LGBTQIA2+ Pride Month: Books

The struggle to remove the stigma of sickness surrounding same-sex love has a long history. In this new study, Henry L. Minton looks back at the struggle of the American gay and lesbian activists who chose scientific research as a path for advancing homosexual rights. He traces the history of gay and lesbian emancipatory research from its early beginnings in the late nineteenth century to its role in challenging the illness model in the 1970s.

This text provides a comprehensive analysis of the legal issues concerning gender and sexual nonconformity in the United States. The author presents a rigorously argued case for the sexualization of the First Amendment, showing why, for example, same-sex ceremonies and intimacy should be considered expressive conduct deserving the protection of the courts.

In Queers in Court, Susan Gluck Mezey examines the contemporary battle for gay and lesbian rights in the United States, tracing the evolution of issues from same sex marriage and privacy rights to military service and employment discrimination.

This book describes the substantive state of the law with regard to lesbian and gay rights. It begins with some background information to put the modern fight for lesbian and gay rights in its proper historical context, then categorizes lesbian and gay rights claims into three areas-individual rights in private contexts, individual rights in public contexts, and couple or family rights thought of as private but pushing into the public sphere-that add up to a single principle: the right to be human in a modern society.

With its ambitious scope and elegant style, Before the Closet sets same-sex relations in Anglo-Saxon sources in relation to the sexual themes of contemporary opera, dance, and theatre. Frantzen offers a comprehensive analysis of sources from the seventh to the twelfth century and traces Anglo-Saxon same-sex behavior through the age of Chaucer and into the Renaissance.

In this innovative celebration of diversity and affirmation of individuality in animals and humans, Joan Roughgarden challenges accepted wisdom about gender identity and sexual orientation. She leads the reader through a fascinating discussion of diversity in gender and sexuality among fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals, including primates. Evolution's Rainbow explains how this diversity develops from the action of genes and hormones and how people come to differ from each other in all aspects of body and behavior.

A groundbreaking book--two decades in the works--that tells the story of how a brilliant writer-turned-activist, granddaughter of a mulatto slave, and the first lady of the United States, whose ancestry gave her membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution, forged an enduring friendship that changed each of their lives and helped to alter the course of race and racism in America.

Open Lives, Safe Schools is written for educators and others concerned about schooling gay children, from kindergarten to graduate school. Antigay discrimination affects everyone in schools.

In an updated second edition that explores the altered legal terrain of LGBT rights for students and educators, Stuart Biegel offers expert guidance on the most challenging concerns in this fraught context. Taking up the pertinent questions likely to arise regarding curriculum and pedagogy in the classroom, school sports, and transgender issues, Biegel reviews the dramatic legal developments of the past decades, identifies the principles at work, and analyzes the policy considerations that result from these changes.

Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians provides access into an underrepresented and misunderstood community and will change the way readers think about transgender people, faith, and the future of Christianity. By introducing transgender issues and language and providing stories of both biblical characters and real-life narratives from transgender Christians living today, Hartke helps readers visualize a more inclusive Christianity, equipping them with the confidence and tools to change both the church and the world.

"You've Changed" examines the philosophical questions raised by the phenomenon of sex reassignment, and brings together the essays of scholars known for their work in gender, sexuality, queer, and disability studies, feminist epistemology and science studies, and philosophical accounts of personal identity.

In this provocative analysis of Whitman's exemplary quest for happiness, Vivian Pollak skillfully explores the intimate relationships that contributed to his portrayal of masculinity in crisis. She maintains that in representing himself as a characteristic nineteenth-century American and in proposing to heal national ills, Whitman was trying to temper his own inner conflicts as well.

A long-time friend of the writer and social critic traces his development and journey from Harlem, to Paris, and finally back to America and discusses his lifelong dedication to articulate the intricacies of race relations and human struggle.

From a March 1992 conference at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, 17 essays examine the life, work, and legacy of African-American writer and activist Hughes (1902-67). Many of the contributors knew him personally. They discuss his pre- eminent role in the Harlem Renaissance; issues of race, culture, and gender; his personal library and exhibits; and his drama.

Presents an in-depth study of the complex and tragic life of Oscar Wilde and a tribute to his inimitable wit and brilliant writings

Emerging at last from six years of legal entanglements involving the Tennessee Williams estate, this intimate and important portrait of Tennessee Williams, written with all the colorful detail and personal insight of a well-crafted novel, spans the unknown years of the playwright's life, as he struggled to find his voice as an artist, to bring his work to fruition, and to find an audience.

Vilified by fellow Victorians for his sexuality and his dandyism, in the 1990s, Oscar Wilde is hailed as a progressive sexual liberator. But this is not how Wilde saw himself. His actions and pretences did not bring him happiness and fulfilment: his art did.

The author of such classics as Death Comes to the Archbishop and O Pioneers! was a complex, passionate and gifted woman trying to forge a new kind of identity for herself as a woman and artist before there were adequate models for this kind of self. This is the first biography to deal openly and seriously with her lesbianism, exploring the importance of female friendships in her life and work and assessing the impact Cather's need to conceal her sexual identity had on the creative process.

This brilliant epic novel set in New York and Prague introduces us to two misfit young men who make it big by creating comic-book superheroes. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just smuggled himself out of Nazi-invaded Prague and landed in New York City. His Brooklyn cousin Sammy Clay is looking for a partner to create heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit America the comic book.

America in the mid-1980s. In the midst of the AIDS crisis and a conservative Reagan administration, New Yorkers grapple with life and death, love and sex, heaven and hell.

First published in the 1930s,The Berlin Stories contains two astonishing related novels, The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin, which are recognized today as classics of modern fiction. Isherwood magnificently captures 1931 Berlin: charming, with its avenues and cafés; marvelously grotesque, with its nightlife and dreamers; dangerous, with its vice and intrigue; powerful and seedy, with its mobs and millionaires--this is the period when Hitler was beginning his move to power.

A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown, the novel draws readers into its rich and memorable portrayals of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery and Sofia and their experience. The Color Purple broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, narrating the lives of women through their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery.

Alexander's beauty, strength, and defiance were apparent from birth, but his boyhood honed those gifts into the makings of a king. His mother, Olympias, and his father, King Philip of Macedon, fought each other for their son's loyalty, teaching Alexander politics and vengeance from the cradle. His love for the youth Hephaistion taught him trust, while Aristotle's tutoring provoked his mind and Homer's Iliad fueled his aspirations. Killing his first man in battle at the age of twelve, he became regent at sixteen and commander of Macedon's cavalry at eighteen, so that by the time his father was murdered, Alexander's skills had grown to match his fiery ambition.

The men and women in these eight short fictions grasp this truth on an elemental level, and their stories detail the ingenious and often desperate ways in which they try to keep their head above water. By turns haunting, heartbreaking, and horrifying--and informed throughout by Baldwin's uncanny knowledge of the wounds racism has left in both its victims and its perpetrators--Going to Meet the Man is a major work by one of our most important writers.

At its center is the deaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for various types of misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one yearns for escape from small town life. When Singer's mute companion goes insane, Singer moves into the Kelly house, where Mick Kelly, the book's heroine (and loosely based on McCullers), finds solace in her music.

Flamboyant and controversial, Oscar Wilde was a dazzling personality, a master of wit, and a dramatic genius whose sparkling comedies contain some of the most brilliant dialogue ever written for the English stage. Here in one volume are his immensely popular novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray; his last literary work The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a product of his own prison experience; and four complete plays.

Tennessee Williams's explosive, often violent, plays shattered conventional proprieties and transformed the American stage. They inspired some of the most famous productions and performances in theatrical and film history, and they continue to grip audiences all over the world. Now, in an authoritative two-volume edition, The Library of America collects the plays that define Williams's extraordinary range and achievement.

Exploring human passion with daring and unflinching honesty, Tennessee Williams forged a poetic theater of raw psychological insight that fused realism and expressionism. Now, in an authoritative two-volume edition, The Library of America collects the plays that reveal a prophetic figure in American life and letters - a writer of generous sympathies and uncompromising frankness who reached wide audiences with plays that revolutionized the themes and styles of the modern theater.

This is the most comprehensive volume of Walt Whitman (1819-1892) ever published. It includes all of his poetry and what he considered his complete prose. This is also the only collection that includes, in exactly the form in which it appeared in 1855, the first edition of Leaves of Grass.

Sixteen short stories from well-known young-adult writers who have something meaningful to share about gay awareness and want to present positive, credible gay role models.

Catherine Reef's fascinating, in-depth biography explores the life and character of one of America's greatest poets, incorporating highlights from his writings and photographs of the poet and the America he experienced. In "Leaves of Grass," first published in 1855, Whitman's innovative, free poetic style celebrated nineteenth-century America and himself as one of its citizens.

Tells the story of a leading poet of the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s who devoted his life to writing about the black experience in America.