive.Revealing, honest, humorous, and self-deprecating, Trans includes an epilogue with Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be?, in which Jacques and Heti discuss the cruxes of writing and identity.From the Hardcover edition.

    There was the location: an impoverished, nuclear waste-riddled area of the American Midwest. There was her mother, a woman who speaks almost entirely in strange koans and warnings of impending danger. Above all, there was her gun-toting, guitar-riffing, frequently semi-naked father, who underwent a religious conversion on a submarine and discovered a loophole which saw him approved for the Catholic priesthood by the future Pope Benedict XVI - despite already having a wife and children.When the expense of a medical procedure forces the 30-year-old Patricia to move back in with her parents, husband in tow, she must learn to live again with her family's simmering madness, and to reckon with the dark side of a childhood spent in the bosom of the Catholic Church. Told with the comic sensibility of a brasher, bluer Waugh or Wodehouse, this is at the same time a lyrical and affecting story of how, having ventured into the underworld, we can emerge with our levity and our sense of justice intact.

    They come from rich families in the big cities of Latin America, from rural immigrant families, and from the worlds in between-and they share an extraordinary inner strength, often maintained against incredible odds. Pressed by conflicting cultural expectations, circumstance, and religion, they have managed the challenges of motherhood, leaving enduring legacies for their children. Now, in these vivid, poignant, and sometimes hilarious reminiscences-all of them infused with distinct sabor latino-Las Mamis celebrates the universality of family love and the special bond between mothers and children.Contributors include: Esmeralda Santiago, Piri Thomas, Marjorie Agosin, Junot Diaz, Alba Ambert, Liz Balmaseda, Mandalit del Barco, Gioconda Belli, Maria Escandon, Dagoberto Gilb, Francisco Goldman, Jaime Manrique, Gustavo Perez-Firmat, Ilan Stavans

    When Jill's parent came out as transgender, Jill pushed through the male-dominated landscape of Hollywood to create the groundbreaking and award-winning Amazon TV series Transparent. Exploring identity, love, sexuality, and the blurring of boundaries through the dynamics of a complicated and profoundly resonant American family, Transparent gave birth to a new cultural consciousness. While working on the show and exploding mainstream ideas about gender, Jill began to erase the lines on their own map, finding their voice as a director, show creator, and activist. She Wants It: Desire, Power, and Toppling the Patriarchy moves with urgent rhythms, wild candor, and razor-edged humor to chart Jill's evolution from straight, married mother of two to identifying as queer and nonbinary. This intense and revelatory metamorphosis challenges the status quo and reflects the shifting power dynamics that continue to shape our collective worldview. With unbridled insight that offers a rare front seat to the inner workings of the #metoo movement and its aftermath, Jill captures the zeitgeist of a generation with thoughtful and revolutionary ideas about gender, inclusion, desire, and consent.

    While her husband, Bob, built his career in advertising, Jo comfortably settled into her role as mother of four, housewife, and community volunteer.In 1968, Jo’s world changed dramatically. Richard Nixon was elected President of the United States, and Bob was offered the job of a lifetime—White House Chief of Staff. As Jo and Bob discussed the opportunities and challenges that this move would entail, little did she anticipate the course that her life, and her relationship with Bob, would take over the next ten years.In this insightful, poignant, and guileless memoir of those ten years, Jo shares her story as the wife of H. R. Haldeman, often referred to as the second most powerful person in the White House. She offers a window into the world of trips on Air Force One, weekends at Camp David, and events at the White House, as well as family vignettes and the growing stresses of her husband’s demanding job.Then a bungled burglary at the Watergate erupted into a national scandal. The news began to feature the Haldeman name. Blaring headlines and vicious political cartoons accompanied new revelations of a cover-up. Multiple investigations and Senate hearings followed. Criminal proceedings loomed.Jo’s compelling account takes the reader on her journey from the heady heights of Washington life through an excruciating public resignation and trial to her husband’s conviction and imprisonment. In a true period piece, Jo illuminates the story of the “woman behind the man” and personalizes the Watergate experience. Enhanced by her personal photographs and the immediacy of her present tense delivery, In the Shadow of the White House is a fascinating work of nonfiction that reads like a novel.

    Set on the sun-soaked beaches of Thailand and the rough waters of the Indian Ocean, The Unimaginable paints a vivid portrait of a young woman on a journey to find herself—and her harrowing fight for survival.After twenty-eight years of playing by the rules, Jessica Gregory moves from her small Indiana town to Phuket, Thailand. But her newfound routine is upended with the arrival of Grant Flynn, a captivating, elusive man who is sailing around the world while trying to move on from a past tragedy. Jessica volunteers to help crew Grant’s boat, Imagine, on a passage across the Indian Ocean and finds herself falling in love with him as the voyage gets underway. But when disaster strikes, Jessica must summon her courage as the crew is confronted by unspeakable terrors—and, aboard a boat named for such promise, comes the unimaginable.

    It was a shock to Williams to discover that her mother had kept journals. But not as much of a shock as what she found when the time came to read them.  “They were exactly where she said they would be: three shelves of beautiful cloth-bound books . . . I opened the first journal. It was empty. I opened the second journal. It was empty. I opened the third. It too was empty . . . Shelf after shelf after shelf, all of my mother’s journals were blank.” What did Williams’s mother mean by that? In fifty-four chapters that unfold like a series of yoga poses, each with its own logic and beauty, Williams creates a lyrical and caring meditation of the mystery of her mother's journals. When Women Were Birds is a kaleidoscope that keeps turning around the question “What does it mean to have a voice?”

    Sarah McBride is on a mission to fight for transgender rights around the world. But before she was a prominent activist, and before she became the first transgender person to speak at the Democratic National Convention in 2016, she was a teenager struggling with her identity. With emotional depth and unparalleled honesty, Sarah shares her personal struggle with gender identity, coming out to her supportive but distraught parents, and finding her way as a woman. She inspires readers with her barrier-breaking political journey that took her, in just four years, from a frightened, closeted college student to one of the nation's most prominent transgender activists walking the halls of the White House, passing laws, and addressing the country in the midst of a heated presidential election. She also details the heartbreaking romance with her first love and future husband Andy, a trans man and activist, who passed away from cancer in 2014 just days after they were married. Sarah's story of identity, love, and tragic loss serves as a powerful entry point for readers who want to gain a deeper understanding of gender identity and what it means to be openly transgender. From issues like bathroom access to healthcare, identification and schools, Sarah weaves the important political milestones, cultural and political debates, and historical context into a personal journey that will open hearts and change minds. Tomorrow Will Be Different highlights Sarah’s work as an activist and the key issues at the forefront of the fight for trans equality, providing a call-to-arms and empowering look at the road ahead. The fight for equality and freedom has only just begun. “We must never be a country that says there’s only one way to love, only one way to look, and only one way to live.” –Sarah McBride

    What one does with this desire is what we call gender." So begins Andrea Long Chu's investigation into gender and desire, females and bodies, radical dreams and philosophical pessimism, and feminism as a form of political suicide. Feminism, Chu argues, is an untenable claim, and "when you make an untenable claim, your desire is showing, like a shy tattoo peeking out from a sleeve." Written in a series of linked theses, this is a provocative and searching text from our most exciting new public intellectual, a self described "sad trans girl in Brooklyn." Chu wears her heart on her sleeve with wit, style, and a manic searching grace.

    . .A poignant diary that chronicles the journeyWhen Don Snyder was teaching the game of golf to his young son, Jack, they made a pact: if one day Jack became good enough to play on a pro golf tour, Don would walk beside him as his caddie. Years later, Jack had developed into a standout college golfer, and Don, at the age of fifty-eight, left the comfort of his Maine home and moved to St. Andrews, Scotland, to learn from the best caddies in the world. He worked loops on famed courses like the Old Course and Kingsbarns, fought his way onto the rotation as a full-time caddie, and recorded the fascinating stories of golfers from every station in life. All the while, he lived like a monk and sent his earnings back home.     A world away, Jack endured his own arduous trials, rising through the ranks and battling within the college golf system. At times, the question for the teenage athlete wasn’t how to continue . . . but whether to continue at all. Finally, Don and Jack approached the moment when they would reunite—and not only tackle an extraordinarily high level of golf competition but also confront the challenges of a father-son relationship that had inevitably changed since the days when their journey began.     Walking with Jack is a truly compelling golf story and a one-of-a-kind narrative that makes you appreciate the lengths to which a father will go to support his son.

    No facility. No machines. Just two dudes and a tribe of thousands. Welcome to November Project’s world takeover.What started 4 years ago as a simple monthlong workout pact between two former Northeastern University oarsmen in Boston has grown into an international fitness phenomenon. November Project espouses free, public, all-weather, outdoor group sweats that turn strangers into friends and connect everyone to the city in which they live. It’s been described as everything from flashmob fitness to “the fight club of running clubs” and a cult. But November Project prides itself on defying categories.In November Project: The Book, Brogan Graham (a.k.a. BG) and Bojan Mandaric, in their own spicy, big-hearted words, chronicle, along with tribe member and writer Caleb Daniloff, their fitness movement’s genesis, evolution, operations, membership, “secret sauce,” and future―and along the way, show you how you can get fit and societally engaged. The book also includes illustrated workouts; the keys to meaningful civic engagement; information on using your city as a gym; advice on starting an NP tribe; tips on growing, sustaining, and invigorating membership through social media; and thoughts on the collective power of community.

    I am not impatient—My skin will wait to greet its old complexions.I'll lie here till the world swims back again. —from "Mummy of a Lady Named Jemutesonekh"Thomas James's Letters to a Stranger—originally published in 1973, shortly before James's suicide—has become one of the underground classics of contemporary poetry. In this new edition, with an introduction by Lucie Brock-Broido and four of James's poems never before published in book form, this fraught and moving masterpiece is at last available.Letters to a Stranger is a new book in the Graywolf Poetry Re/View Series, edited by Mark Doty, dedicated to bringing essential books of contemporary American poetry back into print.

    She still looms large in feminist demands for sexual freedom, evoked as a censorial demagogue, more than a decade after her death. Among the very first writers to use her own experiences of rape and battery in a revolutionary analysis of male supremacy, Dworkin was a philosopher outside and against the academy who wrote with a singular, apocalyptic urgency.Last Days at Hot Slit brings together selections from Dworkin's work, both fiction and nonfiction, with the aim of putting the contentious positions she's best known for in dialogue with her literary oeuvre. The collection charts her path from the militant primer Woman Hating (1974), to the formally complex polemics of Pornography (1979) and Intercourse (1987) and the raw experimentalism of her final novel Mercy (1990). It also includes “Goodbye to All This” (1983), a scathing chapter from an unpublished manuscript that calls out her feminist adversaries, and “My Suicide” (2005), a despairing long-form essay found on her hard drive after her death.

    Oddly, she finds it s a place populated with not just hope, but a newfound appreciation for the splendors of the physical world. Her fight to stay alive, while terrifying, is deeply vibrant."