
Dear Queer Self
An Experiment in Memoir
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed

Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $10.47
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Donald Corren
About this listen
An unvarnished accounting of one man’s struggle toward sexual and emotional maturity
In this unconventional memoir, Jonathan Alexander addresses wry and affecting missives to a conflicted younger self. Focusing on three years—1989, 1993, and 1996—Dear Queer Self follows the author through the homophobic heights of the AIDS epidemic, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the election of Bill Clinton, and the steady advancements in gay rights that followed. With humor and wit afforded by hindsight, Alexander relives his closeted college years, his experiments with his sexuality in graduate school, his first marriage to a woman, and his budding career as a college professor.
As he moves from tortured self-denial to hard-won self-acceptance, the author confronts the deeply uncomfortable ways he is implicated in his own story. More than just a coming-out narrative, Dear Queer Self is both an intimate psychological exploration and a cultural examination—a meshing of inner and outer realities and a personal reckoning with how we sometimes torture the truth to make a life. It is also a love letter, an homage to a decade of rapid change, and a playlist of the sounds, sights, and feelings of a difficult, but ultimately transformative, time.
©2022 Jonathan Alexander (P)2022 Blackstone PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
-
She's Not There
- A Life in Two Genders
- By: Jennifer Finney Boylan
- Narrated by: Jennifer Finney Boylan
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The provocative best seller She's Not There is the winning, utterly surprising story of a person changing genders. By turns hilarious and deeply moving, Jennifer Finney Boylan explores the territory that lies between men and women, examines changing friendships, and rejoices in the redeeming power of family. Told in Boylan's fresh voice, She's Not There is about a person bearing and finally revealing a complex secret.
-
-
Inspiring novel of MTF transition
- By Jamie on 03-01-18
-
Virology
- Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between
- By: Joseph Osmundson
- Narrated by: Joseph Osmundson
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Invisible in the food we eat, the people we kiss, and inside our own bodies, viruses flourish - with the power to shape not only our health, but our social, political, and economic systems. Drawing on his expertise in microbiology, Joseph Osmundson brings listeners under the microscope to understand the structure and mechanics of viruses and to examine how viruses like HIV and COVID-19 have redefined daily life. Virology is a critical warning, a necessary reflection, and a call for a better future.
-
-
Audience confusion
- By Tom on 07-31-22
By: Joseph Osmundson
-
All Down Darkness Wide
- A Memoir
- By: Seán Hewitt
- Narrated by: Seán Hewitt
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Seán Hewitt meets Elias, the two fall headlong into a love story. But as Elias struggles with severe mental illness, they soon come face-to-face with crisis. All Down Darkness Wide is a perceptive and unflinching meditation on the burden of living in a world that too often sets happiness and queer life at odds, and a tender and honest portrayal of what it’s like to be caught in the undertow of a loved one’s deep depression. As lives are made and unmade, this memoir asks what love can endure and what it cannot.
-
-
The very deepest end of the pool
- By Gary Francis Burnham on 05-27-23
By: Seán Hewitt
-
High-Risk Homosexual
- A Memoir
- By: Edgar Gomez
- Narrated by: Edgar Gomez
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A debut memoir about coming of age as a gay, Latinx man, High-Risk Homosexual opens in the ultimate anti-gay space: Edgar Gomez's uncle's cockfighting ring in Nicaragua, where he was sent at 13-years-old to become a man. Listeners follow Gomez through the queer spaces where he learned to love being gay and Latinx, including Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, a drag queen convention in Los Angeles, and the doctor's office where he was diagnosed a "high-risk homosexual".
-
-
It feels familiar
- By Bruno on 06-06-24
By: Edgar Gomez
-
The Baddest Bitch in the Room
- (Explicit Version)
- By: Sophia Chang
- Narrated by: Sophia Chang
- Length: 8 hrs
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sophia Chang is a badass of the music industry. As the daughter of Korean immigrants in predominantly white suburban Vancouver, she grew up shunning the “model minority” myth. Armed with a fierce sense of independence, she moved to New York City and infiltrated the world of hip-hop, yet remained mostly in the shadows of the artists she supported. With her debut memoir, Sophia Chang is finally ready to grab the mic for herself.
-
-
Something in the music spoke to me...
- By Tina G. on 09-30-19
By: Sophia Chang
-
Three Women
- By: Lisa Taddeo
- Narrated by: Tara Lynne Barr, Marin Ireland, Mena Suvari, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In suburban Indiana we meet Lina, the homemaker and mother of two whose marriage, after a decade, has lost its passion. Starved for affection, Lina battles daily panic attacks and, after reconnecting with an old flame through social media, embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming. In North Dakota we meet Maggie, the 17-year-old high school student who allegedly has a clandestine physical relationship with her handsome, married English teacher; the ensuing criminal trial will turn their quiet community upside down.
-
-
Moving, literary nonfiction
- By Homer on 07-25-19
By: Lisa Taddeo
-
She's Not There
- A Life in Two Genders
- By: Jennifer Finney Boylan
- Narrated by: Jennifer Finney Boylan
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The provocative best seller She's Not There is the winning, utterly surprising story of a person changing genders. By turns hilarious and deeply moving, Jennifer Finney Boylan explores the territory that lies between men and women, examines changing friendships, and rejoices in the redeeming power of family. Told in Boylan's fresh voice, She's Not There is about a person bearing and finally revealing a complex secret.
-
-
Inspiring novel of MTF transition
- By Jamie on 03-01-18
-
Virology
- Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between
- By: Joseph Osmundson
- Narrated by: Joseph Osmundson
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Invisible in the food we eat, the people we kiss, and inside our own bodies, viruses flourish - with the power to shape not only our health, but our social, political, and economic systems. Drawing on his expertise in microbiology, Joseph Osmundson brings listeners under the microscope to understand the structure and mechanics of viruses and to examine how viruses like HIV and COVID-19 have redefined daily life. Virology is a critical warning, a necessary reflection, and a call for a better future.
-
-
Audience confusion
- By Tom on 07-31-22
By: Joseph Osmundson
-
All Down Darkness Wide
- A Memoir
- By: Seán Hewitt
- Narrated by: Seán Hewitt
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Seán Hewitt meets Elias, the two fall headlong into a love story. But as Elias struggles with severe mental illness, they soon come face-to-face with crisis. All Down Darkness Wide is a perceptive and unflinching meditation on the burden of living in a world that too often sets happiness and queer life at odds, and a tender and honest portrayal of what it’s like to be caught in the undertow of a loved one’s deep depression. As lives are made and unmade, this memoir asks what love can endure and what it cannot.
-
-
The very deepest end of the pool
- By Gary Francis Burnham on 05-27-23
By: Seán Hewitt
-
High-Risk Homosexual
- A Memoir
- By: Edgar Gomez
- Narrated by: Edgar Gomez
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A debut memoir about coming of age as a gay, Latinx man, High-Risk Homosexual opens in the ultimate anti-gay space: Edgar Gomez's uncle's cockfighting ring in Nicaragua, where he was sent at 13-years-old to become a man. Listeners follow Gomez through the queer spaces where he learned to love being gay and Latinx, including Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, a drag queen convention in Los Angeles, and the doctor's office where he was diagnosed a "high-risk homosexual".
-
-
It feels familiar
- By Bruno on 06-06-24
By: Edgar Gomez
-
The Baddest Bitch in the Room
- (Explicit Version)
- By: Sophia Chang
- Narrated by: Sophia Chang
- Length: 8 hrs
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sophia Chang is a badass of the music industry. As the daughter of Korean immigrants in predominantly white suburban Vancouver, she grew up shunning the “model minority” myth. Armed with a fierce sense of independence, she moved to New York City and infiltrated the world of hip-hop, yet remained mostly in the shadows of the artists she supported. With her debut memoir, Sophia Chang is finally ready to grab the mic for herself.
-
-
Something in the music spoke to me...
- By Tina G. on 09-30-19
By: Sophia Chang
-
Three Women
- By: Lisa Taddeo
- Narrated by: Tara Lynne Barr, Marin Ireland, Mena Suvari, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In suburban Indiana we meet Lina, the homemaker and mother of two whose marriage, after a decade, has lost its passion. Starved for affection, Lina battles daily panic attacks and, after reconnecting with an old flame through social media, embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming. In North Dakota we meet Maggie, the 17-year-old high school student who allegedly has a clandestine physical relationship with her handsome, married English teacher; the ensuing criminal trial will turn their quiet community upside down.
-
-
Moving, literary nonfiction
- By Homer on 07-25-19
By: Lisa Taddeo
-
The Interestings
- A Novel
- By: Meg Wolitzer
- Narrated by: Jen Tullock
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, and degrees of satisfaction diverge. The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age 15 is not always enough to propel someone through life at age 30; not everyone can sustain, in adulthood, what seemed so special in adolescence.
-
-
Needs a better title, but a good read (listen)
- By Tango on 04-12-13
By: Meg Wolitzer
-
Do You Mind If I Cancel?
- (Things That Still Annoy Me)
- By: Gary Janetti
- Narrated by: Gary Janetti
- Length: 3 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gary Janetti, the writer and producer for some of the most popular television comedies of all time, and creator of one of the most wickedly funny Instagram accounts there is, now turns his skills into a hilarious, and poignant audiobook chronicling the pains and indignities of everyday life. Gary spends his 20s in New York, dreaming of starring on soap operas while in reality working at a hotel where he lusts after an unattainable colleague and battles a bellman who despises it when people actually use a bell to call him.
-
-
Spoken Word Poetry?
- By Nicole Placco on 11-06-19
By: Gary Janetti
-
The Female Persuasion
- A Novel
- By: Meg Wolitzer
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 14 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To be admired by someone we admire - we all yearn for this: the private, electrifying pleasure of being singled out by someone of esteem. But sometimes it can also mean entry to a new kind of life, a bigger world. Greer Kadetsky is a shy college freshman when she meets the woman she hopes will change her life. Faith Frank, dazzlingly persuasive and elegant at 63, has been a central pillar of the women’s movement for decades, a figure who inspires others to influence the world.
-
-
Quitting 3 hours in and returning it
- By NMwritergal on 04-07-18
By: Meg Wolitzer
-
Save Yourself
- Memoir
- By: Cameron Esposito
- Narrated by: Cameron Esposito
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Save Yourself is full of funny and insightful recollections about everything from coming out (at a Catholic college where sexual orientation wasn't in the nondiscrimination policy) to how joining the circus can help you become a better comic (so much nudity) to accepting yourself for who you are-even if you're, say, a bowl cut-sporting, bespectacled, gender-nonconforming child with an eye patch (which Cameron was).
-
-
You need this book.
- By Robin on 07-07-20
By: Cameron Esposito
-
Here for It
- Or, How to Save Your Soul in America: Essays
- By: R. Eric Thomas
- Narrated by: R. Eric Thomas
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
R. Eric Thomas didn’t know he was different until the world told him so. Everywhere he went - whether it was his rich, mostly White, suburban high school, his conservative Black church, or his Ivy League college in a big city - he found himself on the outside looking in. In essays by turns hysterical and heartfelt, Thomas reexamines what it means to be an "other" through the lens of his own life experience.
-
-
Love in the Time of Coronavirus, Fabulous edition!
- By MMJetSet on 03-22-20
By: R. Eric Thomas
-
Uncle of the Year
- & Other Debatable Triumphs
- By: Andrew Rannells
- Narrated by: Andrew Rannells
- Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Uncle of the Year, Andrew Rannells wonders: If he, now in his forties, has everything he’s supposed to need to be an adult—a career, property, a well-tailored suit—why does he still feel like an anxious twenty-year-old climbing his way toward solid ground? In deeply personal essays, Rannells argues that we all pretend—for friends, partners, parents, and others—that we are constantly succeeding in the process known as “adulting.” But if this acting is leaving us unfulfilled, then we need new markers of time, new milestones, new expectations of what adulthood is and can be.
-
-
Funny and insightful
- By Gvlgal on 04-21-25
By: Andrew Rannells
-
Nothing's Sacred
- By: Lewis Black
- Narrated by: Lewis Black
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
You've seen him on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart offering up his trademark angry observational humor on everything from politics to pop culture. You've seen his energetic stand-up performances on HBO, Comedy Central, and in venues across the globe. Now Lewis Black's volcanic eruptions can be found in Nothing's Sacred, a collection of rants against stupidity and authority, which oftentimes go hand in hand.
-
-
Nothing's creative in this clunker
- By Adam on 04-22-05
By: Lewis Black
-
Hola Papi
- How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons
- By: John Paul Brammer
- Narrated by: John Paul Brammer
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
LGBTQ advice columnist John Paul Brammer writes a “wise and charming” (David Sedaris) memoir-in-essays chronicling his journey from a queer, mixed-race kid in America’s heartland to becoming the “Chicano Carrie Bradshaw” of his generation.
-
-
It made me feel feelings
- By Chris Ventura on 06-29-21
-
Young Mungo
- By: Douglas Stuart
- Narrated by: Chris Reilly
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born under different stars—Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic—they should be sworn enemies if they’re to be seen as men at all. Their environment is a hyper-masculine and sectarian one, for gangs of young men and the violence they might dole out dominate the Glaswegian estate where they live. And yet against all odds Mungo and James become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds.
-
-
Suffering Sappho!
- By Richard Stewart on 04-12-22
By: Douglas Stuart
-
Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be
- By: Nichole Perkins
- Narrated by: Nichole Perkins
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pop culture is the Pandora’s box of our lives. Racism, wealth, poverty, beauty, inclusion, exclusion, and hope - all of these intractable and unavoidable features course through the media we consume. Examining pop culture’s impact on her life, Nichole Perkins takes listeners on a rollicking trip through the last 20 years of music, media, and the internet from the perspective of one Southern Black woman.
-
-
Open, honest, and amazing
- By chris boutte on 08-21-21
By: Nichole Perkins
-
But You Seemed So Happy
- A Marriage, in Pieces and Bits
- By: Kimberly Harrington
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this tender, funny, and sharp companion to her acclaimed memoir-in-essays Amateur Hour, Kimberly Harrington explores and confronts marriage, divorce, and the ways love, loss, and longing shape a life.
-
-
Contrived
- By BekkaLu on 10-06-23
-
A Wild and Precious Life
- A Memoir
- By: Edie Windsor, Joshua Lyon
- Narrated by: Donna Postel, Joshua Lyon
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this memoir, which she began before passing away in 2017 and completed by her co-writer, Edie recounts her childhood in Philadelphia, her realization that she was a lesbian, and her active social life in Greenwich Village's electrifying underground gay scene during the 1950s. Edie was also one of a select group of trailblazing women in computing, working her way up the ladder at IBM and achieving their highest technical ranking while developing software.
-
-
🏳️🌈 Wow! 🏳️🌈
- By Natalia Zimnoch on 10-15-19
By: Edie Windsor, and others