Memoir & Biography

By: Christie Tate (Author), 2021, Hardcover

A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The refreshingly original and “startlingly hopeful” (Lisa Taddeo) debut memoir of an over-achieving young lawyer who reluctantly agrees to group therapy and gets psychologically and emotionally naked in a room of six complete strangers—and finds human connection, and herself.

Christie Tate had just been named the top student in her law school class and finally had her eating disorder under control. Why then was she driving through Chicago fantasizing about her own death? Why was she envisioning putting an end to the isolation and sadness that still plagued her despite her achievements?

Enter Dr. Rosen, a therapist who calmly assures her that if she joins one of his psychotherapy groups, he can transform her life. All she has to do is show up and be honest. About everything—her eating habits, childhood, sexual history, etc. Christie is skeptical, insisting that that she is defective, beyond cure. But Dr. Rosen issues a nine-word prescription that will change everything: “You don’t need a cure. You need a witness.”

So begins her entry into the strange, terrifying, and ultimately life-changing world of group therapy. Christie is initially put off by Dr. Rosen’s outlandish directives, but as her defenses break down and she comes to trust Dr. Rosen and to depend on the sessions and the prescribed nightly phone calls with various group members, she begins to understand what it means to connect.

“Often hilarious, and ultimately very touching” (People), Group is “a wild ride” (The Boston Globe), and with Christie as our guide, we are given a front row seat to the daring, exhilarating, painful, and hilarious journey that is group therapy—an under-explored process that breaks you down, and then reassembles you so that all the pieces finally fit.

By: Saeed Jones, 2020, paperback

“People don’t just happen,” writes Saeed Jones. “We sacrifice former versions of ourselves. We sacrifice the people who dared to raise us. The ‘I’ it seems doesn’t exist until we are able to say, ‘I am no longer yours.’”

Haunted and haunting, How We Fight for Our Lives is a stunning coming-of-age memoir about a young, black, gay man from the South as he fights to carve out a place for himself, within his family, within his country, within his own hopes, desires, and fears. Through a series of vignettes that chart a course across the American landscape, Jones draws readers into his boyhood and adolescence—into tumultuous relationships with his family, into passing flings with lovers, friends, and strangers. Each piece builds into a larger examination of race and queerness, power and vulnerability, love and grief: a portrait of what we all do forone another—and to one another—as we fight to become ourselves.

An award-winning poet, Jones has developed a style that’s as beautiful as it is powerful—a voice that’s by turns a river, a blues, and a nightscape set ablaze. How We Fight for Our Lives is a one-of-a-kind memoir and a book that cements Saeed Jones as an essential writer for our time.

By: Roxane Gay (Author), 2018, Paperback

From the New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist: a searingly honest memoir of food, weight, self-image, and learning how to feed your hunger while taking care of yourself.

“I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. I buried the girl I was because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere. . . . I was trapped in my body, one that I barely recognized or understood, but at least I was safe.”

In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger, she explores her past—including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life—and brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself.

With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and power that have made her one of the most admired writers of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to learn to take care of yourself: how to feed your hungers for delicious and satisfying food, a smaller and safer body, and a body that can love and be loved—in a time when the bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes.

By: Precious Brady-Davis (Author), Joey Soloway (Introduction), 2021, Paperback

A powerful memoir of independence, releasing the past, and living the dream by award-winning trans advocate Precious Brady-Davis.

Precious Brady-Davis remembers the sense of being singular and grappling with “otherness.” Born into traumatic circumstances, Davis was brought up in the Omaha foster care system and the Pentecostal faith. As a biracial, gender-nonconforming kid, she felt displaced. Yet she realized by coming into her identity that she had a purpose all along.

In I Have Always Been Me, Brady-Davis reflects on a childhood of neglect, instability, and abandonment. She reveals her determination to dream through it and shares her profound journey as a trans woman now fully actualized, absolutely confident, and precious. She speaks to anyone who has ever tried to find their place in this world and imparts the wisdom that comes with surmounting odds and celebrating on the other side.

A memoir, a love story, and an outreach for the marginalized, Precious’s sojourn is a song of self-reliance and pride and an invitation to join in the chorus.

By: Kai Cheng Thom (Author), 2019, Paperback

Winner, Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender Variant Literature; American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book

What can we hope for at the end of the world? What can we trust in when community has broken our hearts? What would it mean to pursue justice without violence? How can we love in the absence of faith?

In a heartbreaking yet hopeful collection of personal essays and prose poems, blending the confessional, political, and literary, Kai Cheng Thom dives deep into the questions that haunt social movements today. With the author’s characteristic eloquence and honesty, I Hope We Choose Love proposes heartfelt solutions on the topics of violence, complicity, family, vengeance, and forgiveness. Taking its cues from contemporary thought leaders in the transformative justice movement such as adrienne maree brown and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, this provocative book is a call for nuance in a time of political polarization, for healing in a time of justice, and for love in an apocalypse.

By: Shawna Kenney (Author), Anne Cleary (Editor), Iris Berry (Editor), Jeffrey Everette (Illustrator), 2023, Paperback

I Was a Teenage Dominatrix is the true story of one woman’s quest for self-education, in academia and beyond. As the reader follows a low income punk rock grrrl into college under the crushing weight of capitalism, the coming-of-age confessional takes outrageous, humorous and moving turns, leaving the reader with plenty to ponder about modern day relationships, shame and self-actualization. Shawna Kenney wrote a sex work memoir before the term ‘sex work’ was commonplace, unwittingly becoming part of what the New York Times dubbed the ‘sex work literati’ of the early 2000s.

The book has enjoyed two prior US printings, translations abroad, and options for film. Out of print since 2012, I Was a Teenage Dominatrix enjoys a new incarnation, thanks to popular demand and Punk Hostage Press. A new cover, new chapters, a “where are they now?” of beloved characters, and a foreword from the author all allow us to revisit this 90s cult classic through a modern-day lens.

By: Robert P Graves (Author), 2022, Paperback

"When I was nine years old and in the fourth grade, I had my first thought of self-harm. I shared with my mother my plan to kill myself. She hugged me, told me it would be okay, and sent me back to the kitchen to finish my homework."

Robert Graves has spent his life dealing with chronic clinical depression and bipolar disorder. I, Rob Graves offers a candid and poignant story about his life as a gay man suffering from these mental health issues and a genetic disposition for substance abuse-which morphed into an anonymous sex addiction during the height of the AIDS Epidemic. Graves chronicles his personal story, illustrating the dangers of misdiagnosis and treatment noncompliance, but rather than teach or preach any specific cure, his memoir lets the reader decide whether the life choices described are right or wrong for their own life path. He shares the journey he took to come to terms with his homosexuality and overcome tremendous health odds-through years of therapy, medication management, and learning the arts of forgiveness and acceptance-to find success and peace with himself and thrive in the present. He aims to provide an inspirational example of breaking the cycle of mental health stigmas and addiction, both in the gay community and the community at large.

By: Carmen Maria Machado (Author), 2020, Paperback

A revolutionary memoir about domestic abuse by the award-winning author of Her Body and Other Parties

In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado’s engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming.

And it’s that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope―the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman―through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships.

Machado’s dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek, and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.

By: Alicia Roth Weigel (Author), 2023, Paperback

"One of the most brilliant thought leaders I have been able to share space with."—Jonathan van Ness, from the foreword

"The must-read memoir of fall 2023."—Them

"Powerful and vital."—Madeline Miller, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Song of Achilles

From a celebrated activist on the forefront of fighting for intersex representation and rights—and a subject of the forthcoming documentary Every Body, from the filmmakers behind RBG—a funny, thought-provoking collection of essays about owning your identity and living your truth.

Two percent of the world’s population—the same percentage of humans who have naturally red hair—is born intersex. Yet many people aren’t even familiar with the word.

Intersex individuals are born with both male and female reproductive organs, yet many are stripped of their identity at birth when a parent designates M or F on a birth certificate. That subjective choice is often followed by invasive, life-changing surgeries, performed without the individual’s consent. Intersex people have become a target of politicians, attacked for who they are and threatened by legislation that attempts to categorize and define them.

Alicia Weigel is fighting back against the hate and fearmongering to protect the rights and lives of everyone. In this book, she boldly speaks out about working as a change agent in a state that actively attempts to pass legislation that would erase her existence, explores how we can reclaim bodily autonomy, and encourages us to amplify our voices to be heard.

Disarming, funny, charming, and powerful, this is a vital account of personal accomplishment that will open eyes and change minds.

By: James Baldwin (Author), 2014, Paperback

By: (Amelia Possanza (Author), 2023, Paperback

For readers of Saidiya Hartman and Jeanette Winterson, Lesbian Love Storyis an intimate journey into the archives—uncovering the romances and role models written out of history and what their stories can teach us all about how to love

When Amelia Possanza moved to Brooklyn to build a life of her own, she found herself surrounded by queer stories: she read them on landmark placards, overheard them on the pool deck when she joined the world’s largest LGBTQ swim team, and even watched them on TV in her cockroach-infested apartment. These stories inspired her to seek out lesbians throughout history who could become her role models, in romance and in life.

Centered around seven love stories for the ages, this is Possanza’s journey into the archives to recover the personal histories of lesbians in the twentieth century: who they were, how they loved, why their stories were destroyed, and where their memories echo and live on. Possanza’s hunt takes readers from a drag king show in Bushwick to the home of activists in Harlem and then across the ocean to Hadrian’s Library, where she searches for traces of Sappho in the ruins. Along the way, she discovers her own love—for swimming, for community, for New York City—and adds her record to the archive.

At the heart of this riveting, inventive history, Possanza asks: How could lesbian love help us reimagine care and community? What would our world look like if we replaced its foundation of misogyny with something new, with something distinctly lesbian?

By: Jackie Pelletier, 2021, Paperback

"Loud Secrets" is a gripping autobiography about trauma, struggle, and growth as it shares the life story of a girl who was born as Betty Ann but grew up to become Jacqueline Marie. This book recounts the secrets and struggles that arose through early childhood molestation, adoption, and having an alcoholic father. The book also shares the author's experience being catholic and a gay public-school teacher and administrator in a school system set in a narrow-minded, rural town in Maine. This unforgettable story is told with the rawness and candor that can only come from someone who spent a lifetime learning that she had done nothing wrong.

Although this story is filled with trauma and struggle, it serves to remind others in similar situations that they are not alone. Those who have lived through sexual abuse, adoption, alcoholic parent(s), and sexual identity issues, will be able to connect with the author's experience and hopefully be inspired to accept and love themselves. Regardless of who you are, this is a must-read autobiography filled with vulnerability and honesty.

By: Randa Jarrar (Author), 2023, Paperback

Queer. Muslim. Arab American. A proudly Fat femme. Randa Jarrar is all of these things. In this "exuberant, defiant and introspective" memoir of a cross-country road trip, she explores how to claim joy in an unraveling and hostile America (The New York Times Book Review).
 
Randa Jarrar is a fearless voice of dissent who has been called "politically incorrect" (Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times). As an American raised for a time in Egypt, and finding herself captivated by the story of a celebrated Egyptian belly dancer's journey across the United States in the 1940s, she sets off from her home in California to her parents' in Connecticut.

Coloring this road trip are journeys abroad and recollections of a life lived with daring. Reclaiming her autonomy after a life of survival--domestic assault as a child, and later, as a wife; threats and doxxing after her viral tweet about Barbara Bush--Jarrar offers a bold look at domestic violence, single motherhood, and sexuality through the lens of the punished-yet-triumphant body. On the way, she schools a rest-stop racist, destroys Confederate flags in the desert, and visits the Chicago neighborhood where her immigrant parents first lived.

Hailed as "one of the finest writers of her generation" (Laila Lalami), Jarrar delivers a euphoric and critical, funny and profound memoir that will speak to anyone who has felt erased, asserting: I am here. I am joyful.

By: Jeff Mann (Author), 2023, Paperback

A Gay man chronicles his relationship to his native Appalachian culture and society. Appalachians are known for their love of place, yet many LGBTQ+ people from the mountains flee to urban areas in search of community and broader acceptance. Jeff Mann tells his story as one who left and then returned, who insists on claiming and celebrating both regional and sexual identities. In memoir and poetry, Mann describes his life as an openly gay man who has remained true to his mountain roots. Mann recounts his upbringing in Hinton, a small town in southern West Virginia, as well as his realization of his homosexuality, his early encounters with homophobia, his coterie of supportive lesbian friends, and his initial attempts to escape his native region in hopes of finding a freer life in urban gay communities. Mann depicts his difficult search for a romantic relationship, the family members who have given him the strength to defy convention, his anger against religious intolerance and the violence of homophobia, and his love for the rich folk culture of the Highland South. His character and values shaped by the mountains, Mann has reconciled his sexuality with both traditional definitions of Appalachian manhood and his own attachment to home and kin. Loving Mountains, Loving Men is a compelling, universal story of making peace with oneself and the wider world.

By: Erika Lee (Author), Christina Soontornvat (Author), 2024, Hardcover

“Powerful. . . . Made in Asian America isn’t just about the past. It’s about the history being made right now by young people, inspired by the Asian Americans who came before them to ensure that our stories are not only heard, but also remembered.” —Paula Yoo, The New York Times Book Review

From three-time Newbery Honoree Christina Soontornvat and award-winning historian Erika Lee comes a middle grade nonfiction that shines a light on the generations of Asian Americans who have transformed the United States and who continue to shape what it means to be American.

Asian American history is not made up of one single story. It’s many. And it’s a story that too often goes untold. 

It begins centuries before America even exists as a nation. It is connected to the histories of Western conquest and colonialism. It’s a story of migration; of people and families crossing the Pacific Ocean in search of escape, opportunity, and new beginnings.

It is also the story of race and racism. Of being labeled an immigrant invasion, unfit to become citizens, and being banned, deported, and incarcerated. Of being blamed for bringing diseases into the country.

And it is a story of bravery and hope. It is the story of heroes who fought for equality in the courts, on the streets, and in the schools, and who continue to fight in solidarity with others doing the same.

This book is a stirring account of the ordinary people and extraordinary acts that made Asian America and the young people who are remaking America today.