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

The ABC's of LGBT+

Ashley Mardell · 329 pages

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

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

In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives

J. Jack Halberstam · 213 pages

In a Queer Time and Place opens with a probing analysis of the life and death of Brandon Teena, a young transgender man who was brutally murdered in small-town Nebraska. After looking at mainstream representations of the transgender body as exhibited in the media frenzy surrounding this highly visible case and the Oscar-winning film based on Brandon's story, Boys Don't Cry, Halberstam turns her at

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

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

Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex"

Judith Butler · 256 pages

"In Bodies That Matter, Judith Butler further develops her distinctive theory of gender by examining the workings of power at the most "material" dimensions of sex and sexuality. Deepening the inquiries she began in Gender Trouble, Butler offers an original reformulation of the materiality of bodies, examining how the power of heterosexual hegemony forms the "matter" of bodies, sex, and gender. Bu

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

Caro De Robertis · 304 pages

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

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.

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'

Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940

George Chauncey · 496 pages

The award-winning, field-defining history of gay life in New York City in the early to mid-20th century. *Gay New York* brilliantly shatters the myth that before the 1960s gay life existed only in the closet, where gay men were isolated, invisible, and self-hating. Drawing on a rich trove of diaries, legal records, and other unpublished documents, George Chauncey constructs a fascinating portrait

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.

Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey Into Manhood and Back Again

Norah Vincent · 297 pages

A journalist's provocative and spellbinding account of her eighteen months spent disguised as a manNorah Vincent became an instant media sensation with the publication of Self-Made Man, her take on just how hard it is to be a man, even in a man's world. Following in the tradition of John Howard Griffin (Black Like Me), Norah spent a year and a half disguised as her male alter ego, Ned, exploring w

The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School

Alexandra Robbins · 436 pages

In a smart, entertaining, reassuring book that reads like fiction, Alexandra Robbins manages to cross Gossip Girl with Freaks and Geeks and explain the fascinating psychology and science behind popularity and "outcasthood." She reveals that the things that set students apart in high school are the things that help them stand out later in life. Robbins follows seven real people grappling with the u

The transgender studies reader

Susan Stryker, Stephen Whittle, Stephen Whittle · 768 pages

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.

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

Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era

Michael S. Kimmel · 319 pages

"One of the enduring images from the 2012 presidential campaign was the demise of the white American male voter as a dominant force in the political landscape. Bellowing white men fill the talk-radio airwaves. Why are they so angry? Michael Kimmel has spent hundreds of hours in the company of these angry white men-from white supremacists to men's rights activists to young students-in pursuit of an

Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex

Eric A. Stanley, Nat Smith · 382 pages

Pathologized, terrorized, and confined, trans/gender-non-conforming and queer folks have always struggled against the enormity of the prison industrial complex. The first collection of its kind, Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith bring together current and former prisoners, activists, and academics to offer new ways for understanding how race, gender, ability, and sexuality are lived under the crushing

Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

Andrew Solomon · 721 pages

Solomon’s startling proposition in *Far from the Tree* is that being exceptional is at the core of the human condition—that difference is what unites us. He writes about families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down's syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, or multiple severe disabilities; with children who are prodigies, who are conceived in rape, who become criminals, and who are transgender. While eac

Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive

Julia Serano · 280 pages

A transformational approach to overcoming the divisions between feminist communities. While many feminist and queer movements are designed to challenge sexism, they often simultaneously police gender and sexuality -- sometimes just as fiercely as the straight, male-centric mainstream does.

Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out

Susan Kuklin · 192 pages

In Beyond Magenta, six teens tell what it is like for them to be members of the transgender community. Portraits and family photographs grace the pages, adding immediacy to the emotional and physical journeys of these unwaveringly honest young adults.