2019 Over the Rainbow Nonfiction Titles
Academic Works
(Download PDF) Over the Rainbow – Academic Works
Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left. Malik Gaines. NYU Press, 2017. An academic look at black embodiment and its expression, from the silver screen to the political theater. Gaines observes how radical black performers from W.E.B Du Bois to Sylvester communicate resistance to (and transcendence from) hegemonic understandings of gender, race, and sexuality.
Children of Harvey Milk: How LGBTQ Politicians Changed the World. Andrew Reynolds. Oxford University Press, 2018. A unique look at how politics affect the LGBTQ community and the LGBTQ politicians that help bring about the changes needed for the community. Reynolds does an excellent job at not only looking at past politicians but current game changers as well.
Circulating Queerness: Before the Gay and Lesbian Novel. Natasha Hurley. University of Minnesota Press, 2018. A look at the emergence of homosexuality as a genre and the ways in which history and society influenced it prior to and after its exposure.
Darker Side of Slash Fan Fiction: Essays on Power, Consent and the Body. Ashton Spacey. McFarland, 2018. Research exploring the ever-changing complexities of queer fan fiction as a genre and how marginalized voices are both heard and ignored in the fiction and among slash fan communities; delves into subjects including asexual, disabled, male pregnancy, violence between partners, and dubious consent, to a depth not usually plumbed.
For the Hard Ones: A Lesbian Phenomenology. tatiana de la tierra. A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2018. This provocative, compelling, straight forward Colombian Lesbian perspective is an excellent addition to any academic library. tatiana de la tierra shares her insight into lesbian relationships and the intersectionality with culture with no regrets and no apologies, and we can always use more of that perspective.
Gay Priori: A Queer Critical Legal Studies Approach to Law Reform. Libby Adler. Duke University Press, 2018. A densely-packed and penetrating study on the reasons behind the priorities of the queer law reform movement and the continuing neglect of those marginalized populations who are most in need (formal equality versus redistribution or equity).
Gay, Inc.: The Nonprofitization of Queer Politics. Myrl Beam. University of Minnesota Press, 2018. Beam presents case studies arguing that the mainstreaming of queer activism is tied to a nonprofit system that actually reinforces institutionalized inequality.
Gender Ambiguity in the Workplace: Transgender and Gender-Diverse Discrimination. Alison Ash Fogarty, Lily Zheng. Praeger, 2018. This work addresses what it is like to be a trans-identifying individual in San Francisco. This informational piece allows a reader to understand potential issues that could arise, but focuses more on ways for employers and workplaces to be inclusive to transgender employees.
Growing Up Queer. Mary Robertson. NYU Press, 2018. Explores a groundbreaking time where children and adolescents are able to identify and explore themselves as the new ‘normal’. This informative work investigates how growing up with this open-mindset has intertwined with other parts of development and culture.
LGBTQ Divorce and Relationship Dissolution. Abbie E. Goldberg, Adam P. Romero, eds. Oxford University Press, 2018. There is a lack in LGBTQ academic study for a basic textbook specifically geared toward covering LGBTQ relationships terminating. This book changes that and covers patterns amongst LGBTQ relationship dissolution giving insight into ways LGBTQ families may handle a variety of issues that may arise during separation. It pulls its information from a variety of essays written by leading experts and is broken into four easy to read segments making it suitable for a classroom text or a single situation reference manual.
Life and Death of Latisha King: A Critical Phenomenology of Transphobia. Gayle Salamon. NYU Press, 2018. An unflinching look at the 2008 murder of 15-year old Latisha King by her classmate. Salamon thoroughly covers reportage and court documents surrounding the event as she peels apart language and even gesture to expose the inner workings of the “transphobic imaginary” at the heart of violence against the gender-transgressing.
Living Out Loud: An Introduction to LGBTQ History, Society, and Culture. Michael Murphy, ed. Routledge, 2018. Excellent beginner textbook for any university LGBT centered course. It covers a variety of topics and is well laid out. The freedom they give to contributors to use whichever acronym fits the situation they are discussing is also unique. You can even find sexual identities not typically discussed like those found in the BDSM and Kink community.
Other, Please Specify. D’Lane Compton, Tey Meadow, Kristen Schilt, eds. University of California Press, 2018. This text is targeted to those in the field of sociology, but offers important guidance for any researcher. Created by those practicing in the field, the book gives insight on how to work with and research within an often-targeted community.
Post-Borderlandia: Chicana Literature and Gender Variant Critique. T. Jackie Cuevas. Rutgers University Press, 2018. Running with the theme of intersectionality this year Post-Borderlandia covers gender identity, race, power dynamics and Trans issues and their effects on current Chicana and Chicanx narratives. It’s a powerful addition to feminist, LGBTQ, and Latinx/a/o studies.
Punishing Disease : HIV and the Criminalization of Sickness. Trevor Hoppe. University of California Press, 2018. This study examines the rise and application of criminal laws, and the public health system support of coercive and punitive responses, to the HIV/AIDS crisis, and gives an overview of how others suffering diseases have been punished historically.
Queering Autoethnography. Stacy Holman Jones, Anne M. Harris. Routledge, 2018. This work illuminates how autoethnography is a hybridizing of the personal and the theoretical – this short, powerful book connects personal queer experience to oppressive places, institutions, and cultural norms of power to advocate a collective fight for justice.
Semi Queer: Inside the World of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers. Anne Balay. University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Offers a look into the world of long-haul trucking. Through oral history interviews, queer and minority trucker drivers share their stories of their daily lives, as well as prejudice and exploitation they have faced in their line of work. It is also an examination of why long-haul trucking holds appeal for some people from these same communities.
Struggling for Ordinary: Media and Transgender Belonging in Everyday Life. Andre Cavalcante. NYU Press, 2018. Solid research from historical and media rhetoric lenses alongside interviews of people from different eras and age groups in the midwestern United States. He looks at the “tipping point” of transgender identity, the tension between acceptance and queerness, and various solutions for belonging lived by transgender individuals.
Theater of the Ridiculous: A Critical History. Kelly I. Aliano. McFarland, 2018. A scholarly survey of the movement that highlights the radical possibilities of camp, from the development of the genre to the contemporary theatre scene, with special attention paid to Charles Ludlam, Maria Montez, Jack Smith, and Ethyl Eichelberger.
Trans Kids: Being Gendered in the Twenty-First Century. Tey Meadow. University of California Press, 2018 This survey gathers firsthand accounts as to what it’s like growing up as the first-generation with affirming families who have gender nonconforming kids.
Transgender Sex Work and Society. Larry Nuttbrock. Harrington Park Press/Columbia University Press, 2018. Scholarly examinations of topics related to transgender sex workers, in the United States and abroad. Substance use, mental and physical health, crime and violence are some of the topics of study, and several areas needing more research are mentioned.
Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility. Reina Gossett, ed. MIT Press, 2017. Visibility and its discontents drive this volume of essays on trans life and culture. Art criticism, queer history, political theory, and personal narrative are woven together, often in a single chapter. A multiplicity of voices means that chapters vary in quality, but Trap Door is more than a sum of its parts. The collection contextualizes queer past and envisions radical futures even as its inhabitants struggle with the darkness of the present.
Turning the Page: Storytelling as Activism in Queer Film and Media. David R. Coon. Rutgers University Press, 2018. Introduces three organizations trying to change how queer media is represented in Hollywood and how it is presented to the general public, in order to strengthen every community and motivate for social justice.
Biographies and Memoirs
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Andy Warhol, Publisher. Lucy Mulroney. University of Chicago Press, 2018. This work fuses art theory, queer history, and personal poetics as it explores some of Warhol’s lesser-known work. Mulroney focuses both on the artistic ingenuity and social impact of the collaborative publishing projects facilitated by Warhol. Warhol’s work, often seen in a vacuum, is placed at the intersections of scene, sexuality, and social artmaking.
Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death. Lillian Faderman. Yale University Press, 2018. Harvey Milk and his legacy has been covered extensively, but this new biography stands out from the crowd. Faderman doesn’t lean into hagiography, instead giving a comprehensive and intersectional account of Milk’s life and his relevance in the current political moment.
House of Nutter: The rebel tailor of Savile Row. Lance Richardson. Crown Archetype/Penguin Random House, 2018. An interesting look at a brothers’ relationship with each other, their careers, and their own sexuality. The photographs scattered throughout where an excellent addition and it gives a neat peek into how mental health was viewed through the lenses of the 50’s and 60’s.
Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry. Imani Perry. Beacon Press, 2018. The book takes its name from Looking for Langston, Isaac Julien’s impressionistic film in memorial of Langston Hughes and black queer history. Perry’s newest more than lives up to the legacy she has placed it in. This “third-person memoir” illuminates the life and legacy of groundbreaking black lesbian playwright Lorraine Hansberry. Perry combines a wealth of research with poetics and personal experience in this gorgeous and necessary biography.
Lost Autobiography of Samuel Steward: Recollections of an Extraordinary Twentieth-Century Gay Life. Samuel Steward , Jeremy Mulderig, ed. University of Chicago Press, 2018. An absorbing, funny, and astonishing memoir of a man with many talents and many identities: Samuel Steward, university professor; Phil Sparrow, tattoo artist; Ward Stames, John McAndrews, and Donald Bishop, writing ground-breaking essays in the first European gay magazines; Phil Andros, explicit novelist; and a man who lived life to its fullest.
Mean. Myriam Gurba. Coffee House Books, 2017. Michelle Tea meets Helene Cixous in this surrealistic exploration of the spaces between trauma and eros. At turns caustic and vulnerable, Gurba’s experimental memoir is a queer Chicana coming-of-age story told from outside time and inside her body. Intense, darkly humorous, and very readable.
My Butch Career: A Memoir. Esther Newton. Duke University Press, 2018. The compelling story of a ‘gender outlaw in the making’, a ground-breaking figure in LGBT history, and her struggle to find her identity as an openly queer academic in a particularly intense time of homophobic persecution.
No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America. Darnell L. Moore. Nation Books, 2018. Intersectionality is a hot topic in the LGBTQ community but few could understand all the many intersections one may possibly encounter in a life. Darnell L. Moore’s “No Ashes in the Fire” is a memoir that covers many intersections, being a Black man, queer, and growing up in poverty. It is an inspiring work that covers struggles, triumphs and a path not often traveled and even less often talked about.
Out of Step: A Memoir. Anthony Moll. Ohio State University Press, 2018. A well-crafted story that explores the unexpected parallels between life in the military during the years of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ and the quest for identity as a bisexual man, in this unwavering, sometimes painful, sometimes funny memoir.
Sinner in Mecca. Parvez Sharma. BenBella Books, 2017. This work shares the journey of a gay Muslim man traveling to Mecca to perform the hajj in 2010, made even more dangerous since he is also a closeted Sunni Muslim. The author documented the journey on a film of the same name.
Sister Love: The Letters of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker 1974-1989. Julie R. Enszer. A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2018. This work reveals a friendship between two important African American lesbian poets through their letters. The text offers insight into what it is to be a woman of color during this same time period and the micro and regular aggressions endured within the literary community.
To my Trans Sisters. Charles Craggs, ed. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2017. A book by trans women and for trans women – a rare and needed perspective in a world of coming-out-stories framed for cis audiences. This series of letters is full of advice, empathy, strength and hope from trans women speaking to their younger selves and to their larger communities. An uplifting and powerful collection centering the experiences of a community all-too-often made invisible.
Tomorrow will be different: Love, loss, and the fight for Trans Equality. Sarah McBride. Crown Archetype / Penguin Random House, 2018. Sarah is a well-known figure in Washington, D.C and to the Democratic Party. She is an activist and an advocate for Trans rights and visibility. Her memoir shares her experience, looking beyond the privilege she was born with and those she was not, to help others fighting for equality.
Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading. Edmund White. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018. A memoir and book of books wrapped up into one, from one of America’s best known “gay novelists,” a phrase he also explores in this book. He digs deep into books that have influenced him, stayed with him, or held meaning for him in various parts of his life. He also shares a lot about his life, friends, other writers and lovers (and ex-lovers!), and talks about how much being a gay man in America has changed since his childhood (born in 1940) and how his reading has changed since a recent health scare left him unconscious for three days.
Wild Mares. Dianna Hunter. University of Minnesota Press, 2018. A memoir about what the author calls the “lesbian land movement” of the 1970s, and her participation in attempts contributing to farm-based “utopian” societies of women only in the rural Midwest. Side commentary on clothing, haircuts, music, depression, and so on bring the reader into the era directly.
General Interest
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After Silence. Avram Finkelstein. University of California Press, 2017. Finkelstein’s latest is billed as “a history of AIDS and its images”. More than that, it is a personal history of the minds and bodies behind the groundbreaking visual protest strategies that accompanied 80’s AIDS activism. Love for collaborators and the movement drives this book even as we are reminded, in the words of activist art collective Gran Fury, “ART IS NOT ENOUGH”.
Calypso. David Sedaris. Little, Brown and Co., 2018. Fans of David Sedaris will be no stranger to the dark camp sensibilities at play in Calypso. What’s surprising, though, is a somber tone at play even in his moments of irreverence. Sedaris’ reflections on mortality, middle age, and familial loss are delivered with characteristic heart. His wit is still present, if muted, making this volume feel all the more intimate. An unexpended and welcome addition to his oeuvre.
Clinician’s Guide to Gender-Affirming Care. Sand C. Chang, Anneliese A. Singh, lore m. dickey. Context Press, 2018. A practical handbook for medical practitioners, including mental health providers. It goes beyond basic definitions to ask clinicians to examine their own biases and misconceptions about transgender and nonconforming clients, and provides example scenarios where care providers handled a medical situation inadequately. Case studies come with suggestions for scripts to navigate similar situations, and reaffirms the importance of the client’s needs and desires coming first.
David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 Years of LGBT Music. Darryl W. Bullock. Overlook Press, 2017. Well-researched overview of queer musicians who have had a major impact on popular music, bringing to light hidden stories and closely examining queer performative movements, making this a compelling and important work.
Gender: Your Guide. Lee Airton. Adams Media/Simon & Schuster, 2018. Many things amazing in life are constantly evolving; including language and gender. In today’s world a book like Gender: Your Guide is an excellent resource for allies looking to understand that evolution. Easily broken into three parts with very clear sections this book is an easy, quick read for anyone trying to learn about gender in today’s world.
Little in Love with Everyone: Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. Genevieve Hudson. Advocate, 2018. The newest in Fiction Advocate’s series of books investigating “essential readings of the new canon”. This work explores Fun Home’s themes of openness and repression. Hudson illuminates Bechdel’s highly personal text by placing it in historical and literary context. The author also explores her own personal connection to Fun Home and its impact as her roadmap to the world of lesbian literature.
Unbound: Transgender Men and the Remaking of Identity. Arlene Stein. Pantheon, 2018. This work provides a wide range of experiences from personal accounts of transgender men. The author has also included interviews with friends and family members, making the book useful for family members learning to be supportive. The book maintains a narrow focus – patients from one office, all from the United States, making the medical information (insurance strategies, etc) only useful to those in the states.
History
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Boys of Fairy Town. Jim Elledge. Chicago Review Press, 2018. This work uses patterns of history and individual biography to illuminate the queer history of Chicago from the founding of the city through World War II; aimed at general readers and anyone interested in queer history brought vividly to life.
Ike’s Mystery Man: The Secret Lives of Robert Cutler. Peter Shinkle. Steerford Press, 2018. The searing true story of Robert Cutler, America’s first National Security Advisory under President Eisenhower, who helped create the executive order that banned gay people from working in or being a contractor for the federal government while he, himself, was a closeted gay man.
No Sanctuary: Teachers and the School Reform That Brought Gay Rights to the Masses. Stephen Lane. ForeEdge, 2018. a detailed history of grassroots efforts by teachers and students to reform schools into safe places for queer youth.
Pride: The Unlikely Story of the True Heroes of the Miner’s Strike. Tim Tate. John Blake, 2018. This oral history of the foundation of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) which helped the families of Welsh miners survive a painful strike in Thatcher’s UK, shows the disparate groups overcoming prejudices to show solidarity in the face of aggressive governmental persecution.
Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation. Robert W. Fieseler. Liveright, 2018. This book brings to light a historical event that has long been closeted and pushed to the side that deeply affected the LGBTQ community. Fieseler writes in a journalistic style that does due diligence to bringing the facts of the case to a world that may not of heard of the event before.
Berlin’s Third Sex. Magnus Hirschfeld. Rixdorf Editions, 2017. The work provides views into a German sub-culture during 1904. Well-written and full of inspiring views and a positive look at the culture, this work offers insight into a time LGBT stories are often cast in negative light. This is the first translation into English of this classic work.
Out for Queer Blood. Clayton Delery. Exposit Books/McFarland, 2017. This history addresses the murder of Fernando Rios, the trial, and the aftermath. Delery touches on a variety of topics including homophobia, the genealogy of the “gay panic defense,” and hate crimes law.
Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day. Peter Ackroyd. Abrams Press, 2018. An historic look into two thousand years’ worth of queer London history that explores the link between urbanity and non-heterosexuality.
Lesbian South. Jaime Harker. University of North Carolina Press, 2018. A chronicle of the Women in Print movement through its participants and their connections to liberation movements and the American south. Harker links celebrated authors, underground publishers, feminist figures, and readers both in and out of the closet. Well-researched, illuminating and enjoyable.
