Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

A queer minister, politician and staunch activist for LGBTQ rights, Cheri DiNovo went from living on the streets as a teenager to performing the first legalized same-sex marriage registered in Canada in 2001. From rights for queer parents to banning conversion therapy, her story will inspire people (queer or ally) to not only resist the system—but change it.

Henry Gerber was the father of American gay liberation. Born in 1892 in Germany, Henry Gerber was expelled from school as a boy and lost several jobs as a young man because of his homosexual activities. He emigrated to the United States and enlisted in the army for employment. After his release, he explored Chicago’s gay subculture: cruising Bughouse Square, getting arrested for “disorderly conduct,” and falling in love.

Abiertamente homosexual, Truman Capote es considerado uno de los narradores más grandes de los Estados Unidos de la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Autor de la célebre novela "A sangre fría", su figura irreverente y frontal escandalizó al país.

Testing expectations of motherhood and faith, this haunting and breathtakingly-honest depiction of the transformation of a family through the mystery of gender questioning and identity is a dual story of awakening: of the heart of a mother towards her transgendered child, and of the child’s awakening to his, her, their fluidity of gender.

While we can all recall Martin Luther King Jr. giving his "I Have a Dream" speech in front of a massive crowd at Lincoln Memorial, few of us remember the man who organized this watershed nonviolent protest in eight short weeks: Bayard Rustin. This was far from Rustin's first foray into the fight for civil rights. As a world-traveling pacifist, he brought Gandhi's protest techniques to the forefront of US civil rights demonstrations, helped build the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led the fight for economic justice, and played a deeply influential role in the life of Dr. King.

This powerful book couldn’t come at a more timely juncture. With our deep misunderstanding of racial identity, the murder of transgender women increasing at an alarming rate, and the battle of faith and sexual orientation at churches across the country, we are in a cultural war of ideologies. Overwhelming prejudices have constricted our basic capacity for compassion and understanding. Live Through This is a collection of intimate essays about one man’s journey to self-acceptance when his faith, sexuality, and race battled with societal norms.

PopDaddy is a novel from Southern writer Jeffrey Roach that recounts the heartwarming and hilarious tale of how he and his partner Ken started a family in one of the unlikeliest places. The book takes place in the early 2000s, when single parent adoptions were the only way for a gay couple to adopt a baby from Guatemala, and begins when the couple's best friend announces she's pregnant. Ken wants a baby too.

It’s hard enough coming out, but playing basketball for a nationally ranked school and trying to figure out your sexual identity in the closeted and paranoid world of big-time college sports - that’s a challenge. Kate Fagan’s love for basketball and for her religious teammates at the University of Colorado was tested by the gut-wrenching realization that she could no longer ignore the feelings of otherness inside her. In trying to blend in, Kate had created a hilariously incongruous world for herself in Boulder.

What’s a sweets-loving young boy growing up gay in North Carolina in the '80s supposed to think when he’s diagnosed with type-1 diabetes? That God is punishing him, naturally. This was, after all, when gay-hating Jesse Helms was his senator, AIDS was still the boogeyman, and no one was saying, "It gets better." And if stealing a copy of a gay porno magazine from the newsagent was a sin, then surely what the men inside were doing to one another was much worse. Sweet Tooth is Tim Anderson’s uproarious memoir of life after his hormones and blood sugar both went berserk.

In this memoir of her 40 weeks and five days in hell, Andrea Askowitz takes an unflinching look at her pregnant life from struggling with hormones to poor body image to a self imposed exile from family to take us on a ride through the turbulence of single lesbian motherhood. Along the way we meet her liberal parents as they struggle with their daughter's choices, the lover she longs to reconnect with who goes M.I.A. before the pregnancy, the friends who turn out to be no help at all and strangers who offer up some unlikely kindness.

All the Rage chronicles Brad Fraser's rise as he breaks with his past and enrolls as a performing arts student. He is pulled into the newly developing Canadian theatre scene, where he shows great promise. But his early career is one of challenge after challenge, some of which result from his upbringing and prejudice against his queerness. But just as many challenges arise from his combative personality and willingness to challenge the establishment. Few Canadian artists have been as abrasive, notorious, and polarizing as Fraser was in his youth.

Actress and playwright Tina Alexis Allen's audacious memoir unravels her privileged suburban Catholic upbringing that was shaped by her formidable father - a man whose strict religious devotion and dedication to his large family hid his true nature and a life defined by deep secrets and dangerous lies.

Salvador Dalí, Jerome Robbins, Jackie Onassis. Gregory Peck, Mick Jagger, S. J. Perelman, I. M. Pei. Philip Johnson, Josephine Baker, John Lennon: They, and so many more who made New York City the center of the universe in the 1970s, all had one thing in common besides their adopted hometown - they shopped at a legendary palace of books, music, and art: Rizzoli Books at 712 Fifth Avenue. There, Kennedys and Rockefellers mingled with tourists and "regular" customers under the watchful gaze of sophisticated employees.

Nearing the age of forty, with an entire life already lived as a woman, Miles Borrero comes face to face with his father’s impending death. Suddenly realizing he has been stalling his transition for fear of losing his family’s love, this moment catalyzes Miles’s determination to be known as his father’s son. In Beautiful Monster, Miles chronicles his unusual childhood, by turns riveting and hilarious, in ’80s and ’90s Colombia during the Pablo Escobar years, as well as his move to Salt Lake City to pursue acting and the winding trajectory that eventually lands him in New York City.

In this series of stories, you will encounter attractive actors, stunning fashion models, handsome artists, a suave British aristocrat, the activist and founder of a London gay paper, and a charismatic and very persistent millionaire. Also there are some really fantastic kissers! I mean exceptionally good!

Dreams: Forging My Own Path is a captivating memoir that follows the extraordinary journey of Rugare Gomo, a gay, Black immigrant whose unwavering resilience and determination lead him from the streets of Zimbabwe to the bustling cities of Australia. Born stateless in the UK to Zimbabwean parents, Gomo's story is a powerful testament to the indomitable human spirit and the transformative power of embracing one's authentic self.

I Love My Computer Because My Friends Live in It is a hilarious memoir of growing up in the early days of the internet and celebrating technology's role in our lives. Coming of age in suburban Connecticut in the late '80s and early '90s, Jess Kimball Leslie looked to the nascent internet to find the tribes she couldn't find IRL: fellow Bette Midler fans; women who seemed impossibly sure of their sexuality; interns trudging through similarly soul-crushing media jobs.

In his debut collection of candid, shocking, and just plain hilarious essays, comedic artist and musician Greg Scarnici recounts the period in his life when he was just starting to understand his sexuality and the city of New York that he calls home.

Award-winning writer Bill Schelly relates how comics and fandom saved his life in this engrossing story that begins in the burgeoning comic fandom movement of the 1960s and follows the twists and turns of a career that spanned 50 years. Schelly recounts his struggle to come out at a time when homosexuality was considered a mental illness, how the egalitarian nature of fandom offered a safe haven for those who were different, and how his need for creative expression eventually overcame all obstacles.

Annie Liontas suffered multiple concussions in her thirties. In Sex with a Brain Injury, she writes about what it means to be one of the “walking wounded,” facing her fear, her rage, her physical suffering, and the effects of head trauma on her marriage and other relationships. Forced to reckon with her own queer mother’s battle with addiction, Liontas finds echoes in their pain. Liontas weaves history, philosophy, and personal accounts to interrogate and expand representations of mental health, ability, and disability—particularly in relation to women and the LGBT community.