Showing titles in Lesbian Studies

In this collection of essays, Lambda Literary Award-winning writer and longtime activist and performance artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the politics and realities of disability justice, a movement that centers the lives and leadership of sick and disabled queer, trans, Black, and brown people, with knowledge and gifts for all. Care Work is a mapping of access as radical love, a celebration of the work that sick and disabled queer/people of color are doing to find each other and to build power and community.

The term killjoy has been used to dismiss feminism by claiming that it causes misery. But by naming ourselves feminist killjoys, we recover a feminist history, turning it into a source of strength as well as an inspiration. Drawing on her own stories and those of others, especially Black and brown feminists and queer thinkers, Sara Ahmed combines depth of thought with honesty and intimacy. The Feminist Killjoy Handbook unpicks the lies our culture tells us and provides a form of solidarity and companionship that can be returned to over a lifetime.

In January 2021, Steph Lentz was fired from her job as an English teacher at a Sydney Christian school after she came out as a lesbian. A hardcore Christian during her teens and 20s, Steph once preached against homosexuality and defended her church's conservative teachings about marriage and sex – that is, until she fell in love with a woman at her church and her world turned upside-down. In the midst of ongoing debates about religious freedom and discrimination against LGBTQIA+ people in Australia, Steph's story is timely and necessary.

Anne Lister was remarkable. Fearless, charismatic and determined to explore her lesbian sexuality, she forged her own path in a society that had no language to define her. She was a landowner, an industrialist and a prolific diarist whose output has secured her legacy as one of the most fascinating figures of the 19th century. Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister follows Anne from her crumbling ancestral home in Yorkshire to the glittering courts of Denmark as she resolves to put past heartbreak behind her and find herself a wife.

When Christopher Penczak was introduced to Witchcraft, he found a spiritual path through which he could honor and embrace his homosexuality. In Gay Witchcraft, Penczak's clearheaded theory and practice combine to create a classic book of Witchcraft focused on the perspective of the gay community.

Discover the extraordinary diaries of the real Anne Lister. When this volume of Anne Lister's diaries was first published in 1988, it was hailed as a vital piece of lost lesbian history. The editor, Helena Whitbread, had spent years painstakingly researching and transcribing Lister's extensive journals, much of which were written in an elaborate code - what Lister called her 'crypthand', which allowed her to record her life in intimate, and at times, explicit, detail. Until then, Anne Lister's lesbianism had been supressed or hinted at; this was the first time her story had been told.

In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing experience with a charismatic but volatile woman, this is a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Each chapter views the relationship through a different lens, as Machado holds events up to the light and examines them from distinct angles.

When Jeanette Winterson left home at 16 because she was in love with a woman, Mrs. Winterson asked her: "Why be happy when you could be normal?" This book is the story of a life's work to find happiness. It is the story of how the painful past returned to haunt Jeanette's later life, and send her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her real mother. It is also a book about other people's stories, showing how fiction and poetry can form a string of guiding lights, a life raft which supports us when we are sinking.

High School is the revelatory and unique coming-of-age story of Sara and Tegan Quin, identical twins from Calgary, Alberta, growing up in the height of grunge and rave culture in the '90s, well before they became the celebrated musicians and global LGBTQ icons we know today. While grappling with their identity and sexuality, often alone, they also faced academic meltdown, their parents' divorce and the looming pressure of what might come after high school.

Ivan Coyote is a celebrated storyteller and the author of 10 previous books, including Gender Failure (with Rae Spoon) and One in Every Crowd, a collection for LGBT youth. Tomboy Survival Guide is a funny and moving memoir told in stories, in which Ivan recounts the pleasures and difficulties of growing up a tomboy in Canada's Yukon, and how they learned to embrace their tomboy past while carving out a space for those of us who don't fit neatly into boxes or identities or labels.

Living an Orgasmic Life is written for anyone who finds sex challenging or feels uncomfortable with their sex life. Women who are alienated from their erotic side due to sexual abuse or trauma will find a healing balm here. Women who can't surrender into pleasure, can't sustain intimacy, or want to reclaim and feel empowered in their sexuality will greatly benefit from this book. Living an Orgasmic Life explores the many reasons that cause women to disconnect from their sexuality.

A proud working-class woman, an "out" lesbian long before the Rainbow revolution, Joan Nestle has stood at the forefront of American freedom struggles from the McCarthy era to the present day. Featuring photographs and a new introduction by the author, this classic collection which intimately accounts the lesbian, feminist and civil rights movements through personal essays is available again for the first time in years.

In this quintessential work of queer theory, Jack Halberstam takes aim at the protected status of male masculinity and shows that female masculinity has offered a distinct alternative to it for well over two centuries. Demonstrating how female masculinity is not some bad imitation of virility, but a lively and dramatic staging of hybrid and minority genders, Halberstam catalogs the diversity of gender expressions among masculine women from 19th-century pre-lesbian practices to contemporary drag-king performances.

In 1969, a series of riots over police action against The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village, changed the longtime landscape of the homosexual in society literally overnight. Since then the event itself has become the stuff of legend, with relatively little hard information available on the riots themselves.

Public Sex collects the best of Pat Califia's work published over the past 20 years. Providing both a chronicle of the radical sex movement in the United States, as well as the definitive opinions of America's most consistent and trenchant sexual critic, Public Sex is must-listen material for anyone interested in sexual practices, feminism, censorship, or simply the art of the political essay.

Contemporary relationships are in a state of rapid evolution. These changes can and should empower people with the opportunity to develop partnerships based on their own sexualities, understandings, and agreements. This makes it possible to create what Kenneth Haslam, founder of the Kinsey Institute's Polyamory Archive, has called designer relationships. The possibilities are limitless, and thinking about a partnership as something people can craft allows for flexibility and change.

Compiled and designed by queer power couple Ashley Molesso and Chessie Needham, founders of the popular Brooklyn stationery company Ash + Chess, The Gay Agenda is an inviting and entertaining guide that pays tribute to the LGBTQ+ community. Filled with engaging descriptions, interesting facts, and helpful features - such as historical queer icons and events and LGBTQ+ acronym definitions - this fabulous compendium illuminates the transformation of the community, highlighting its struggles, achievements, landmarks, and contributions.

During World War II, as the United States called on its citizens to serve in unprecedented numbers, the presence of gay Americans in the armed forces increasingly conflicted with the expanding anti-homosexual policies and procedures of the military. In Coming Out Under Fire, Allan Berube examines in depth and detail these social and political confrontations - not as a story of how the military victimized homosexuals, but as a story of how a dynamic power relationship developed.

Love addiction for lesbians comes in many forms. Some struggle by sexually acting out and others are serial relationship junkies, jumping from one relationship into the next. Some are addicted to the high of falling in love and once that wears off don't know how to handle the day-to-day realities of a committed relationship. Some are even addicted to fantasy and intrigue, while others are love avoidants and sexual anorexics. Love avoidants may be able to get into a relationship but once they are fully committed, struggle with feeling smothered.

Cleis Press' most lauded editor, Sacchi Green assumes the helm of one the most-heralded and best-selling series, Best Lesbian Erotica. This match made in book publishing heaven is also a fan fave whose listeners range from 18 to 80 and who can't get enough of the Lambda Award-winning Sacchi Green's scorching hot stories of lesbian sex.