So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color

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

Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans

Dan Baum · 311 pages

The hidden history of a haunted and beloved city told through the intersecting lives of nine remarkable characters After Hurricane Katrina, Dan Baum moved to New Orleans to write about the city's response to the disaster for The New Yorker. He quickly realized that Katrina was not the most interesting thing about New Orleans, not by a long shot. The most interesting question, which struck him as h

The Underground Girls of Kabul

Jenny Nordberg · 350 pages

An award-winning foreign correspondent who contributed to a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times series reveals the secret Afghan custom of disguising girls as boys to improve their prospects, discussing its political and social significance as well as the experiences of its practitioners.

China Witness: Voices from a Silent Generation

Xinran · 434 pages

This magnificent and groundbreaking work of oral history gives voice to a forgotten generation and reveals the secret history of 20th-century China.China Witness is the personal testimony of a generation whose stories have not yet been told. Here the grandparents and great-grandparents of today sum up in their own words – for the first and perhaps the last time – the vast changes that have overtak

Race: How Blacks And Whites Think And Feel About The American Obsession

Studs Terkel · 403 pages

First published in 1992 at the height of the furor over the Rodney King incident, Studs Terkel's Race was an immediate bestseller. In a rare and revealing look at how people in America truly feel about race, Terkel brings out the full complexity of the thoughts and emotions of both blacks and whites, uncovering a fascinating narrative of changing opinions. Preachers and street punks, college stude

Listening Is an Act of Love

Dave Isay · 304 pages

From more than ten thousand interviews, StoryCorps-the largest oral history project in the nation's history-presents a tapestry of American stories, told by the people who lived them to the people they love.StoryCorps began with the idea that everyone has an important story to tell. And since 2003, this remarkable project has been collecting the stories of everyday Americans and preserving them fo

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

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'

The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories, China From the Bottom Up

Liao Yiwu · 328 pages

A compilation of twenty-seven extraordinary oral histories that opens a window, unlike any other, onto the lives of ordinary, often outcast, Chinese men and women. Liao Yiwu (one of the best-known writers in China because he is also one of the most censored) chose his subjects from the bottom of Chinese society: people for whom the "new" China--the China of economic growth and globalization--is no

Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It

Craig Taylor · 413 pages

A collection of interviews with contemporary Londoners from all parts of the city and all walks of life.

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

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

Queer: A Graphic History

Meg-John Barker · 175 pages

Activist-academic Meg-John Barker and cartoonist Jules Scheele illuminate the histories of queer thought and LGBTQ+ action in this groundbreaking non-fiction graphic novel. From identity politics and gender roles to privilege and exclusion, Queer explores how we came to view sex, gender and sexuality in the ways that we do; how these ideas get tangled up with our culture and our understanding o

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

Judith Butler · 221 pages

One of the most talked-about scholarly works of the past fifty years, Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble is as celebrated as it is controversial. Arguing that traditional feminism is wrong to look to a natural, 'essential' notion of the female, or indeed of sex or gender, Butler starts by questioning the category 'woman' and continues in this vein with examinations of 'the masculine' and 'the femin

Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community

Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, Madeline D. Davis · 434 pages

Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold traces the evolution of the lesbian community in Buffalo, New York from the mid-1930s up to the early 1960s. Drawing upon the oral histories of 45 women, it is the first comprehensive history of a working-class lesbian community. These poignant and complex stories show how black and white working-class lesbians, although living under oppressive circumstances, nev

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

Barbara Demick · 314 pages

A remarkable view into North Korea, as seen through the lives of six ordinary citizens Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years--a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the unchallenged rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Taking us into a landscape most of us have nev

The ABC's of LGBT+

Ashley Mardell · 329 pages

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.

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.

Missed Her

Ivan E. Coyote · 151 pages

The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade

Ann Fessler · 358 pages

In this deeply moving and myth-shattering work, Ann Fessler brings out into the open for the first time the astonishing untold history of the million and a half women who surrendered children for adoption due to enormous family and social pressure in the decades before Roe v. Wade. An adoptee who was herself surrendered during those years and recently made contact with her mother, Ann Fessler bril

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

C.J. Pascoe · 240 pages

Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law

Dean Spade · 240 pages

"Wait-what's wrong with rights? Much of the legal advocacy for trans and gender nonconforming people in the US has reflected the civil rights and equality" strategies of mainstream gay and lesbian organizations-agitating for legal reforms that would ostensibly guarantee equal access, nondiscrimination, and equal protection under the law. This approach assumes that the state and its legal, policing

Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity

Julia Serano · 416 pages

A provocative manifesto, Whipping Girl tells the powerful story of Julia Serano, a transsexual woman whose supremely intelligent writing reflects her diverse background as a lesbian transgender activist and professional biologist. Serano shares her experiences and observations—both pre- and post-transition—to reveal the ways in which fear, suspicion, and dismissiveness toward femininity shape our