West Stacks Reading Room

The poet, Audre Lorde, depicts her life and examines the influence of various women on her development.

The daughter of an aristocratic family, a wife, a devoted mother and a lover of women, Sappho was one of the greatest writers of her own or any age. Although most people have heard of Sappho, the story of her lost poems and the lives of ancient women they celebrate has never been told for a general audience. Philip Freeman paints a vivid picture of Sappho's world. He delves into religious rites, customs, the role of women in the family, medical knowledge and the experience of motherhood at the time. Through this contextual knowledge, a picture of Sappho's life emerges.

Lauded by luminaries such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Adrienne Rich, and Joy Harjo, among others, the work of African American lesbian poet Cheryl Clarke has spoken on behalf of the black, feminist and gay movements for more than 25 years. Her writing has earned her distinction as a contemporary black feminist icon in the tradition of June Jordan. In fact, few writers have tackled hot-button issues of race and sexuality with as much force or fearless humor as Clarke. The Days of Good Looks --her first new book of poetry in a decade -- collects the author's most popular poems and essays along with an array of new unpublished writing.

"Before Night Fall is Reinaldo Arenas's stunning autobiography - a bold and unrestrained account of his life as a writer and a homosexual. Arenas, acknowledged as one of the great twentieth-century Cuban writers, was born in 1943 into a poor, rural Cuban family. At the age of fifteen he joined Castro's guerrillas against Batista's right-wing regime, only to discover that repression under Castro would be on a monumental scale. Reinaldo Arenas spent twenty years of his life trying to survive his "re-education," to safeguard his manuscripts, and to maintain his sanity when he was imprisoned in El Morro prison in Havana.

An extraordinary history of the turbulent sixties and early seventies that displays James Baldwin's fury and despair more deeply than any of his other works, and powerfully speaks to contemporary conversations around racism. "It contains truth that cannot be denied." -- The Atlantic Monthly In this stunningly personal document, James Baldwin remembers in vivid details the Harlem childhood that shaped his early conciousness and the later events that scored his heart with pain--the murders of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, his sojourns in Europe and in Hollywood, and his retum to the American South to confront a violent America face-to-face.

A collection of short fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, personal narratives, critical essays and visual art produced by cisgender and transgender bisexual, pansexual, polysexual and fluid men from the United States, Canada, Chile, India, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Bisexual Women in the Twenty-First Century reflects the "brave new world" of bisexual women's lives through an eclectic collection of articles that typifies an ongoing feminist process of theory grounded in life experience. The book's broad scope addresses a "world" created in response to lesbian-feminism, homophobia within the mainstream women's movement, and sexism within the gay rights movement. The book includes Carol Queen's memoirs of the swinging lesbian scene in the 1970s, a critical examination of Alice Walker's novel The Temple of My Familiar, and a look back at the controversy surrounding bisexual inclusion in the Northampton Lesbian and Gay Pride March in Massachusetts in the early 90s.

This book explores the invisibility and invalidation of bisexuality from the past to the present and is unique in extending the discussion to focus on contemporary and emerging identities. Nikki Hayfield draws on research from psychology and the social sciences to offer a detailed and in-depth exploration of the invisibility and invalidation of bisexuality, pansexuality, and asexuality. The book discusses how early sexologists' understood gender and sexuality within a binary model and how this provided the underpinnings of bisexual invisibility.

We all encounter others whose gender identities differ from our own, whether it is in the classroom, in public, in the media or online. For many, there is anxiety about which words to use in conversation and sometimes people keep quiet so as to not offend someone whose gender identity may not be readily discernible, when in actuality, what they desire is to understand, learn, and interact.

Winner of the John Boswell Prize from the American Historical Association 2018 Winner of the William Sanders Scarborough Prize from the Modern Language Association 2018 Winner of an American Library Association Stonewall Honor 2018 Winner of Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction 2018 Winner of the Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies The story of Christine Jorgensen, America's first prominent transsexual, famously narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era.

Sarah McBride is on a mission to fight for transgender rights around the world. But before she was a prominent activist, and before she became the first transgender person to speak at the Democratic National Convention in 2016, she was a teenager struggling with her identity. With emotional depth and unparalleled honesty, Sarah shares her personal struggle with gender identity, coming out to her supportive but distraught parents, and finding her way as a woman.

Covering American transgender history from the mid-twentieth century to today, Transgender History takes a chronological approach to the subject of transgender history, with each chapter covering major movements, writings, and events. Chapters cover the transsexual and transvestite communities in the years following World War II; trans radicalism and social change, which spanned from 1966 with the publication of The Transsexual Phenomenon, and lasted through the early 1970s; the mid-'70s to 1990, the era of identity politics and the changes witnessed in trans circles through these years; and the gender issues witnessed through the '90s and '00s.

Essays, conversations, and archival investigations explore the paradoxes, limitations, and social ramifications of trans representation within contemporary culture. The increasing representation of trans identity throughout art and popular culture in recent years has been nothing if not paradoxical. Trans visibility is touted as a sign of a liberal society, but it has coincided with a political moment marked both by heightened violence against trans people (especially trans women of color) and by the suppression of trans rights under civil law. Trap Door grapples with these contradictions.

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.

Finalist, 2019 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Studies A profound intellectual engagement with Afrofuturism and the philosophical questions of space and time Queer Times, Black Futures considers the promises and pitfalls of imagination, technology, futurity, and liberation as they have persisted in and through racial capitalism. Kara Keeling explores how the speculative fictions of cinema, music, and literature that center black existence provide scenarios wherein we might imagine alternative worlds, queer and otherwise.

Have pride in history. A rich and sweeping photographic history of the Queer Liberation Movement, from the creators and curators of the massively popular Instagram account LGBT History.   "If you think the fight for justice and equality only began in the streets outside Stonewall, with brave patrons of a bar fighting back, you need to read We Are Everywhere right now."--Anderson Cooper Through the lenses of protest, power, and pride, We Are Everywhere is an essential and empowering introduction to the history of the fight for queer liberation.

Winner: Native American and Indigenous Studies Association's Best Subsequent Book 2017 Honorable Mention: Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award 2017 Across North America, Indigenous acts of resistance have in recent years opposed the removal of federal protections for forests and waterways in Indigenous lands, halted the expansion of tar sands extraction and the pipeline construction at Standing Rock, and demanded justice for murdered and missing Indigenous women.

As threatening evidence that sex is not the natural basis upon which oppositional gender roles are built, the intersexed are made to disappear into normative categories, thus aligning once again the rightful place of male and female as opposites.

The Legal Status of Intersex Persons provides a basis for discussion regarding all legal aspects concerning persons born with sex characteristics that do not belong strictly to male or female categories, or that belong to both at the same time. It contains contributions from medical, psychological and theological perspectives, as well as national legal perspectives from Germany, Australia, India, the Netherlands, Columbia, Sweden, France and the USA. It explores international human rights aspects of intersex legal recognition and also features chapters on private international law and legal history.The book is a timely one.

The 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games are likely to feature the first transgender athlete, a topic that will be highly contentious during the competition. But transgender and intersex athletes such as Laurel Hubbard, Tifanny Abreu, and Caster Semenya didn't just turn up overnight. Both intersex and transgender athletes have been newsworthy stories for decades. In Sporting Gender: The History, Science, and Stories of Transgender and Intersex Athletes, Joanna Harper provides an in-depth examination of why gender diverse athletes are so controversial.

From one of the world's foremost intersex activists, a candid, provocative, and eye-opening memoir of gender identity, self-acceptance, and love. My name is Hida Viloria. I was raised as a girl but discovered at a young age that my body looked different. Having endured an often turbulent home life as a kid, there were many times when I felt scared and alone, especially given my attraction to girls. But unlike most people in the first world who are born intersex--meaning they have genitals, reproductive organs, hormones, and/or chromosomal patterns that do not fit standard definitions of male or female--I grew up in the body I was born with because my parents did not have my sex characteristics surgically altered at birth. It wasn't until I was twenty-six and encountered the term intersex in a San Francisco newspaper that I finally had a name for my difference.

"When I was in school, everyone got to a certain age where they became interested in talking about only one thing: boys, girls and sex. Me though? I was only interested in comics." Growing up, Rebecca assumes sex is just a scary new thing they will 'grow into' as they get older, but when they leave school, start working and do grow up, they start to wonder why they don't want to have sex with other people. In this brave, hilarious and empowering graphic memoir, we follow Rebecca as they navigate a culture obsessed with sex - from being bullied at school and trying to fit in with friends, to forcing themselves into relationships and experiencing anxiety and OCD - before coming to understand and embrace their asexual identity.

Asexuality (an orientation where someone does not experience sexual attraction) is widely misunderstood. Or worse: ignored. Until it becomes common knowledge that asexuality exists as a sexual orientation, then people who DO relate on the spectrum will continue to struggle internally (feeling alone, broken, or flawed) and externally (in relationships, and life in general).

What is so radical about not having sex? To answer this question, this collection of essays explores the feminist and queer politics of asexuality. Asexuality is predominantly understood as an orientation describing people who do not experience sexual attraction. In this multidisciplinary volume, the authors expand this definition of asexuality to account for the complexities of gender, race, disability, and medical discourse.

In this groundbreaking book, thirty authors highlight how our experiences are shaped by a deeply entrenched gender binary. Nuanced storytellers break away from mainstream portrayals of gender diversity, cutting across lines of age, race, ethnicity, ability, class, religion, family, and relationships.

Selected as a 2019 LGBT Book of the Year by Dazed and Ms. Magazine A ground-breaking anthology of writing on the topic of love, written by trans and non-binary people who share their thoughts, feelings and experiences of love in all its guises. The collection spans familial, romantic, spiritual and self-love as well as friendships and ally love, to provide a broad and honest understanding of how trans people navigate love and relationships, and what love means to them.

The Two-Spirit man occupies a singular place in Native American culture, balancing the male and the female spirit even as he tries to blend gay and Native identity. The accompanying ambiguities of gender and culture come into vivid relief in the powerful and poignant Becoming Two-Spirit, the first book to take an in-depth look at contemporary American Indian gender diversity.

In this collection of short but powerful two-spirit plays, characters dispel conventional notions of gender and sexuality while celebrating Indigenous understandings. With a refreshing spin, the plays touch on topics of desire, identity, and community as they humorously tackle the colonial misunderstandings of Indigenous people. From a female trickster story centred on erotic lesbian tales to the farcical story about a new nation of Indigenous people called the Nation of Mischief, this collection creates a space to explore what it means to be queer and Indigenous.

A sweeping history of Indigenous traditions of gender, sexuality, and resistance that reveals how, despite centuries of colonialism, Two-Spirit people are reclaiming their place in Native nations. Reclaiming Two-Spirits decolonizes the history of gender and sexuality in Native North America. It honors the generations of Indigenous people who had the foresight to take essential aspects of their cultural life and spiritual beliefs underground in order to save them. Before 1492, hundreds of Indigenous communities across North America included people who identified as neither male nor female, but both. They went by aakíí'skassi, miati, okitcitakwe or one of hundreds of other tribally specific identities.

In Cherokee Asegi udanto refers to people who either fall outside of men's and women's roles or who mix men's and women's roles. Asegi, which translates as "strange," is also used by some Cherokees as a term similar to "queer." For author Qwo-Li Driskill, asegi provides a means by which to reread Cherokee history in order to listen for those stories rendered "strange" by colonial heteropatriarchy. As the first full-length work of scholarship to develop a tribally specific Indigenous Queer or Two-Spirit critique, Asegi Stories examines gender and sexuality in Cherokee cultural memory, how they shape the present, and how they can influence the future.

This landmark literary collection strives to reflect the complexity ofidentities within Native Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer,and Two-Spirit (GLBTQ2) communities. Gathering together the work ofestablished writers and talented new voices, this anthology spansgenres - fiction and nonfiction, poetry and essay - andthemes - memory, history, sexuality, indigeneity, friendship,family, love, and loss - and represents a watershed moment inIndigenous literatures, queer studies, and the intersections betweenthe two.