Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

Growing up queer in a conservative Midwestern town, Gabe Montesanti never felt comfortable in her own skin. A competitive swimmer, she turned to perfectionism and self-control to create a sense of safety, only to develop an eating disorder and constantly second-guess her instincts. When she enters graduate school in St. Louis, she is determined to put the baggage of her childhood behind her.

Edith Hamilton didn’t publish her first book until she was 62. But over the next three decades this former headmistress would become the twentieth century’s most famous interpreter of the classical world. Today, Hamilton’s Mythology (1942) remains the standard version of ancient tales. During the Cold War, her influence even extended to politics, as she argued that postwar America could learn from the fate of Athens after its victory in the Persian Wars. Victoria Houseman tells the fascinating life story of a remarkable classicist whose ideas were shaped by—and aspired to shape—her times.

A mixed-race orphan, Murray grew up in segregated North Carolina before escaping to New York, where she attended Hunter College and became a labor activist in the 1930s. When she applied to graduate school at the University of North Carolina, where her white great-great-grandfather had been a trustee, she was rejected because of her race. She went on to graduate first in her class at Howard Law School, only to be rejected for graduate study again at Harvard University this time on account of her sex. Undaunted, Murray forged a singular career in the law.

Entwined explores the fuzzy lines between friendship, romance, and family with various essay forms, including a play, an advice column, and a love letter. Rather than wallowing in the throes of jealousy, this collection celebrates the hard work, humor, and wisdom needed to create a love life that resists conventional narratives.

For someone who made a career out of oversharing on the Internet, Tyler Oakley has a shocking number of personal mishaps and shenanigans to reveal in his first book: He experienced a legitimate rage blackout in a Cheesecake Factory; he had a fashion stand-off with the White House Secret Service; he crashed a car in front of his entire high school in an Arby's uniform; he projectile vomited while bartering with a grandmother.

Are you feeling confused or uninformed about your gender identity? Look no further! If you're questioning your gender identity, you're not alone. Many people have struggled with understanding their gender and finding a place where they belong. This book provides a safe, inclusive, and informative space to explore and understand your gender identity.

Meet Shane Jenek. Raised in the Brisbane suburbs by loving parents, Shane realises from a young age that he's not like all the other boys. At a performing arts agency he discovers his passion for song, dance and performance, and makes a promise to himself: to find a bigger stage. Meet Courtney Act.

Born to indigenous working-class Mexican immigrants in San Diego in the 1970s, Jesse Leon’s childhood was violently ruptured. A dangerous and harrowing encounter at a local gift shop when he was eleven years old left Jesse with a deadly secret. Hurt, alone, and scared for his life, Jesse numbed his pain by losing himself in the hyper-masculine culture of the streets and wherever else he could find it—in alcohol, drugs, and prostitution.

n this unforgettable meet-cute, Samantha Allen traces her story of self-discovery during gender transition and the life-altering partnership that began with a simple hello in an elevator. Feeling “unfinished” at the liminal age of twenty-six, the author had already accumulated decades of emotional baggage growing up in a Mormon family and living with gender dysphoria. When she met Corey midtransition, she felt even more like an awkward shape-shifter. Now Samantha shares how taking a chance on that fortuitous encounter meant having the courage to be herself.

So often the stories shared by trans people about their transition center on gender dysphoria: a feeling of deep discomfort with their birth-assigned gender, and a powerful catalyst for coming out or transitioning. But for many non-cisgender people, it's gender euphoria that pushes forward their transition: the joy the first time a parent calls them by their new chosen name, the first time they have the confidence to cut their hair short, the first time they truly embrace themself.

Sipping Dom Pérignon Through a Straw is an inspirational and truly intersectional memoir from global humanitarian and disability-justice advocate Eddie Ndopu—a queer, Black wheelchair user. Ndopu’s incredible story begins with his childhood being raised by a single mother fleeing Apartheid South Africa before rocketing through every boundary put in front of him—because of his disability, his ethnicity, and his sexuality—to eventually hold official positions at both the United Nations and the World Economic Forum.

For fans of A Street Cat Named Bob and Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World, Strays is a compelling true story of a man who rescues a stray, injured cat and how they save each other. Homeless, alcoholic, and depressed, Michael King lives in a UPS loading bay on the wrong side of the tracks in Portland, Oregon. One rainy night, he stumbles upon a hurt, starving, scruffy cat and takes her in.

At first, America knew the only child of Sonny and Cher as Chastity, the cherubic little girl who appeared on her parents' TV show. In later years, she became famous for coming out on a national stage, working with two major organizations toward LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) rights and publishing two books. And just within the past 18 months, Chaz Bono has entered the public consciousness as the most high-profile transgender person ever.

Jeremy Ivester is a transgender man. Thirty years ago, his parents welcomed him into the world as what they thought was their daughter. As a child, he preferred the toys and games our society views as masculine. He kept his hair short and wore boys’ clothing. They called him a tomboy. That’s what he called himself. By high school, when he showed no interest in flirting, his parents thought he might be lesbian. At 20, he wondered if he was asexual. At 23, he surgically removed his breasts.

No writer is as emblematic of the American 20th century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture.

Melissa Giberson is a middle-aged suburban wife and mother of two kids, solidly planted in the life she's always wanted. Yet she longs for something more—something she cant quite put her finger on until, one day at the Y, she finds herself mesmerized by the sight of a naked woman and asks herself for the first time: Am I gay?

Newly arrived in the Sonoran Desert, eleven-year-old Zoë enters a world of giant beetles, thundering javelinas, and gnarled palo verde trees. In Cactus Country RV Park, Zoë has been given a fresh start and a shorter new haircut. Although Zoë doesn’t have the words to express it, he experiences life as a trans boy—and here, others begin to see him as a boy, too. Zoë spends hot days chasing shade and freight trains with an ever-rotating pack of sunburned desert kids, and nights fending off his own questions about the body underneath his baggy clothes.

In To Name the Bigger Lie, Sarah Viren “has pulled off a magic trick of fantastic proportion” (The Washington Post), telling the story of an all-too-real investigation into her personal and professional life that she expands into a profound exploration of the nature of truth. The memoir begins as Viren is researching what she believes will be a book about her high school philosophy teacher, a charismatic instructor who taught her and her classmates to question everything—eventually, even the reality of historical atrocities.

In 1987, somebody shoved a flyer into the hand of Peter Staley: Massive AIDS demonstration, it announced. After four years on Wall Street as a closeted gay man, Staley was familiar with the homophobia common on trading floors. He also knew that he was not beyond the reach of HIV, having recently been diagnosed with AIDS-related complex. A week after the protest, Staley found his way to a packed meeting of the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power - ACT UP - in the West Village. It would prove to be the best decision he ever made.

At age 36, while serving on a jury, author Molly Wizenberg found herself drawn to a female attorney she hardly knew. Married to a man for nearly a decade and mother to a toddler, Wizenberg tried to return to her life as she knew it, but something inside her had changed irredeemably. Instead, she would discover that the trajectory of our lives is rarely as smooth or as logical as we'd like to believe.