Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive

Bad Feminist

Roxane Gay · 360 pages

A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation, Roxane Gay. "Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink, all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I'm not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once l

Undoing Gender

Judith Butler · 278 pages

Butler addresses the regulation of sexuality and gender that takes place in psychology, aesthetics, and social policy. These essays deepen her treatment of issues introduced by earlier work on the relationship between power and the body, the meaning & purpose of the incest taboo, and the problems of kinship. "Undoing Gender constitutes Judith Butler's recent reflections on gender and sexuality,

Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore · 354 pages

Nobody Passes is a collection of essays that confronts and challenges the very notion of belonging. By examining the perilous intersections of identity, categorization, and community, contributors challenge societal mores and countercultural norms. Nobody Passes explores and critiques the various systems of power seen (or not seen) in the act of 2passing.3 In a pass-fail situation, standards for a

We Should All Be Feminists

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 64 pages

In this essay -- adapted from her TEDx talk of the same name -- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, award-winning author of Americanah, offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author's exploration

How to Be a Woman

Caitlin Moran · 313 pages

Though they have the vote and the Pill and haven't been burned as witches since 1727, life isn't exactly a stroll down the catwalk for modern women. They are beset by uncertainties and questions: Why are they supposed to get Brazilians? Why do bras hurt? Why the incessant talk about babies? And do men secretly hate them? Caitlin Moran interweaves provocative observations on women's lives with l

Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme

Ivan E. Coyote, Zena Sharman · 312 pages

In the summer of 2009, butch writer and storyteller Ivan Coyote and gender researcher and femme dynamo Zena Sharman wrote down a wish-list of their favourite queer authors; they wanted to continue and expand the butch-femme conversation. The result is *Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme*. The stories in these pages resist simple definitions. The people in these stories defy reductive stereotype

A Room of One's Own

Virginia Woolf · 129 pages

A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on 24 October 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers of and characters in fiction, the m

PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions About Gender and Sexuality

Carol Queen, Lawrence Schimel · 199 pages

PoMo: short for PostModern; in th earts, a movement following after and in direct reaction to Modernism; culturally, an outlook that acknowledges diverse and complex points of view. PoMoSexual: the queer erotic reality beyond the boundaries of gender, separatism, and essentialist notions of sexual orientation.

S/He

Minnie Bruce Pratt · 189 pages

This brave memoir chronicles Pratt’s struggle to overcome the repressive traditions of Southern womanhood and live her life honestly. It chronicles her youth, her marriage, her eventual decision to come out as a lesbian, and her life with transgendered activist and author Leslie Feinberg.

The Argonauts

Maggie Nelson · 160 pages

Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of “autotheory” offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. At its center is a romance: the story of the author’s relationship with artist Harry Dodge. This story, which includes the author’s account of falling in love with Dodge, as well as her journe

A Queer History of the United States

Michael Bronski · 287 pages

"A Queer History of the United States is groundbreaking and accessible. It looks at how American culture has shaped the LGBT, or queer, experience, while simultaneously arguing that LGBT people not only shaped but were pivotal in creating our country. Using numerous primary documents and literature, as well as social histories, Bronski's book takes the reader through the centuries--from Columbus'

Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Primer

Riki Anne Wilchins · 176 pages

"In this introduction to the work of postmodern sex and gender theorists, gender activist Riki Wilchins explains the key ideas that have shaped contemporary sex and gender studies. Using straightforward prose and concrete examples from LGBT politics - as well as her own life - Wilchins makes thinkers like Derrida, Foucault, and Judith Butler easily accessible to students, activists, and others who

Female Masculinity

J. Jack Halberstam · 344 pages

Masculinity without men. In Female Masculinity Jack Halberstam takes aim at the protected status of male masculinity and shows that female masculinity has offered a distinct alternative to it for well over two hundred years. Providing the first full-length study on this subject, Halberstam catalogs the diversity of gender expressions among masculine women from nineteenth-century pre-lesbian practi

To Belong Here: A New Generation of Queer, Trans, and Two-Spirit Appalachian Writers (Appalachian Futures Black Native & Queer Voices)

Rae Garringer · 112 pages

Girls Will Be Girls: Dressing Up, Playing Parts and Daring to Act Differently

Emer O'Toole · 320 pages

Missed Her

Ivan E. Coyote · 151 pages

The Full Spectrum: A New Generation of Writing About Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Question

David Levithan, Billy Merrell · 280 pages

Teens are more aware of sexuality and identity than ever, and they're looking for answers and insights, as well as a community of others. In order to help create that community, YA authors David Levithan and Billy Merrell have collected original poems, essays, and stories by young adults in their teens and early 20s. The Full Spectrum includes a variety of writers--gay, lesbian, bisexual, straight

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence

Adrienne Rich · 32 pages

The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You

S. Bear Bergman · 205 pages

"Alternately unsettling and affirming, devastating and delicious, The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You, is a new collection of essays on gender and identity by S. Bear Bergman that is irrevocably honest and endlessly illuminating. With humour and grace, these essays deal with issues from women's spaces to the old boys' network, from gay male bathhouses to lesbian potlucks, from being a child to prep

Marsha: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson

Tourmaline · 306 pages

Cloud 9

Caryl Churchill · 64 pages

A landmark play about sexual politics in colonial Africa and modern-day Britain, in which all our assumptions about sex and gender are stunningly exploded. Set in both colonial Africa and modern-day Britain, Cloud Nine is about relationships between women and men, men and men, women and women. -- Samuel French.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

Audre Lorde · 191 pages

A collection of fifteen essays written between 1976 and 1984 gives clear voice to Audre Lorde's literary and philosophical personae. These essays explore and illuminate the roots of Lorde's intellectual development and her deep-seated and longstanding concerns about ways of increasing empowerment among minority women writers and the absolute necessity to explicate the concept of difference—differe

It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living

Dan Savage · 338 pages

A collection of original essays and expanded testimonials written to teens from celebrities, political leaders, and everyday people. While many of these teens can't see a positive future for themselves, we can. We can show LGBT youth the kind of happiness, potential, and satisfaction their lives hold if they can just get through these early years.

Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation

Kate Bornstein, S. Bear Bergman · 302 pages

Today's transgenders and other sex/gender radicals are writing a drastically new world into being. In Gender Outlaws, Bornstein, together with writer, raconteur, and theater artist S. Bear Bergman, collects and contextualizes the work of this generation's trans and genderqueer forward thinkers.