Adult Nonfiction

Essential Reading for Pride: Selected as a Favorite LGBTQ+ Book for Adults by People Magazine

A provocative, eye-opening, and original book on the science of sexuality beyond gender from an internationally bestselling psychologist.

For psychological scientist and bestselling author Dr. Julia Shaw, the dearth of information on bisexuality was crushing, so she dug deep and found a colorful and fascinating world that she could help bring out of the shadows.

In Bi: The Hidden Culture, History, and Science of Bisexuality, Shaw explores all that we know about the world’s largest sexual minority through a personal journey that starts with her own openly bisexual identity and celebrates the resilience and beautiful diversity of the bi community. This rigorous and entertaining book will challenge us to think deeper about who we are and how we love.

Significant strides have been made in the movement for LGBTQ+ rights, visibility, and empowerment, but the conversation is far from over.

By: Vaneet Mehta (Author), 2023, Paperback

"You're just being greedy."
"Are you sure you're not gay?"
"Pick a side."

Being a bisexual man isn't easy - something Vaneet Mehta knows all too well. After spending more than a decade figuring out his identity, Vaneet's coming out was met with questioning, ridicule and erasure. This experience inspired Vaneet to create the viral #BisexualMenExist campaign, combatting the hate and scepticism m-spec (multi-gender attracted spectrum) men encounter, and helping others who felt similarly alone and trapped.

This powerful book is an extension of that fight. Navigating a range of topics, including coming out, dating, relationships and health, Vaneet shares his own lived experience as well as personal stories from others in the community to help validate and uplift other bisexual men. Discussing the treatment of m-spec men in LGBTQ+ places, breaking down stereotypes and highlighting the importance of representation and education, this empowering book is a rallying call for m-spec men everywhere.

My partner doesn't believe I'm bisexual, what should I do?
How should I approach sex with someone of a different gender for the first time?
Can I reconcile being bisexual with wanting a biological child?
Identifying as bisexual can be a pretty confusing experience - navigating experimentation versus orientation, at times presenting as a straight-passing member of a queer community, at other times having people discredit your attraction to multiple genders. Lewis Oakley, creator of the Ask A Bi Dad column, knows every trick in the book - and he's here to answer your most burning questions...
Warm, chatty, wise and startlingly honest - this is your new bi bible.

Bob Jones University is a Christian, fundamentalist, nondenominational liberal arts school in Greenville, South Carolina. BJU was founded in 1927 by Christian evangelist Bob Jones Sr., who was against the secularization of higher education and the influence of religious liberalism in denominational colleges. For most of the twentieth century, BJU branded itself as the “World’s Most Unusual University” because of its separatist culture. Many BJU students come from fundamentalist communities and are aware of BJU’s strict rules and conservative lifestyle. So why would queer students enroll at BJU?

A former queer student of BJU himself, Lance Weldy has come to terms with his own involvement with the institution and has reached out to other queer students to help represent the range of queer experience in this restrictive atmosphere. BJU and Me: Queer Voices from the World’s Most Christian University provides behind-the-scenes explanations from nineteen former BJU students from the past few decades who now identify as LGBT+. They write about their experiences, reflect on their relationships with a religious institution, and describe their vulnerability under a controlling regime.

Some students hid their sexuality and graduated under the radar; others transferred to other schools but faced reparative therapy elsewhere; some endured mandatory counseling sessions on campus; while still others faced incredible obstacles after being outed by or to the BJU administration. These students give voices to their queer experiences at BJU and share their unique stories, including encounters with internal and/or external trauma and their paths to self-validation and recovery. Often their journeys led them out of fundamentalism and the BJU network entirely.

By: C. Riley Snorton (Author), 2017, Paperback

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. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives—ones lived by African Americans such as Lucy Hicks Anderson and James McHarris. Their erasure from trans history masks the profound ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence.

Drawing on a deep and varied archive of materials—early sexological texts, fugitive slave narratives, Afro-modernist literature, sensationalist journalism, Hollywood films—Snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable. In tracing the twinned genealogies of blackness and transness, Snorton follows multiple trajectories, from the medical experiments conducted on enslaved black women by J. Marion Sims, the “father of American gynecology,” to the negation of blackness that makes transnormativity possible.

Revealing instances of personal sovereignty among blacks living in the antebellum North that were mapped in terms of “cross dressing” and canonical black literary works that express black men’s access to the “female within,” Black on Both Sidesconcludes with a reading of the fate of Phillip DeVine, who was murdered alongside Brandon Teena in 1993, a fact omitted from the film Boys Don’t Cry out of narrative convenience. Reconstructing these theoretical and historical trajectories furthers our imaginative capacities to conceive more livable black and trans worlds.

By: Harold Green III (Author), Melissa Koby (Illustrator), 2022, Hardcover

The poet and founder of the music collective Flowers for the Living pays tribute to all Black women by focusing on visionaries and leaders who are making history right now, including Ava DuVernay, Janelle Monae, Kamala Harris, Misty Copeland, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Robin Roberts, Roxane Gay, and Simone Biles—with this compilation of celebratory odes featuring full-color illustrations by Melissa Koby.

Black women are exceptional. To honor how Black women use their minds, talent, passion, and power to transform society, Harold Green began writing love letters in verse which he shared on his Instagram account. Balm for our troubled times, his tributes to visionaries and leaders quickly went viral and became a social media sensation. Now, in this remarkable collection, Green brings together many of these popular odes with never-before-seen works. 

A timely celebration of contemporary Black figures who are making history and shaping our culture today, Black Roses is divided into five sections—advocates, curators, innovators, luminaries, trailblazers—reflecting the diversity of Black women’s achievements and the depth of their reach. These inspiring changemakers are leaving their mark on the world by creating new beauty in their respective art forms, heading movements, fighting for equality and to change the status quo, and championing new definitions of what’s possible in every meaningful way. Green lifts them up to create meaningful connections between these figures and our own lives and experiences.

Black Roses spotlights and urges readers to learn more about Allyson Felix, Angelica Ross, Ava DuVernay, Bisa Butler, Bozoma Saint John, Charisma Sweat-Green, Dr. Eve Ewing, Dr. Janice Jackson, Dr. Johnnetta Cole, Eunique Jones-Gibson, Issa Rae, Janelle Monae, Jennifer Hudson, Jessica Matthews, Kamala Harris, Keisha Bottoms, Kimberly Bryant, Kimberly Drew, Lisa Green, Lizzo, Mandilyn Graham, Mellody Hobson, Michelle Alexander, Misty Copeland, Naomi Beckwith, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Phylicia Rashad, Rapsody, Raquel Willis, Robin Roberts, Roxane Gay, Shellye Archambeau, Simone Biles, Stacey Abrams, Tabitha Brown, Tamika Mallory, Tarana Burke, Tasha Bell, Tomi Adeyemi, and Tracee Ellis Ross.

An exposé of how far-right extremists across Europe use attacks on abortion to introduce broader fascist politics–and their connections to the American far right, from a leading investigative journalist

Think today's anti-abortion ideas are rooted in religious prohibitions or arguments about where life begins? Wrong: today's anti-abortion movement is largely financed and planned by far-right extremists. Many of them are avowedly fascist and white supremacist, afraid of a "great replacement" of the world's white population by other races, who are working hard to reshape governments and policies across Europe, North America and around the world. Much of this far-right organizing and funding network, however, has been overlooked by today's feminist and left movements.

As investigative journalist Sian Norris uncovers here, it is through attacking abortion rights that fascist ideas from the dark web, incel chat boards, and fringe organizations comes to enter mainstream debate -- and to then shape governmental policy across Europe, from authoritarian regimes like Hungary's to liberal democracies like Britain. As Norris goes undercover at anti-abortion activist meetings, and pieces together the money trail linking American think tanks to far-right fascist groups, she maps out the pipeline by which fascism has become respectable across the Global North by taking away women's reproductive rights and autonomy.

By: Justice Rivera (Editor), 2024, Paperback

From erotic labor, to the rights of people who use psychoactive substances, to reproductive health and carcerality—we are living through a political moment when debates about bodily autonomy are at a fever pitch.

Body Autonomy: Decolonizing Sex Work and Drug Use is a bold and timely collection that confronts these charged issues at the intersection of social justice and public health. It reveals the histories behind the United State's ideological wars and illustrates their costs to all of us. It is a primer on healing-centered harm reduction, which presents a visionary framework and set of practical strategies to advance unity and care while working to transform conditions for communities that bear the brunt of interpersonal and systemic violence, overdose deaths, and health inequities. In the words of leading advocates, service providers, and the scholars whose lives and communities have been harmed by American neo-colonial policies, Body Autonomy offers promising, healing-centered interventions that represent a critical culture shift. 

This collection features trusted voices on health and social policy reform, including Kate D'Adamo, Justice Rivera, Ismail Ali, Paula Kahn, and Sasanka Jinadasa, as well as respected healers like Richael Faithful, Amira Barakat Al-Baladi, and Mona Knotte. The articles, interviews, worksheets, and poems within are an offering to expand our collective understanding of survival, healing, and embodied freedom. Body Autonomy is a must read for anyone with a compassionate worldview, people seeking to know more about underground economies, and those who know that punishment doesn't lead to security. It is a liberatory design and a prayer for what's possible.

By: barb morrison (Author), 2023, Paperback

Bottoming For God: A story about gender euphoria, sobriety, old skool NYC, true love, past lives and coming home.

**A 2024 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST**

“Zachary Zane is one of the best sex writers working today.” —Dan Savage, New York Times bestselling author

Named a Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Book of the Year by Buzzfeed

A sex and relationship columnist bares it all in a series of essays—part memoir, part manifesto—that explore the author’s coming-of-age and coming out as a bisexual man and move toward embracing and celebrating sex unencumbered by shame.

As a boy, Zachary Zane sensed that all was not right when images of his therapist naked popped into his head. Without an explanation as to why, a deep sense of shame pervaded these thoughts. Though his therapist assured him a little imagination was nothing to be ashamed of, over the years, society told him otherwise.

Boyslut is a series of personal and tantalizing essays that articulate how our society still shames people for the sex that they have and the sexualities that they inhabit. Through the lens of his bisexuality and much self-described sluttiness, Zane breaks down exactly how this sexual shame negatively impacts the sex and relationships in our lives, and through personal experience, shares how we can unlearn the harmful, entrenched messages that society imparts to us.

From stories of drug-fueled threesomes and risqué Grindr hookups to insights on dealing with rejection and living with his boyfriend and his boyfriend’s wife, Boyslut is reassuring and often painfully funny—but is most potently a testimony that we can all learn to live healthier lives unburdened by stigma.

A New York Times Bestseller
A Washington Post Bestseller
Named a "Best Essay Collection of the Decade" by Literary Hub

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert).

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings―asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass―offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

By: James Martin (Author), 2018, Paperback

“A treasure...a wise and entertaining book that should appeal to the spiritual pilgrim in all of us, no matter what the faith and no matter whether believer or nonbeliever.”

– Chicago Tribune

The New York Times bestselling author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything and Jesus: A Pilgrimage turns his attention to the relationship between LGBT Catholics and the Church in this loving, inclusive, and revolutionary book.

A powerful call for tolerance, acceptance, and support—and a reminder of Jesus' message for us to love one another. In this moving and inspiring book, Martin offers a powerful, loving, and much-needed voice in a time marked by anger, prejudice, and divisiveness.

By: Dr. Liz Powell (Author), 2018, Paperback

Have you read "that book" on non-monogamy and still wondered "But how do you actually DO this?"Are you totally great on the theory of open relationships, but feel like you don't know how it works in practice?Join Dr. Liz Powell, psychologist, speaker, and coach, as she draws from her education, research, and life experience to bring you Building Open Relationships. This new book is an all-inclusive guide to beginning and maintaining your non-monogamous life, no matter where you fall under the non-monogamous umbrella.Complete with worksheets, discussion starters, examples, and hard-won lessons (i.e. my mistakes), this book will give you all the tools you need to be more successful in non-monogamy.

By: Emily Nagoski PhD (Author), Amelia Nagoski DMA (Author), 2020, Paperback

“A primer on how to stop letting the world dictate how you live and what we think of ourselves, Burnout is essential reading [and] . . . excels in its intersectionality.”—Bustle
 
This groundbreaking book explains why women experience burnout differently than men—and provides a roadmap to minimizing stress, managing emotions, and living more joyfully.
 
Burnout. You, like most American women, have probably experienced it. What’s expected of women and what it’s really like to exist as a woman in today’s world are two different things—and we exhaust ourselves trying to close the gap. Sisters Emily Nagoski, PhD, and Amelia Nagoski, DMA, are here to help end the all-too-familiar cycle of feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. They compassionately explain the obstacles and societal pressures we face—and how we can fight back. 
 
You’ll learn
• what you can do to complete the biological stress cycle
• how to manage the “monitor” in your brain that regulates the emotion of frustration
• how the Bikini Industrial Complex makes it difficult for women to love their bodies—and how to defend yourself against it
• why rest, human connection, and befriending your inner critic are keys to recovering from and preventing burnout
 
With the help of eye-opening science, prescriptive advice, and helpful worksheets and exercises, all women will find something transformative in Burnout—and will be empowered to create positive change.

By: Ria Brodell (Author), 2018, Hardcover

Portraits and texts recover lost queer history: the lives of people who didn't conform to gender norms, from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries.

“A serious—and seriously successful—queer history recovery project.”
—Publishers Weekly

Katherina Hetzeldorfer, tried “for a crime that didn't have a name” (same sex sexual relations) and sentenced to death by drowning in 1477; Charles aka Mary Hamilton, publicly whipped for impersonating a man in eighteenth-century England; Clara, aka “Big Ben,” over whom two jealous women fought in 1926 New York: these are just three of the lives that the artist Ria Brodell has reclaimed for queer history in Butch Heroes. Brodell offers a series of twenty-eight portraits of forgotten but heroic figures, each accompanied by a brief biographical note. They are individuals who were assigned female at birth but whose gender presentation was more masculine than feminine, who did not want to enter into heterosexual marriage, and who often faced dire punishment for being themselves.

Brodell's detailed and witty paintings are modeled on Catholic holy cards, slyly subverting a religious template. The portraits and the texts offer intriguing hints of lost lives: cats lounge in the background of domestic settings; one of the figures is said to have been employed variously as “a prophet, a soldier, or a textile worker”; another casually holds a lit cigarette. Brodell did extensive research for each portrait, piecing together a life from historical accounts, maps, journals, paintings, drawings, and photographs, finding the heroic in the forgotten.