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Cover ArtFine explores the vastness and fluidity of gender and its impact on the human experience. This compelling collection of illustrated interviews echoes that gender is "a language with a billion dialects." This series could be added to for years to come as language and gender are always evolving.
 
Publisher description:
As graphic artist Rhea Ewing neared college graduation in 2012, they became consumed by the question: What is gender? This obsession sparked a quest in which they eagerly approached both friends and strangers in their quiet Midwest town for interviews to turn into comics. A decade later, this project exploded into a sweeping portrait of the intricacies of gender expression with interviewees from all over the country. Questions such as "How do you Identify" produced fiercely honest stories of dealing with adolescence, taking hormones, changing pronouns—and how these experiences can differ, often drastically, depending on culture, race, and religion. Amidst beautifully rendered scenes emerges Ewing's own story of growing up in rural Kentucky, grappling with their identity as a teenager, and ultimately finding themself through art—and by creating something this very fine. Tender and wise, inclusive and inviting, Fine is an indispensable account for anyone eager to define gender in their own terms.
 
Cover ArtPart autobiography, part manifesto on gender and sexuality, part guidebook on FTM transition, part blueprint for effective activism. Jamison Green lays it all out in this eye opening read based on his decades of experience and personal journey. Read with pencil and paper at hand! And tissues!
 
Publisher description:
At least two generations of transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people have emerged since Becoming a Visible Man was first published in 2004, but the book remains a beloved resource for trans people and their allies. Since the first edition's publication, author Jamison Green's writings and advocacy among business and governmental organizations around the world have led to major changes in the fields of law, medicine, and social policy, and his (mostly invisible) work has had significant effects on trans people globally. This new edition captures the changes of the last two decades, while also imparting a message of self-acceptance and health. With profoundly personal and eminently practical threads, Green clarifies transgender experience for transgender people and their families, friends, and coworkers. Medical and mental health care providers, educators, business leaders, and advocates seeking information about transgender concerns can all gain from Green's integrative approach to the topic. This book candidly addresses emotional relationships that are affected by a transition, and brings refined integrity to the struggle to self-define, whether one undergoes a transition or chooses not to. Emphasizing the lives of transgender men-who are often overlooked-he elucidates the experience of masculinity in a way that is self-assured and inclusive of feminist values. Green's inspirational wisdom has informed and empowered thousands of readers. There is still no other book like Becoming a Visible Man in the transgender canon.

Find Becoming a Visible Man in our online catalog

 

Cover ArtEmbark on a thrilling year-long adventure alongside the fascinating personas of Tom and Crystal, as the dual narrative allows readers to witness the transformative power of drag. Their sharp commentary and wit create an engaging and relatable read, exploring themes of self-acceptance and queerness.
 
Publisher description:
In these pages, find glamour and gaffes on and off the stage, clarifying snippets of queer theory, terrifyingly selfish bosses, sex, quick sex, KFC binges, group sex, the kind of honesty that banishes shame, glimmers of hope, blazes of ambition, tender sex, mad dashes in last night's heels plus a full face of make-up, and a rom-com love story for the ages. This is where the unspeakable becomes the celebrated. This is the diary of a drag queen--one dazzling, hilarious, true performance of a real, flawed, extraordinary life.

I hope people like me will read this and feel seen and loved by it. I hope people who aren't like me will enjoy it, laugh with it, learn from it. And I hope people who don't like me will file lawsuits just so I can wear my brand-new leopard-print skirt suit and bust their asses in court. - Crystal Rasmussen

 
Cover ArtIf you love a book with a punk anti-hero and a sharp analysis of gender and feminism thrown in, Nevada is a must read. Maria and James are on opposites sides of transitioning, but their stories intersect in a surprising and anti-climactic way. Hooray for the reissue of this cult classic!
 
Publisher description:
Nevada follows a disaffected trans woman as she embarks on a cross-country road trip. Maria Griffiths is almost thirty and works at a used bookstore in New York City while trying to stay true to her punk values. She's in love with her bike but not with her girlfriend, Steph. She takes random pills and drinks more than is good for her, but doesn't inject anything except, when she remembers, estrogen, because she's trans. Everything is mostly fine until Maria and Steph break up, sending Maria into a tailspin, and then onto a cross-country trek in the car she steals from Steph. She ends up in the backwater town of Star City, Nevada, where she meets James, who is probably but not certainly trans, and who reminds Maria of her younger self. As Maria finds herself in the awkward position of trans role model, she realizes that she could become James's savior--or his downfall. One of the most beloved cult novels of our time and a landmark of trans literature, Imogen Binnie's Nevada is a blistering, heartfelt, and evergreen coming-of-age story, and a punk-smeared excavation of marginalized life under capitalism. Guided by an instantly memorable, terminally self-aware protagonist.
 
Cover ArtAfter being deported for violating obscenity laws by publishing a book of short stories titled Lesbian Love, Eve Adams (a queer, Jewish immigrant) would be murdered by Nazis at Auschwitz. Her story is important queer history about America's early lesbian culture and the indominable spirit of love.
 
Publisher's description: 
"On these pages, Eve Adams rises up, loves, rebels—her times, eerily resembling our own." —Joan Nestle, cofounder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives and author of A Restricted Country
2022 Lambda Literary Awards Finalist
 
Born Chawa Zloczewer into a Jewish family in Poland, Eve Adams emigrated to the United States in 1912,took a new name, befriended anarchists, sold radical publications, and ran lesbian-and-gay-friendly speakeasies in Chicago and New York. Then, in 1925, Adams risked all to write and publish a book titled Lesbian Love.
Adams's bold activism caught the attention of the young J. Edgar Hoover and the US Bureau of Investigation, leading to her surveillance and arrest. Adams was convicted of publishing an obscene book and of attempted sex with a policewoman sent to entrap her.
Adams was jailed and then deported back to Europe, and ultimately murdered by Nazis in Auschwitz. In The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams, acclaimed historian Jonathan Ned Katz has recovered the extraordinary story of an early, daring activist.

Carefully distinguishing fact from fiction, Katz presents the first biography of Adams, and the publisher reprints the long-lost text of Adams's rare, unique book Lesbian Love

Find The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams in our online catalog.

ThisCover Art book has everything: Joy! Sorrow! Romance! Vampires! Fanfic! Archives! It may also be the most exquisitely written book I've read all year. Highly recommended for LGBTQIA+ readers in search of a story of love and self-discovery with a happy ending.
 
Publisher's description:
A whirlwind romance between an eccentric archivist and a grieving widow explores what it means to be at home in your own body in this clever, humorous, and heartfelt novel.

When archivist Sol meets Elsie, the larger than life widow of a moderately famous television writer who's come to donate her wife's papers, there's an instant spark. But Sol has a secret: he suffers from an illness called vampirism, and hides from the sun by living in his basement office. On their way to falling in love, the two traverse grief, delve into the Internet fandom they once unknowingly shared, and navigate the realities of transphobia and the stigmas of carrying the vampire disease.

Then, when strange things start happening at the collection, Sol must embrace even more of the unknown to save himself and his job. Dead Collections is a wry novel full of heart and empathy, that celebrates the journey, the difficulties and joys, in finding love and comfort within our own bodies.

 

Cover ArtMorris is my hero.  He loves the tangerine colored dress in the dress-up area, so he wears it.  Sadly, the other kids tease him about wearing a dress and how boys shouldn't wear dresses.  Eventually, Morris decides that he will wear a dress no matter what other people say, and he helps the other kids decide it's not a big deal.   
 
Publisher's description: A young boy faces adversity from classmates when he wears an orange dress at school.
 
Cover ArtCompanion Piece is so incredible. The book takes place during COVID time, and thus during the current ecological ruination of the world. It weaves in the power of imagination and the power of words (and pronoun changes) to change/make history. It is humble, powerful, and deeply caring. The main character is a free-thinking lesbian. Despite taking place in contemporary society, there is a fair amount of history presented too. I wish that my art could do what this text does, and as skillfully.
 
Publisher's description:
Here we are in extraordinary times. Is this history? What happens when we cease to trust governments, the media, each other? What have we lost? What stays with us? What does it take to unlock our future? Following her astonishing Seasonal Quartet, Ali Smith again lights a way for us through the nightmarish now, in a vital celebration of companionship in all its timeless and contemporary, legendary and unpindownable, spellbinding and shapeshifting forms. Companion Piece stands apart from the Quartet, which remains discrete unto itself. But like Smith's groundbreaking series, this new novel boldly captures the spirit of the times. 'Every hello, like every voice, holds its story ready, waiting.
 
Cover ArtIn The Adventures of China Iron, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara re-writes Martín Fierro, an epic poem about the founding of Argentina from a feminist, LGBT, postcolonial point of view. Our protagonist is named China (pronounced chee-nah), the Quechua-derived word for an indigenous woman, Iron, which alludes to Fierro. China's personal journey parallels that of the development of early colonial Argentina, but Cabezón Cámara subverts the dominant, genocidal, Euro-centric narrative, asking what if history was inclusive? The book ends in a racially and sexually heterogeneous utopia based on shared understanding and mutual cooperation. Told with humor and sophistication, this joyful and hallucinatory novel suggests that other worlds are not only possible, but that they might exist, hidden in plain sight, right alongside this one.
 
Publisher description: 
This is a riotous romp taking the reader from the turbulent frontier culture of the pampas deep into indigenous territories. It charts the adventures of Mrs. China Iron, Martín Fierro's abandoned wife, in her travels across the pampas in a covered wagon with her new-found friend, soon to become lover, a Scottish woman named Liz. While Liz provides China with a sentimental education and schools her in the nefarious ways of the British Empire, their eyes are opened to the wonders of Argentina's richly diverse flora and fauna, cultures and languages, as well as to its national struggles. After a clash with Colonel Hernández (the author who 'stole' Martín Fierro's poems) and a drunken orgy with gauchos, they eventually find refuge and a peaceful future in a utopian indigenous community, the river-dwelling Iñchiñ people. Seen from an ox-drawn wagon, the narrative moves through the Argentinian landscape, charting the flora and fauna of the Pampas, Gaucho culture, Argentinian nation-building, and British colonial projects.
 
Cover ArtThe world needs more children's books that include affirmed genders. I appreciated Peanut's free spirit, self-love, and fearlessness about being goofy and doing what makes them happy. This book completely normalizes the use of non-binary pronouns they/them and makes for an excellent family read-aloud or all ages storytime.
 
Publisher's description: Peanut just has their own unique way of doing things. Whether it's cartwheeling during basketball practice or cutting their own hair, this little guinea pig puts their own special twist on life. So when Peanut decides to be a rhythmic gymnast, they come up with a routine that they know is absolutely perfect, because it is absolutely, one hundred percent Peanut.
 
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