LGBTQIA+ Resources

Winner, 2019 Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History, given by the American Society for Theatre Research Honorable Mention, 2021 Errol Hill Award, given by the American Society for Theatre Research Argues for a conception of black cultural life that exceeds post-blackness and conditions of loss In Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life, cultural critic and historian Tavia Nyong'o surveys the conditions of contemporary black artistic production in the era of post-blackness. Moving fluidly between the insurgent art of the 1960's and the intersectional activism of the present day, Afro-Fabulations challenges genealogies of blackness that ignore its creative capacity to exceed conditions of traumatic loss, social death, and archival erasure. If black survival in an anti-black world often feels like a race against time, Afro-Fabulations looks to the modes of memory and imagination through which a queer and black polytemporality is invented and sustained. Moving past the antirelational debates in queer theory, Nyong'o posits queerness as "angular sociality," drawing upon queer of color critique in order to name the gate and rhythm of black social life as it moves in and out of step with itself. He takes up a broad range of sites of analysis, from speculative fiction to performance art, from artificial intelligence to Blaxploitation cinema. Reading the archive of violence and trauma against the grain, Afro-Fabulations summons the poetic powers of queer world-making that have always been immanent to the fight and play of black life.

An embittered dog walker obsessed with a social media influencer inadvertently puts a curse on a young man - and must adventure into mysterious dimension in order to save him - in this wildly inventive, delightfully subversive, genre-nonconforming debut novel about illusion, magic, technology, kinship, and the emergent future.

"Unlike anything I've ever read. Muir's writing is as sharp as a broken tooth, and just as unsettling." --V.E. Schwab on Gideon the Ninth"Deft, tense and atmospheric, compellingly immersive and wildly original." --The New York Times on Gideon the NinthShe answered the Emperor's call.She arrived with her arts, her wits, and her only friend.In victory, her world has turned to ash.After rocking the cosmos with her deathly debut, Tamsyn Muir continues the story of the penumbral Ninth House in Harrow the Ninth, a mind-twisting puzzle box of mystery, murder, magic, and mayhem. Nothing is as it seems in the halls of the Emperor, and the fate of the galaxy rests on one woman's shoulders. Harrowhark's health is failing, her magic refuses to cooperate, her sword makes her throw up, and even her mind threatens to betray her. What's worse, someone is trying to kill her. And she has to wonder: if they succeeded, would the universe be better off?

A NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, and WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER! A 2021 Alex Award winner! The 2021 RUSA Reading List: Fantasy Winner! An Indie Next Pick! One of Publishers Weekly's "Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2020" One of Book Riot's "20 Must-Read Feel-Good Fantasies" Lambda Literary Award-winning author TJ Klune's bestselling, breakout contemporary fantasy that's "1984 meets The Umbrella Academy with a pinch of Douglas Adams thrown in." (Gail Carriger) Linus Baker is a by-the-book case worker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. He's tasked with determining whether six dangerous magical children are likely to bring about the end of the world. Arthur Parnassus is the master of the orphanage. He would do anything to keep the children safe, even if it means the world will burn. And his secrets will come to light. The House in the Cerulean Sea is an enchanting love story, masterfully told, about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place--and realizing that family is yours. "1984 meets The Umbrella Academy with a pinch of Douglas Adams thrown in." --Gail Carriger, New York Times bestselling author of Soulless

Next Generation Indie Book Awards Winner in LGBT . "An important resource for readers of any age who are struggling to understand their sexual orientation, or those who would like to better understand asexuality." --Library Journal, starred review Julie Sondra Decker's book functions as a starting point for people interested in asexuality. It covers the basics of what asexuality is and isn't, explores the most common issues asexual people may be dealing with, presents some pointers for newly asexual-identified people and the people who love them, and includes some resources to find out more. It's for the layperson, written in everyday language. She writes for people who are on the asexual spectrum, people who think they might be asexual, friends and family and partners of people who have come out as asexual, curious parties, and those looking for information on the subject for their school papers, sexuality studies, and alternative sexuality resources. And it's for people who think asexuality doesn't exist. Chapters include: Asexuality as a Sexual Orientation Romantic Orientation Libido and Masturbation Intimate and Sexual Activity Asexual Relationships Asexual Community Should Asexual People Get Therapy and Be Fixed Am I Asexual? Should I Come Out? And much more If you think you may be asexual, or if you have a friend or partner who may be a sexual, this personal book will help you better understand what it means to be asexual in a world dominated by sexuality.

On September 23, 1970, a group of antiwar activists staged a robbery at a bank in Massachusetts, during which a police officer was killed. While the three men who participated in the robbery were soon apprehended, two women escaped and became fugitives on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, eventually landing in a lesbian collective in Lexington, Kentucky, during the summer of 1974. In pursuit, the FBI launched a massive dragnet. Five lesbian women and one gay man ended up in jail for refusing to cooperate with federal officials, whom they saw as invading their lives and community. Dubbed the Lexington Six, the group's resistance attracted national attention, inspiring a nationwide movement in other minority communities. Like the iconic Stonewall demonstrations, this gripping story of spirited defiance has special resonance in today's America. Drawing on transcripts of the judicial hearings, contemporaneous newspaper accounts, hundreds of pages of FBI files released to the author under the Freedom of Information Act, and interviews with many of the participants, Josephine Donovan reconstructs this fascinating, untold story. The Lexington Six is a vital addition to LGBTQ, feminist, and radical American history.

*INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER* *INSTANT USA TODAY BESTSELLER* *INSTANT #1 INDIE BESTSELLER* From the New York Times bestselling author of Red, White & Royal Blue comes a new romantic comedy that will stop readers in their tracks... For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don't exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can't imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there's certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures. But then, there's this gorgeous girl on the train. Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August's day when she needed it most. August's subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there's one big problem: Jane doesn't just look like an old school punk rocker. She's literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her. Maybe it's time to start believing in some things, after all. Casey McQuiston's One Last Stop is a magical, sexy, big-hearted romance where the impossible becomes possible as August does everything in her power to save the girl lost in time. "A dazzling romance, filled with plenty of humor and heart." - Time Magazine, "The 21 Most Anticipated Books of 2021" "Dreamy, other worldly, smart, swoony, thoughtful, hilarious - all in all, exactly what you'd expect from Casey McQuiston!" - Jasmine Guillory, New York Times bestselling author of The Proposal and Party for Two

One of 2020's most acclaimed books. Winner of the Southern Book Prize * Winner of the Weatherford Award * A Kirkus Best Fiction Book of 2020 * One of O Magazine's Best LGBT Books of 2020 *  * One of the Women's National Book Association's 2020 Great Group Reads Selections * EW's 50 Most Anticipated Books of 2020 * BookRiot * Lambda Literary's * Salon * BookPage's * Garden & Gun's * Logo NewNowNext's In this "brutally fresh kind of homecoming novel," (Entertainment Weekly) Brian Jackson returns to his small Appalachian hometown and the family who rejected him. Carter Sickels's stunning literary achievement "deserves a place in the canon of AIDS literature alongside the likes of Larry Kramer and Rebecca Makkai" (Los Angeles Review of Books). The story of Brian's return to small-town Ohio is told in a chorus of voices: Brian's mother Sharon; his fourteen-year-old sister, Jess, as she grapples with her brother's mysterious return; and the video diaries Brian makes to document his final summer. Written in prose that seeks "to answer without flinching away from ugliness and without demonizing the ignorant" (Salon), The Prettiest Star offers an urgent portrait of a family in the center of a national crisis, in order to tell a unique story about the politics and fragility of the body, and to explore the bounds of family and redemption.

After an international incident affects U.S. and British relations, the president's son Alex and Prince Henry must pretend to be best friends, but as they spend time together, the two begin a secret romance that could derail a presidential campaign.

Shortlisted for 2020 Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize Corey Sobel challenges tenacious stereotypes in this compelling debut novel, shedding new light on the hypermasculine world of American football. The Redshirt introduces Miles Furling, a young man who is convinced he was placed on earth to play football. Deep in the closet, he sees the sport as a means of gaining a permanent foothold in a culture that would otherwise reject him. Still, Miles's body lags behind his ambitions, and recruiters tell him he is not big enough to compete at the top level. His dreams come true when a letter arrives from King College. The elite southern school boasts one of the best educations in America and one of the worst Division One football programs. King football is filled with obscure, ignored players like Miles--which is why he and the sports world in general are shocked when the country's top recruit, Reshawn McCoy, also chooses to attend the college. As brilliant a student as he is a player, the intensely private Reshawn refuses to explain why he chose King over other programs. Miles is as baffled as everyone else, and less than thrilled when he winds up rooming with the taciturn Reshawn. Initially at odds with each other, the pair become confidants as the win-at-all-costs program makes brutal demands on their time and bodies. When their true selves and the identities that have been imposed on them by the game collide, both young men are forced to make life-changing choices.

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER / AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK ONE OF PRESIDENT OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021  Winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence Winner of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction Shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Longlisted for the 2022 Carnegie Medal for Excellence Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize In the spirit of The Known World and The Underground Railroad, "a miraculous debut" (Washington Post)​ and "a towering achievement of imagination" (CBS This Morning)about the unlikely bond between two freedmen who are brothers and the Georgia farmer whose alliance will alter their lives, and his, forever--from "a storyteller with bountiful insight and assurance" (Kirkus) A Best Book of the Year: Oprah Daily, NPR, Washington Post, Time, Boston Globe, Smithsonian, Chicago Public Library, BookBrowse, and the Oregonian A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A July Indie Next Pick In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry--freed by the Emancipation Proclamation--seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother, who was sold away when they were boys.   Parallel to their story runs a forbidden romance between two Confederate soldiers. The young men, recently returned from the war to the town of Old Ox, hold their trysts in the woods. But when their secret is discovered, the resulting chaos, including a murder, unleashes convulsive repercussions on the entire community. In the aftermath of so much turmoil, it is Isabelle who emerges as an unlikely leader, proffering a healing vision for the land and for the newly free citizens of Old Ox.   With candor and sympathy, debut novelist Nathan Harris creates an unforgettable cast of characters, depicting Georgia in the violent crucible of Reconstruction. Equal parts beauty and terror, as gripping as it is moving, The Sweetness of Water is an epic whose grandeur locates humanity and love amid the most harrowing circumstances.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * OVER TWO MILLION COPIES SOLD! "Packed with incredible insight about what it means to be a woman today."--Reese Witherspoon (Reese's Book Club Pick) In her most revealing and powerful memoir yet, the activist, speaker, bestselling author, and "patron saint of female empowerment" (People) explores the joy and peace we discover when we stop striving to meet others' expectations and start trusting the voice deep within us. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY O: The Oprah Magazine * The Washington Post * Cosmopolitan * Marie Claire * Bloomberg * Parade * "Untamed will liberate women--emotionally, spiritually, and physically. It is phenomenal."--Elizabeth Gilbert, author of City of Girls and Eat Pray Love This is how you find yourself. There is a voice of longing inside each woman. We strive so mightily to be good: good partners, daughters, mothers, employees, and friends. We hope all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, overwhelmed, and underwhelmed. We look at our lives and wonder: Wasn't it all supposed to be more beautiful than this? We quickly silence that question, telling ourselves to be grateful, hiding our discontent--even from ourselves. For many years, Glennon Doyle denied her own discontent. Then, while speaking at a conference, she looked at a woman across the room and fell instantly in love. Three words flooded her mind: There She Is. At first, Glennon assumed these words came to her from on high. But she soon realized they had come to her from within. This was her own voice--the one she had buried beneath decades of numbing addictions, cultural conditioning, and institutional allegiances. This was the voice of the girl she had been before the world told her who to be. Glennon decided to quit abandoning herself and to instead abandon the world's expectations of her. She quit being good so she could be free. She quit pleasing and started living. Soulful and uproarious, forceful and tender, Untamed is both an intimate memoir and a galvanizing wake-up call. It is the story of how one woman learned that a responsible mother is not one who slowly dies for her children, but one who shows them how to fully live. It is the story of navigating divorce, forming a new blended family, and discovering that the brokenness or wholeness of a family depends not on its structure but on each member's ability to bring her full self to the table. And it is the story of how each of us can begin to trust ourselves enough to set boundaries, make peace with our bodies, honor our anger and heartbreak, and unleash our truest, wildest instincts so that we become women who can finally look at ourselves and say: There She Is. Untamed shows us how to be brave. As Glennon insists: The braver we are, the luckier we get.

Lavishly illustrated with over 175 black-and-white and color images that range from high to popular culture and from Ancient Greece to contemporary America, Christopher Reed's arresting book reveals the deep linkages between art and homosexuality as we understand those terms. This is the first book to fully explore the interdependence between the identity of the artist and the homosexual. It offers a bold, globe-spanning narrative that draws on artwork from all the important periods in the Western tradition, including classical, Renaissance, and contemporary, withspecial focus on the modern period. It was in the nineteenth century that the identities of the avant-garde artist and the homosexual took shape, and almost as quickly overlapped. The figures involved - Ingres, Courbet, Wilde, Whitman - are among that era's most iconic artists. The development oftwentieth-century art - exemplified in the work of figures like Gertrude Stein, Jasper Johns, David Hockney, and David Wojnarowicz - this book argues is simply not understandable apart from the concurrent development of ideas about sexual identity. This highly readable volume challenges the ideas ofmany prominent art critics and punctures the platitudes surrounding discussions of both art and sexuality. The book discusses what it means to be an insider and outsider, how sexuality came to define one's fundamental humanity, and what people risk (and gain) in rejecting economic and socialconformity. Reed shows that many of the core ideas that define modern thought more generally are nearly indecipherable without an understanding of this pairing. The debates that have surrounded artists and homosexuals in effect capture the dramatic history of the evolution of the modern mind.

Art and Queer Cultureis a comprehensive and definitive survey of artworks that have constructed, contested or otherwise responded to alternative forms of sexuality. Not a book exclusively about artists who identify themselves as gay or lesbian, Art and Queer Cultureinstead traces the shifting possibilities and constraints of sexual identity that have provided visual artists with a rich creative resource over the last 125 years.

Baby, You Are My Religion argues that American butch-femme bar culture of the mid-20th Century should be interpreted as a sacred space for its community. Before Stonewall#65533;when homosexuals were still deemed mentally ill#65533;these bars were the only place where many could have any community at all. Baby, You are My Religion explores this community as a site of a lived corporeal theology and political space. It reveals that religious institutions such as the Metropolitan Community Church were founded in such bars, that traditional and non-traditional religious activities took place there, and that religious ceremonies such as marriage were often conducted within the bars by staff. Baby, You are My Religion examines how these bars became not only ecclesiastical sites but also provided the fertile ground for the birth of the struggle for gay and lesbian civil rights before Stonewall.

A 2015 Stonewall Honor Book A groundbreaking work of LGBT literature takes an honest look at the life, love, and struggles of transgender teens. Author and photographer Susan Kuklin met and interviewed six transgender or gender-neutral young adults and used her considerable skills to represent them thoughtfully and respectfully before, during, and after their personal acknowledgment of gender preference. Portraits, family photographs, and candid images grace the pages, augmenting the emotional and physical journey each youth has taken. Each honest discussion and disclosure, whether joyful or heartbreaking, is completely different from the other because of family dynamics, living situations, gender, and the transition these teens make in recognition of their true selves.

High school and the difficult terrain of sexuality and gender identity are brilliantly explored in this smart, incisive ethnography. 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.

Roddrick Colvin assesses the impact of lesbian and gay police officers on law enforcement in the US and the UK, as well as the policies that enable a diverse work environment.

Colvin tracks the evolution of police agencies toward being more ¿gay friendly¿ both as employers and as service providers. He also provides insights into the day-to-day barriers and opportunities that lesbian and gay officers experience working within organizations that traditionally have been hostile to them. Integrating quantitative and qualitative research, he offers a compelling demonstration that police agencies can best fulfill their missions when they are representative of the communities they serve.

A collection of in-depth analytical interviews with twelve of the best-known gay novelists writing in English today, including Armistead Maupin, David Leavitt, Alan Garganus, and others.

This critical introduction to gay and lesbian identity within the media explores the concept of 'new storytelling'. The case studies look at film, television and online media, focussing on the narrative potential of individual storytellers who, as producers, writers and performers, challenge identity concerns and offer new expressions of liberty.

"The most comprehensive history to date of America's gay-rights movement." --The Economist A New York Times Notable Book of 2015 The sweeping story of the modern struggle for gay, lesbian, and trans rights--from the 1950s to the present--based on amazing interviews with politicians, military figures, legal activists, and members of the entire LGBT community who face these challenges every day. The fight for gay, lesbian, and trans civil rights--the years of outrageous injustice, the early battles, the heart-breaking defeats, and the victories beyond the dreams of the gay rights pioneers--is the most important civil rights issue of the present day. Based on rigorous research and more than 150 interviews, The Gay Revolution tells this unfinished story not through dry facts but through dramatic accounts of passionate struggles, with all the sweep, depth, and intricacies only an award-winning activist, scholar, and novelist like Lillian Faderman can evoke. The Gay Revolution begins in the 1950s, when law classified gays and lesbians as criminals, the psychiatric profession saw them as mentally ill, the churches saw them as sinners, and society victimized them with irrational hatred. Against this dark backdrop, a few brave people began to fight back, paving the way for the revolutionary changes of the 1960s and beyond. Faderman discusses the protests in the 1960s; the counter reaction of the 1970s and early eighties; the decimated but united community during the AIDS epidemic; and the current hurdles for the right to marriage equality. In the words of the eyewitnesses who were there through the most critical events, The Gay Revolution paints a nuanced portrait of the LGBT civil rights movement. A defining account, this is the most complete and authoritative book of its kind.

Now English-speaking readers can gain new access to valuable information on homosexuality and homosociality written by French-speaking scholars and researchers. Gay Studies From the French Cultures contains work taken from symposia held by the Research and Study Group on Homosociality and Homosexualities (GREH) in France over the past several years. GREH, founded by Mendes-Leite in 1986, is a forum and university network designed to open and enrich debate and interdisciplinary research on homosociality, homosexuality, and lesbianism. The chapters, all translated from their original French, represent a mosaic of scholars from Brazil, The Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada, as well as France, giving readers a broad perspective on the subject. Although authors share cultural roots and connections through GREH, the book contains a deliberate disparity of topics and points of view from French-speaking persons in the western hemisphere, seeking to heighten understanding through diversity. The book is divided into three parts: Theoretical Background, Lesbian History and Commentary, and Gay Male History and Commentary. Some of the various topics discussed include: theoretical background on sexualities and gender studies gay and lesbian history homosexuality and AIDS nineteenth century's French gay and lesbian history sociology of Brazilian homosexualities French-spoken Canadian history on sexualities historiographiesAn enlightening volume, Gay Studies From the French Cultures provides a bridge between English-language and Francophone research on homosexuality, increasing the knowledge, awareness, and understanding of a whole new group of readers.

The new edition of Gender Circuits explores the impact of new technologies on the gendered lives of individuals through substantive sociological analysis and in-depth case studies. Examining the complex intersections between gender ideologies, social scripts, information and biomedical technologies, and embodied identities, this book explores whether and how new technologies are reshaping what it means to be a gendered person in contemporary society.

This set has an ambitious scope with the goal of offering the most up-to-date international overview of key issues in the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals. HIV/AIDS has been a major media focus, but this set fosters a broader understanding of the status of LGBT individuals in their society. More than 70 countries are represented. The clear, accessible prose is appropriate for high school student research on up. The material is especially needed in a cultural climate that increasingly supports and requires information about LGBT populations. The content is useful for a paper on a hot topic, health classes, discussion groups, and gay-straight alliance groups.

Thirty years ago when a gay, lesbian or bisexual person went for therapy, the accepted approach to treatment was to seek a cure for the client's homosexual psychopathology. Today, although the vast majority of psychologists are considerably more compassionate, accepting and the understanding of their gay, lesbian and bisexual clients, they lack a comprehensive source of information regarding this population.

The rise of heterosexual culture and the resistance it met from feudal lords, church fathers, and the medical profession. Heterosexuality is celebrated--in film and television, in pop songs and opera, in literature and on greeting cards--and at the same time taken for granted. It is the cultural and sexual norm by default. And yet, as Louis-Georges Tin shows in The Invention of Heterosexual Culture, in premodern Europe heterosexuality was perceived as an alternative culture. The practice of heterosexuality may have been standard, but the symbolic primacy of the heterosexual couple was not. Tin maps the emergence of heterosexual culture in Western Europe and the significant resistance to it from feudal lords, church fathers, and the medical profession. Tin writes that before the phenomenon of "courtly love" in the early twelfth century, the man-woman pairing had not been deemed a subject worthy of more than passing interest. As heterosexuality became a recurrent theme in art and literature, the nobility came to view it as a disruption of the feudal chivalric ethos of virility and male bonding. If feudal lords objected to the "hetero" in heterosexuality and what they saw as the associated dangers of weakness and effeminacy, the church took issue with the "sexuality," which threatened the Christian ethos of renunciation and divine love. Finally, the medical profession cast heterosexuality as pathology, warning of an epidemic of "lovesickness." Noting that the discourse of heterosexuality does not belong to heterosexuals alone, Tin offers a groundbreaking history that reasserts the cultural identity of heterosexuality.

Protect your rights -- protect your relationship! Now more than ever, it's important that you take the proper legal steps to define and protect your relationship in the eyes of the law. If you don't, you run the risk of being shut out of each other's lives -- and the lives of children you co-parent -- in times of medical, financial or personal crisis. This practical, plain-English guide shows lesbian and gay couples how to: make practical decisions about living together obtain domestic partner benefits make medical decisions for each other when needed take care of each other's finances when one partner is incapacitated leave property to each other have and raise children through adoption, donor insemination, surrogacy or foster parenting The 15th edition is updated with a discussion of the laws of each state offering either marriage or marriage-equivalent status, covers all the new state laws in recent months, and discusses the pros and cons of entering into a marriage or like relationship. It also includes a CD-ROM that helps living-together contracts, powers of attorney, wills and more.

Visibility matters to activists--to their social and political relevance, their credibility, their influence. But invisibility matters, too, in times of political hostility or internal crisis. Out in Africa is the first to present an intimate look at how Namibian and South African lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) organizations have cultivated visibility and invisibility as strategies over time. As such, it reveals the complexities of the LGBT movements in both countries as these organizations make use of Western terminology and notions of identity to gain funding even as they work to counter the perception that they are "un-African." Different sociopolitical conditions in Namibia and South Africa affected how activists in each country campaigned for LGBT rights between 1995 and 2006. Focusing on this period, Ashley Currier shows how, in Namibia, LGBT activists struggled against ruling party leaders' homophobic rhetoric and how, at the same time, black LGBT citizens of South Africa, though enjoying constitutional protections, greater visibility, and heightened activism, nonetheless confronted homophobic violence because of their gender and sexual nonconformity. As it tells the story of the evolving political landscape in postapartheid Namibia and South Africa, Out in Africa situates these countries' movements in relation to developments in pan-African LGBT organizing and offers broader insights into visibility as a social movement strategy rather than simply as a static accomplishment or outcome of political organizing.

In the Bible Belt, it's common to see bumper stickers that claim One Man + One Woman = Marriage, church billboards that command one to "Get right with Jesus," letters to the editor comparing gay marriage to marrying one's dog, and nightly news about homophobic attacks from the Family Foundation. While some areas of the Unites States have made tremendous progress in securing rights for gay people, Bible Belt states lag behind. Not only do most Bible Belt gays lack domestic partner benefits, lesbians and gay men can still be fired from some places of employment in many regions of the Bible Belt for being a homosexual.   In Pray the Gay Away, Bernadette Barton argues that conventions of small town life, rules which govern Southern manners, and the power wielded by Christian institutions serve as a foundation for both passive and active homophobia in the Bible Belt. She explores how conservative Christian ideology reproduces homophobic attitudes and shares how Bible Belt gays negotiate these attitudes in their daily lives. Drawing on the remarkable stories of Bible Belt gays, Barton brings to the fore their thoughts, experiences and hard-won insights to explore the front lines of our national culture war over marriage, family, hate crimes, and equal rights. Pray the Gay Away illuminates their lives as both foot soldiers and casualties in the battle for gay rights.

Winner of the 2016 Book Award from the American Society of Criminology, Division of Critical Criminology. In this book, Carrie L. Buist and Emily Lenning reflect on the origins of Queer Criminology, survey the foundational research and scholarship in this emerging field, and offer suggestions for the future. Covering topics such as the criminalization of queerness; the policing of Queer communities; Queer experiences in the courtroom; and the correctional control of Queer people, Queer Criminology synthesizes the work of criminologists, journalists, legal scholars, non-governmental organizations, and others to illuminate the historical and contemporary context of the Queer experience. Queer Criminology offers examples of the grave injustices that Queer people face around the world, particularly in places such as Russia, Kyrgyzstan, England, India, Thailand, Nigeria, and the United States. These injustices include, but are not limited to, selective enforcement, coerced confessions, disproportionate sentencing, rape, extortion, denial of due process, forced isolation, corporal punishment, and death. By highlighting a pattern of discriminatory, disproportionate, and abusive treatment of Queer people by the criminal legal system, this book demonstrates the importance of developing a criminology that critiques the heteronormative systems that serve to oppress Queer people around the world. Buist and Lenning argue that criminology is incomplete without a thorough recognition and understanding of these Queer experiences. Therefore, Queer Criminology is a vital contribution to the growing body of literature exploring the Queer experience, and should be considered a necessary tool for students, scholars, and practitioners alike who are seeking a more just criminal legal system.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2016 Rural queer experience is often hidden or ignored, and presumed to be alienating, lacking, and incomplete without connections to a gay culture that exists in an urban elsewhere. Queering the Countryside offers the first comprehensive look at queer desires found in rural America from a genuinely multi-disciplinary perspective. This collection of original essays confronts the assumption that queer desires depend upon urban life for meaning.   By considering rural queer life, the contributors challenge readers to explore queer experiences in ways that give greater context and texture to modern practices of identity formation. The book's focus on understudied rural spaces throws into relief the overemphasis of urban locations and structures in the current political and theoretical work on queer sexualities and genders. Queering the Countryside highlights the need to rethink notions of "the closet" and "coming out" and the characterizations of non-urban sexualities and genders as "isolated" and in need of "outreach." Contributors focus on a range of topics--some obvious, some delightfully unexpected--from the legacy of Matthew Shepard, to how heterosexuality is reproduced at the 4-H Club, to a look at sexual encounters at a truck stop, to a queer reading of TheWizard of Oz.   A journey into an unexplored slice of life in rural America, Queering the Countryside offers a unique perspective on queer experience in the modern United States and Canada.  

Before the 1969 Stonewall Riots ushered in the contemporary gay liberation movement, overt representations of same-sex desire in American literature and the arts were few and far between. Even in the 1970s, when gay and lesbian cultures began to register on our national consciousness, such work was still quite rare. In the 1980s and 90s, however, all that changed. The Queer Renaissance puts a name to the unprecedented outpouring of creative work by openly lesbian and gay novelists, poets, and playwrights in the past two decades. This volume is one of the first to analyze critically this cultural awakening and is one of the only books to consider the work of gay male and lesbian writers together. Most importantly, The Queer Renaissance is the first book to consider how this wave of creative activity has worked in tandem with a flourishing of radical queer politics. The Queer Renaissance explores the work of such important figures as Audre Lorde, Edmund White, Randall Kenan, Gloria Anzalda, Tony Kushner, and Sarah Schulman to question the dichotomy between art and activism. In addition, The Queer Renaissance interrogates the ways queer theory deploys, intersects with, and contests contemporary theoretical movements such as cultural studies, feminist theory, African American theory, and Chicano/a theory.

From the ancient poet Sappho to tombois in contemporary Indonesia, women throughout history and around the globe have desired, loved, and had sex with other women. In beautiful prose, Sapphistries tells their stories, capturing the multitude of ways that diverse societies have shaped female same-sex sexuality across time and place. Leila J. Rupp reveals how, from the time of the very earliest societies, the possibility of love between women has been known, even when it is feared, ignored, or denied. We hear women in the sex-segregated spaces of convents and harems whispering words of love. We see women beginning to find each other on the streets of London and Amsterdam, in the aristocratic circles of Paris, in the factories of Shanghai. We find women’s desire and love for women meeting the light of day as Japanese schoolgirls fall in love, and lesbian bars and clubs spread from 1920s Berlin to 1950s Buffalo. And we encounter a world of difference in the twenty-first century, as transnational concepts and lesbian identities meet local understandings of how two women might love each other. Giving voice to words from the mouths and pens of women, and from men’s prohibitions, reports, literature, art, imaginings, pornography, and court cases, Rupp also creatively employs fiction to imagine possibilities when there is no historical evidence. Sapphistries combines lyrical narrative with meticulous historical research, providing an eminently readable and uniquely sweeping story of desire, love, and sex between women around the globe from the beginning of time to the present.

Second Son: Transitioning Toward My Destiny, Love and Life is a story that intimately explores the transition experience of Ryan Sallans, born Kimberly Ann Sallans. Each chapter viscerally pulls the reader through Ryan's transition from infant to child, child to body-obsessed teenage girl, teenage girl to eating-disordered young woman, female to male, daughter to son, and finally a beloved partner to a cherished fiancé. It offers readers a unique glimpse of life and love as lived by a uniquely talented and truth-telling man.

Although transgender people are increasingly represented in academic studies and popular culture, they rarely have the opportunity to add their own voices to the conversation. In this remarkable book, Jackson Shultz records the stories of more than thirty Americans who identify as transgender. They range in age from fifteen to seventy-two; come from twenty-five different states and a wide array of racial, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds; and identify across a vast spectrum of genders and sexualities. Giving voice to a diverse group of individuals, the book raises questions about gender, acceptance, and unconditional love. From historical descriptions of activism to personal stories of discrimination, love, and community, these touching accounts of gender transition shed light on the uncharted territories that lie beyond the gender binary. Despite encounters with familial rejection, drug addiction, and medical malpractice, each account is imbued with optimism and humor, providing a thoughtful look at the daily joys and struggles of transgender life. With an introduction and explanations from the author, this work will appeal to health-care providers, educators, and legal professionals; anyone questioning their own gender, considering transition, or setting out on their own transition journey; and transgender individuals, their significant others, friends, family, and allies.

"In this fascinating personal journey through history, Leslie Feinberg - one of the most prominent transgender rights activists today - unearths a vast body of evidence that throughout history there have always been people who defy cultural boundaries of sex and gender." "During an embattled childhood and teenage years as a gender outlaw, Feinberg began a search for others struggling to assert an identity. What s/he found was a long tradition of individuals fighting back against injustice - from Joan of Arc to the Welsh peasants who cross-dressed to protest taxes, from the Black and Latina drag queens who led the Stonewall rebellion to transsexual parents fighting for custody today. Traditional society often exacted a terrible price from these transgender warriors, and Feinberg urges us now to receive them as hero/ines and visionaries." "Illustrated with many previously unpublished historical images and contemporary photographs, Transgender Warriors is an eye-opening excursion through the history of sex and gender expression and a powerful testament to the resilient and rebellious spirit."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This book reviews evidence of health disparities among gay and bisexual men, identifying individual and community factors that have contributed to these disparities, and suggests strategies for public health efforts to eliminate inequality in the future.

Violence against lesbians and gay men has increasingly captured media and scholarly attention. But these reports tend to focus on one segment of the LGBT community--white, middle class men--and largely ignore that part of the community that arguably suffers a larger share of the violence--racial minorities, the poor, and women. In Violence against Queer People, sociologist Doug Meyer offers the first investigation of anti-queer violence that focuses on the role played by race, class, and gender.   Drawing on interviews with forty-seven victims of violence, Meyer shows that LGBT people encounter significantly different forms of violence--and perceive that violence quite differently--based on their race, class, and gender.  His research highlights the extent to which other forms of discrimination--including racism and sexism--shape LGBT people's experience of abuse. He reports, for instance, that lesbian and transgender women often described violent incidents in which a sexual or a misogynistic component was introduced, and that LGBT people of color sometimes weren't sure if anti-queer violence was based solely on their sexuality or whether racism or sexism had also played a role. Meyer observes that given the many differences in how anti-queer violence is experienced, the present media focus on white, middle-class victims greatly oversimplifies and distorts the nature of anti-queer violence. In fact, attempts to reduce anti-queer violence that ignore race, class, and gender run the risk of helping only the most privileged gay subjects. Many feel that the struggle for gay rights has largely been accomplished and the tide of history has swung in favor of LGBT equality. Violence against Queer People, on the contrary, argues that the lives of many LGBT people--particularly the most vulnerable--have improved very little, if at all, over the past thirty years.  

"Each chapter in this comprehensive book provides resources for teens encountering interpersonal or systemic mistreatment at home, school, work, and in their community. The text lays out their legally recognized rights in these contexts, providing information about how to make use of existing laws. Also included are strategies for meeting needs not currently recognized as legal rights, drawing on past and contemporary struggles for equality. Accessible and engaging, this book provides LGBTQ+ youth with the tools to protect themselves, participate safely in the activities they care about, and to make societal change."

"Every generation has its hot-button issue," writes David P. Gushee, "For us, it's the LGBT issue." In Changing Our Mind, Gushee takes the reader along his personal and theological journey as he changes his mind about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender inclusion in the Church. "For decades now, David Gushee has earned the reputation as America's leading evangelical ethicist. In this book, he admits that he has been wrong on the LGBT issue." writes Brian D. McLaren, author and theologian.

Forbears can become fairy-tale figures, especially when they defy tradition and are spoken of only in whispers. For the biographer and historian Emily Bingham, the secret of who her great-aunt was, and just why her story was buried for so long, led to Irrepressible: The Jazz Age Life of Henrietta Bingham. Raised like a princess in one of the most powerful families in the American South, Henrietta was offered the helm of a publishing empire. Instead, she ripped through the Jazz Age like an F. Scott Fitzgerald character: intoxicating and intoxicated, selfish and shameful, seductive and brilliant, and often terribly troubled. In New York, Louisville, and London she drove men and women wild with desire, and her youth blazed with sex. But her lesbian love affairs made her the subject of derision and drove a doctor to try to cure her. After the speed and pleasure of her youth, the toxicity of judgment coupled with her own anxieties led to years of addiction and breakdowns. Henrietta rode the cultural cusp as a muse to the Bloomsbury group, the daughter of the ambassador to England during the rise of Nazism, the seductress of royalty and athletic champions, and a pre-Stonewall figure who never buckled to convention. Henrietta's audacious physicality made her unforgettable in her own time, and her ecstatic and at times harrowing story brings to life an essential chapter in America's twentieth century.

This collection, the first of its kind, gathers original and previously published fiction and poetry from lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer authors from Appalachia. Like much Appalachian literature, these works are pervaded with an attachment to family and the mountain landscape, yet balancing queer and Appalachian identities is an undertaking fraught with conflict. This collection confronts the problematic and complex intersections of place, family, sexuality, gender, and religion with which LGBTQ Appalachians often grapple. With works by established writers such as Dorothy Allison, Silas House, Ann Pancake, Fenton Johnson, and Nickole Brown and emerging writers such as Savannah Sipple, Rahul Mehta, Mesha Maren, and Jonathan Corcoran, this collection celebrates a literary canon made up of writers who give voice to what it means to be Appalachian and LGBTQ.

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974. . . My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver’s license...records my first name simply as Cal." So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of l967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.

From a leading journalist and activist comes a brave, beautifully wrought memoir. When Darnell Moore was fourteen, three boys from his neighborhood tried to set him on fire. They cornered him while he was walking home from school, harassed him because they thought he was gay, and poured a jug of gasoline on him. He escaped, but just barely. It wasn't the last time he would face death. Three decades later, Moore is an award-winning writer, a leading Black Lives Matter activist, and an advocate for justice and liberation. In No Ashes in the Fire, he shares the journey taken by that scared, bullied teenager who not only survived, but found his calling. Moore's transcendence over the myriad forces of repression that faced him is a testament to the grace and care of the people who loved him, and to his hometown, Camden, NJ, scarred and ignored but brimming with life. Moore reminds us that liberation is possible if we commit ourselves to fighting for it, and if we dream and create futures where those who survive on society's edges can thrive. No Ashes in the Fire is a story of beauty and hope-and an honest reckoning with family, with place, and with what it means to be free. Lambda Literary Award - Gay Memoir/Biography (Winner - 2019) A New York Times Notable Book of the Year (2018)

In this lyrical debut, Ryan Berg immerses readers in the gritty, dangerous, and shockingly underreported world of homeless LGBTQ teens in New York. As a caseworker in a group home for disowned LGBTQ teenagers, Berg witnessed the struggles, fears, and ambitions of these disconnected youth as they resisted the pull of the street, tottering between destruction and survival. Focusing on the lives and loves of eight unforgettable youth, No House to Call My Home traces their efforts to break away from dangerous sex work and cycles of drug and alcohol abuse, and, in the process, to heal from years of trauma. From Bella's fervent desire for stability to Christina's irrepressible dreams of stardom to Benny's continuing efforts to find someone to love him, Berg uncovers the real lives behind the harrowing statistics: over 4,000 youth are homeless in New York City--43 percent of them identify as LGBTQ. Through these stories, Berg compels us to rethink the way we define privilege, identity, love, and family. Beyond the tears, bluster, and bravado, he reveals the force that allows them to carry on--the irrepressible hope of youth.

Having tracked one hundred women for more than ten years, Lisa M. Diamond argues that for some women love and desire are not rigidly heterosexual or homosexual, but fluid, changing as women move through the stages of life, various social groups and, most importantly, different love relationships.

This timely title gives young people a better understanding of sexual orientation, gender identity, and the LGBTQ community. Personal testimonials shed light on the difficulties individuals face coming out and dispel myths of gender stereotypes. Also included is advice on how to support family members, friends, or classmates who identify as a member of the LGBTQ community.

"The capacity to be attracted, and attractive, to people of both sexes is something we take for granted in the famous and infamous (rock stars and other celebrities); in the unfamous we tend to ignore it or to dismiss it as confusion or lack of self-knowledge." "Yet bisexuality shows up everywhere once we open our eyes - in our daily lives, in our childhoods, in books, movies, art, and popular culture. As part of our contemporary obsession with categories and identities, we use marriage and other institutions, homosexual as well as heterosexual, to pigeonhole sexuality. But why should we? We live long sexual lives, in the sense that between birth and death we form many intense and varied personal attachments. We tend to select a few of those attachments and derive from them a label, "straight" or "gay," for our "sexual identity." The rest - an adolescent "crush," for example, or the passion a favorite teacher inspired - we write off as "phases" or footnotes. But, as Marjorie Garber reveals, this pruning away of our sexual lives cuts us off from many deep and important feelings." "Garber argues that erotic life is, by nature, politically incorrect and unpredictable. This unpredictability locates bisexuality not between heterosexuality and homosexuality but beyond them. Gathering evidence from art, literature, film, pop culture, advertising, science, and psychology, Garber documents how, both for cultures and for individuals, circumstance, accident, and inclination produce a rich and complicated history of emotion and experience over time."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Listed as a Must-Read, The Advocate calls it a "casual but highly readable memoir." Sunshine had been unlucky in love-with both men and women-for years. She needed a new plan. What else could she do but hit the internet, cross her fingers, and hope for the best? In this heartfelt, humorous memoir the author takes readers on her personal journey of falling in love with Leor, who was born female, but who became the man of her dreams, through all of the ups and downs of loving a newly transgendered man.This riveting memoir is part love story, part Rorschach relationship test, and a psychological mirror for everyone who has ever been in love. The book gives readers an extremely rare and intimate glimpse into the lives of transgendered people and the people who love them. It also helps shatter preconceived notions about gender identity. And it should be required reading for those about to embark on a relationship, no matter their sexual orientation. When My Boyfriend Was a Girl is a mind-blowing memoir that will shatter any preconceived notions you have about gender, relationships, and love. With a foreword by Max Wolf Valerio, author of "The Testosterone Files."

Asher Machnik is a teenage boy cursed with a beautiful androgynous face. Guys punch him, girls slag him and by high school he's developed an intense fear of being touched. Art remains his only escape from an otherwise emotionally empty life. Eulalie Mason is the lonely, tough-talking dyke from school who befriends Ash. The only one to see and accept all of his sides as a loner, a fellow artist and a best friend, she's starting to wonder if ash is ever going to see all of her.... a + e 4EVER is a graphic novel--and a A Stonewall Book Award Honoree--set in that ambiguous crossroads where love and friendship, boy and girl, straight and gay meet. It goes where few books have ventured, into genderqueer life, where affections aren't black and white.

"This is Beautiful Music for Ugly Children, on community radio 90.3, KZUK. I'm Gabe. Welcome to my show." My birth name is Elizabeth, but I'm a guy. Gabe. My parents think I've gone crazy and the rest of the world is happy to agree with them, but I know I'm right. I've been a boy my whole life. When you think about it, I'm like a record. Elizabeth is my A side, the song everybody knows, and Gabe is my B side - not heard as often, but just as good. It's time to let my B side play. .

Themes: Hi-Lo, Bisexuality, bullying. Low-level teen fiction tackling tough and gritty topics like foster care, rape, teen pregnancy and more. Series contains two silver medal winners for the Independent Publishers Book Award--and a Moonbeam Children's Book Award. Each novel is approximately 200-pages. Lexile Levels: 390 to 400. Brett Miller is one of the kings of Elkhead High. Everyone knows the kings rule the school. Football stars. Pretty girls. The in-crowd. Brett and his buddies are the tormentors; nobody messes with them. His life seems perfect, Normal. His girlfriend Jillia is hot. He loves her. He imagines marrying her someday. Then Brett meets Zach...Lexile Levels: 330. 191 pages.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING LOVE STORY SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE! "[A] wise, wildly unique" (Entertainment Weekly) love story from the New York Times bestselling co-author of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and Will Grayson, Will Grayson about a teen who wakes up every morning in a different body, living a different life. Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl. There's never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere. It's all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin's girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone he wants to be with--day in, day out, day after day. With his new novel, David Levithan, bestselling co-author of Will Grayson, Will Grayson, and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, has pushed himself to new creative heights. He has written a captivating story that will fascinate readers as they begin to comprehend the complexities of life and love in A's world, as A and Rhiannon seek to discover if you can truly love someone who is destined to change every day. "A story that is always alluring, oftentimes humorous and much like love itself-- splendorous." --Los Angeles Times  

In Feminist, Queer, Crip Alison Kafer imagines a different future for disability and disabled bodies. Challenging the ways in which ideas about the future and time have been deployed in the service of compulsory able-bodiedness and able-mindedness, Kafer rejects the idea of disability as a pre-determined limit. She juxtaposes theories, movements, and identities such as environmental justice, reproductive justice, cyborg theory, transgender politics, and disability that are typically discussed in isolation and envisions new possibilities for crip futures and feminist/queer/crip alliances. This bold book goes against the grain of normalization and promotes a political framework for a more just world.

A bright, bold debut about a girl who was born a boy, but refuses to let that stand in the way of her dream. More than anything else, George wants to play Charlotte in her fourth-grade class's production of Charlotte's Web. The problem is, her teacher won't let her, because George is a boy. But George isn't about to let that squash her dream. With the help of her best friend, George must learn to stand up for her wish - and brave a few bullies along the way. Transcending all categories and genres,George is a pertinent and poignant middle-grade read for kids of all backgrounds.

TheNew York Times Bestselling story of first love, family, loss, and betrayal for fans of John Green, David Levithan, and Rainbow Rowell Jude and her twin brother, Noah, are incredibly close. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude cliff-dives and wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them. But three years later, Jude and Noah are barely speaking. Something has happened to wreck the twins in different and dramatic ways . . . until Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy, as well as someone else; an even more unpredictable new force in her life. The early years are Noah's story to tell. The later years are Jude's. What the twins don't realize is that they each have only half the story, and if they could just find their way back to one another, they'd have a chance to remake their world. This radiant novel from the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Sky Is Everywhere will leave you breathless and teary and laughing; often all at once. "A wild, beautiful, and profoundly moving novel. Jandy Nelson's writing is so electric, so alive, her pages practically glow in the dark."; Ransom Riggs, New York Times bestselling author of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and Hollow City "Jandy Nelson is a rare, explosive talent, and one of the best writers working today. Her prose is vivid, breathtaking, and drenched in passion, and her stories remind me why words can change the world." ;Tahereh Mafi, New York Times bestselling author of the Shatter Me series. "I love this book. Jandy Nelson is my new writing hero. Read this book. She'll be your favorite author as well."; Holly Goldberg Sloan, New York Times bestselling author of Counting by 7s "Jandy Nelson's writing is poetic and mesmerizing. More importantly, Nelson weaves a novel that seeps into your bones like fire on a cold day . . . I'll Give You the Sun is a novel that promises a story like nothing else and then delivers it; Garret Freymann-Weyr, author of Printz Honor book, My Heartbeat "This is a stunning, artfully woven story. My heart burst open at the blazing, unforgettable end. Magnificent."; Nova Ren Suma, author of Imaginary Girls and 17 & Gone "An extraordinary book! I've never read anything like it. Lyrical-unique-passionate-magical-tragic-hopeful; Nelson's characters will fly off the page and into your heart."; Nancy Garden, author of Annie on my Mind

A powerful and inspiring story about a transgender teen's struggle to find his own path -- and love his true self. J had always felt different. He was certain that eventually everyone would understand who he really was: a boy mistakenly born as a girl. Yet as he grew up, his body began to betray him; eventually J stopped praying to wake up a "real boy" and started covering up his body, keeping himself invisible -- from his parents, from his friends, from the world. But after being deserted by the best friend he thought would always be by his side, J decides that he's done hiding -- it's time to be who he really is. And this time he is determined not to give up, no matter the cost.

Every story can change a life. Watch a video Growing up isn't easy. Many young people face daily tormenting and bullying, making them feel like they have nowhere to turn. This is especially true for LGBT kids and teens who often hide their sexuality for fear of bullying. Without other openly gay adults and mentors in their lives, they can't imagine what their future may hold. In many instances, gay and lesbian adolescents are taunted - even tortured - simply for being themselves. After a number of tragic suicides by LGBT students who were bullied in school, syndicated columnist and author Dan Savage uploaded a video to YouTube with his partner Terry Miller to inspire hope for LGBT youth facing harassment. Speaking openly about the bullying they suffered as teenagers, and how they both went on to lead rewarding adult lives, their video launched the It Gets Better Project YouTube channel and initiated a worldwide phenomenon. With over 6,000 videos posted and over 20 million views in the first three months alone, the world has embraced the opportunity to provide personal, honest and heartfelt support for LGBT youth everywhere. It Gets Better is a collection of expanded essays and new material from celebrities, everyday people and teens who have posted videos of encouragement, as well as new contributors who have yet to post videos to the site. While many of these teens couldn't see a positive future for themselves, we can. We can show LGBT youth the levels of happiness, potential and positivity their lives will reach if they can just get through their teen years. By sharing these stories, It Gets Better reminds teenagers in the LGBT community that they are not alone - and it WILL get better.

A Stonewall Book Award Winner! "Little and Lion is beautifully insightful, honest, and compassionate. Brandy's ability to find larger meaning in small moments is nothing short of dazzling."-Nicola Yoon, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Everything, Everything A stunning novel on love, identity, loss, and redemption. When Suzette comes home to Los Angeles from her boarding school in New England, she's isn't sure if she'll ever want to go back. L.A. is where her friends and family are (as well as her crush, Emil). And her stepbrother, Lionel, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, needs her emotional support. But as she settles into her old life, Suzette finds herself falling for someone new...the same girl her brother is in love with. When Lionel's disorder spirals out of control, Suzette is forced to confront her past mistakes and find a way to help her brother before he hurts himself--or worse.

In his twisty, gritty, profoundly moving New York Times bestselling-debut--also called "mandatory reading" and selected as an Editors' Choice by the New York Times--Adam Silvera brings to life a charged, dangerous near-future summer in the Bronx. In the months after his father's suicide, it's been tough for sixteen-year-old Aaron Soto to find happiness again--but he's still gunning for it. With the support of his girlfriend Genevieve and his overworked mom, he's slowly remembering what that might feel like. But grief and the smile-shaped scar on his wrist prevent him from forgetting completely.  When Genevieve leaves for a couple of weeks, Aaron spends all his time hanging out with this new guy, Thomas. Aaron's crew notices, and they're not exactly thrilled. But Aaron can't deny the happiness Thomas brings or how Thomas makes him feel safe from himself, despite the tensions their friendship is stirring with his girlfriend and friends. Since Aaron can't stay away from Thomas or turn off his newfound feelings for him, he considers turning to the Leteo Institute's revolutionary memory-alteration procedure to straighten himself out, even if it means forgetting who he truly is.  Why does happiness have to be so hard? "Silvera managed to leave me smiling after totally breaking my heart. Unforgettable." --Becky Albertalli, author of Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda  "Adam Silvera explores the inner workings of a painful world and he delivers this with heartfelt honesty and a courageous, confident hand . . . A mesmerizing, unforgettable tour de force." --John Corey Whaley, National Book Award finalist and author of Where Things Come Back and Noggin 

Morris is a little boy who loves using his imagination. But most of all, Morris loves wearing the tangerine dress in his classroom’s dress-up center. The children in Morris’s class don’t understand. Dresses, they say, are for girls. And Morris certainly isn’t welcome in the spaceship some of his classmates are building. Astronauts, they say, don’t wear dresses. One day when Morris feels all alone and sick from their taunts, his mother lets him stay home from school. Morris dreams of a fantastic space adventure with his cat, Moo. Inspired by his dream, Morris paints the incredible scene he saw and brings it with him to school. He builds his own spaceship, hangs his painting on the front of it and takes two of his classmates on an outer space adventure. With warm, dreamy illustrations, Isabelle Malenfant perfectly captures Morris’s vulnerability and the vibrancy of his imagination.

A funny, honest novel about being out, being proud . . . and being ready for something else. Rafe is a normal teenager from Boulder, Colorado. He plays soccer. He's won skiing prizes. He likes to write. And, oh yeah, he's gay. He's been out since 8th grade, and he isn't teased, and he goes to other high schools and talks about tolerance and stuff. And while that's important, all Rafe really wants is to just be a regular guy. Not that GAY guy.To have it be a part of who he is, but not the headline, every single time. So when he transfers to an all-boys' boarding school in New England, he decides to keep his sexuality a secret - not so much going back in the closet as starting over with a clean slate. But then he sees a classmate breaking down. He meets a teacher who challenges him to write his story. And most of all, he falls in love with Ben . . . who doesn't even know that love is possible. This witty, smart, coming-out-again story will appeal to gay and straight kids alike as they watch Rafe navigate being different, fitting in, and what it means to be himself.

An epic road trip involving family history, gay history, the girlfriend he can't have, and the grandfather he never knew. Carson Smith is resigned to spending his summer in Billings, Montana, helping his mom take care of his father, a dying alcoholic he doesn't really know. Then he meets Aisha Stinson, a beautiful girl who has run away from her difficult family, and Pastor John Logan, who's long held a secret regarding Carson's grandfather, who disappeared without warning or explanation thirty years before. Together, Carson and Aisha embark on an epic road trip to find the answers that might save Carson's dad, restore his fragmented family, and discover the "Porcupine of Truth" in all of their lives.

"The book every LGBT person would have killed for as a teenager, told in the voice of a wise best friend. Frank, warm, funny, USEFUL." -Patrick Ness, bestselling author Lesbian. Bisexual. Queer. Transgender. Straight. Curious. This book is for everyone, regardless of gender or sexual preference. This book is for anyone who's ever dared to wonder. This book is for YOU. There's a long-running joke that, after "coming out," a lesbian, gay guy, bisexual, or trans person should receive a membership card and instruction manual. THIS IS THAT INSTRUCTION MANUAL. You're welcome. Inside you'll find the answers to all the questions you ever wanted to ask: from sex to politics, hooking up to stereotypes, coming out and more. This candid, funny, and uncensored exploration of sexuality and what it's like to grow up LGBT also includes real stories from people across the gender and sexual spectrums, not to mention hilarious illustrations. You will be entertained. You will be informed. But most importantly, you will know that however you identify (or don't) and whomever you love, you are exceptional. You matter. And so does this book. One of The Guardian's Best Books of the Year "This egregious gap has now been filled to a fare-thee-well by Dawson's book..." - Booklist(Starred)

This day in June... Parade starts soon... Rainbow arches... Joyful marches! In a wildly whimsical, validating, and exuberant reflection of the LGBT community, This Day In June welcomes readers to experience a pride celebration and share in a day when we are all united. Also included is a Reading Guide chock-full of facts about LGBT history and culture, as well as a Note to Parents and Caregivers with information on how to talk to children about sexual orientation and gender identity in age-appropriate ways. This Day In June is an excellent tool for teaching respect, acceptance, and understanding of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.

In the first of eight volumes, readers are introduced to fifth gradersShuichi Nitori and his new friend Yoshino Takatsuki. They have happy homes,loving families, and are well liked by their classmates. But they share a secretthat further complicates the already-complicated verge of puberty: Shuichi is aboy who wants to be a girl, and Yoshino is a girl who wants to be a boy. Wandering Son: Book One is written and drawn by one of today's mostcritically acclaimed creators of manga, Shimura, who portrays Shuishi andYoshino's very private journey with affection, gentle humor, and unmistakablegrace. Wandering Son: Book One is a sophisticated work of literary mangatranslated with rare skill and sensitivity by veteran translator and comicsscholar Matt Thorn.

The year is 1990, and in his hometown of Dublin, Ireland, Neil Byrne plays rugby, keeps up with the in-crowd at his school, and is just a regular guy. A guy who's gay. It's a secret he keeps from the wider world as he explores the city at night and struggles to figure out how to reveal his real self--and to whom. First published in Ireland in 1993 and compared to The Catcher in the Rye by critics, Tom Lennon's When Love Comes to Town is told with honesty, humor and originality.