The Lambda Literary Awards - (LGBTQIA) 2022
The Lambdas have been announced! These books are marked as the best queer fiction by the Lambda Literary Society. Both winners and nominees have been included to broaden your reading experience. Read the rainbow!
100 Boyfriends
Author(s):
Description:
"An irreverent, dirty, and profoundly intimate collection of vignettes exploring gay male desire, loneliness, sex, and self-sabotage"-- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
A Desolation Called Peace
Author(s):
Description:
"An alien armada lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can communicate with it, no one can destroy it, and Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is running out of options. In a desperate attempt at diplomacy with the mysterious invaders, the fleet captain has sent for a diplomatic envoy. Now Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass - still reeling from the recent upheaval in the Empire - face the impossible task of trying to communicate with a hostile entity. Whether they succeed or fail could change the face of Teixcalaan forever"--Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Mar
Antiman : A Hybrid Memoir
Author(s):
Description:
Rajiv Mohabir's Antiman is an impassioned, genre-blending memoir that navigates the fraught constellations of race, sexuality, and cultural heritage that have shaped his experiences as an Indo-Guyanese queer poet and immigrant to the United States.--From statement at Amazon.com.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
B Moh
Bath Haus : A Thriller
Author(s):
Description:
"Oliver Park, a recovering addict from Indiana, finally has everything he ever wanted: sobriety and a loving, wealthy partner in Nathan, a prominent DC trauma surgeon. Despite their difference in age and disparate backgrounds, they've made a perfect life together. With everything to lose, Oliver shouldn't be visiting Haus, a gay bathhouse. But through the entrance he goes, and it's a line crossed. Inside, he follows a man into a private room, and it's the final line. Whatever happens next, Nathan can never know. But then, everything goes wrong, terribly wrong, and Oliver barely escapes with his life. He races home in full-blown terror as the hand-shaped bruise grows dark on his neck. The truth will destroy Nathan and everything they have together, so Oliver does the thing he used to do so well: he lies. What follows is a classic runaway-train narrative, full of exquisite escalations, thrills, and twists" -- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Ver
Blue-skinned Gods
Author(s):
Description:
"In Tamil Nadu, India, a boy is born with blue skin. His father sets up an ashram, and the family makes a living off of the pilgrims who seek the child's blessings and miracles, believing young Kalki to be tenth human incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. Kalki is confronted with three trials in his tenth year--tests of his power that will prove his divine status and, his father tells him, spread his fame worldwide. Over the next decade, as the story of his family unravels, his relationship to everyone--his dominating father, his beloved cousin, his cancer-stricken aunt, and the young woman he imagines he will marry--threatens to fall apart. At once a personal tale of youthful searching, and a magisterial, continent spanning tour-de-force, Blue-Skinned Gods is unwaveringly honest and heartbreaking, a powerful novel told through the eyes of a wonderfully winning and idiosyncratic protagonist" -- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Sin
Borealis
Author(s):
Description:
"In Borealis, Aisha Sabatini Sloan writes about a solitary summer visit to Alaska, observing glaciers, shorelines, mountains, bald eagles, and herself. As she studies her surroundings, the myth of Alaska-excitement, exploration, possibility-is complicatedby boredom and isolation, and her attempts to set down place in writing are suffused with nostalgia and anxiety. The first title commissioned for the Spatial Species series, Borealis is a shapeshifting logbook of Sabatini Sloan's experiences as a queer woman contemplating her Blackness in the wilderness and in the mysteries of art-making. The Spatial Species series, edited by Youmna Chlala and Ken Chen, investigates the ways we activate space through language. In the tradition of Georges Perec's An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, Spatial Species titles are pocket-sized editions, each keenly focused on place. Instead of tourist spots and public squares, we encounter unmarked, noncanonical spaces: edges, alleyways, diasporic traces. Such intimate journeying requires experiments in language and genre, moving travelogue, fiction, or memoir into something closer to eating, drinking, and dreaming"-- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
Breeder
Author(s):
Description:
"Will Meadows is a seemingly average fifteen-year-old Westie, who lives and works in Zone F, the run-down outermost ring of the Corporation. In the future state of the Corp, a person's value comes down to productivity: the right actions win units, the wrong ones lose them. If Will is unlucky and goes into unit debt, there's only one place to go: the Rator. But for Zone F Breeders, things are much worse--they're born into debt and can only accrue units through reproduction. Every day in Zone F is a struggle, especially for Will who is fighting against time for access to an illegal medical drug, Crystal 8. Under the cover of night, Will travels to the Gray Zone, where life is less regulated and drugs--and people--are exchanged for gold. There, Will meets Rob, a corrupt member of the Corporation running a Breeder smuggling operation. Will also meets Alex, another teen whom he quickly recognizes as a Breeder in disguise. Suddenly, Will has an illicit job and money, access to Crystal, and a real friend. As the pair grows closer, Alex shares her secret: she is part of the Response, an uprising to overthrow the Corporation. Caught up in the new friendship, Will and Alex become careless as the two covertly travel into Zone B for a day of adventure. Nothing goes as planned and Will's greatest fear is realized. Will his true identity be revealed?" --Amazon.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Rij
Calvin
Author(s):
JR Ford
Vanessa Ford
Kayla Harren
Description:
"A transgender boy prepares for the first day of school and introduces himself to his family and friends for the first time"-- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
E For
Cheer Up! : Love And Pompoms
Author(s):
Description:
"Annie is a smart, antisocial lesbian starting her senior year of high school who's under pressure to join the cheerleader squad to make friends and round out her college applications. Her former friend BeeBee is a people-pleaser, a trans girl who must keep her parents happy with her grades and social life in order to maintain their support of her transition. Through the rigors of squad training and amped up social pressures (not to mention micro-aggressions and other queer youth problems), the two girls rekindle a friendship they thought they'd lost and discover there may be other, sweeter feelings springing up between them" --Back cover.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Fra
Dear Senthuran : A Black Spirit Memoir
Author(s):
Description:
Akwaeke Emezi, an award-winning author, reveals the harrowing yet inspiring truths of their personal, spiritual, and artistic journey--from the social constraints of childhood in Aba, Nigeria, through a lifetime of discoveries involving sexuality, storytelling, and self, to their determination to carve their way through the thorny labyrinth of the publishing world. Interweaving letters to friends, lovers, and family, Emezi reveals the raw pain of their journey as a spirit in the human world, the perils of all-consuming love and intimacy, and the hard-earned reward of achieving both literary recognition and a peaceful, joyous home. Dear Senthuran is a revelatory account of what it means to embody multiple spirits, to fight for survival, and to bend the world to one's will.-- From statement provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
B Eme
Detransition, Baby : A Novel
Author(s):
Description:
"Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men. Ames isn't happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese—and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames's boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she's pregnant with his baby—and that she's not sure whether she wants to keep it—Ames wonders if this is the chance he's been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family—and raise the baby together?" -- from jacket.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Pet
Girlhood : Essays
Author(s):
Melissa Febos
Forsyth Harmon
Description:
When her body began to change at eleven years old, Febos understood that her meaning to other people had changed with it. By her teens, she defined herself based on these perceptions and by the romantic relationships she threw herself into headlong. Over time, Febos increasingly questioned the stories she'd been told about herself and the habits and defenses she'd developed over years of trying to meet others' expectations. Blending investigative reporting, memoir, and scholarship, Febos charts how she and others like her have reimagined relationships and made room for the anger, grief, power, and pleasure women have long been taught to deny.--From publisher marketing.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
818 Feb
Gordo : Stories
Author(s):
Description:
"His first-ever collection of stories, Jaime Cortez's Gordo is set in a migrant workers camp near Watsonville, California, in the 1970s. A young boy named Gordo fights back tears underneath a wrestler's mask as he is forced to fight other boys and grow into his father's expectations of manhood. As he comes of age, Gordo learns about sex, poverty, and discovers the wrenching divides between documented and undocumented immigrants. Fat Cookie, high schooler and resident artist, uses tiny library pencils to draw murals of graffiti flowers along the camp's blank walls, the words CHICANO POWER boldly lettered across, before she runs away from home one day with her mother's boyfriend. Los Tigres, the perfect pair of twins who show up to Gyrich Farms every season without fail, are champion drinkers until one of them is rushed to the emergency room after a brawl, bloody and slumped in a tattered easy chair on the back of a pick-up truck. These scenes from Steinbeck Country seen so intimately from within are full of humor, family drama, and a sweet frankness about serious matters-who belongs to America and how are they treated? Written with balance and poise, Cortez braids together elegantly tragicomic and inviting stories about life on a California camp, in essence redefining what all-American means"-- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Cor
Greedy : Notes From A Bisexual Who Wants Too Much
Author(s):
Description:
Jen Winston takes us inside her journey of self-discovery, leading us through stories of a childhood "girl crush," an onerous quest to have a threesome, and an enduring fear of being bad at sex. Greedy follows Jen's attempts to make sense of herself as she explores the role of the male gaze, what it means to be "queer enough," and how to overcome bi stereotypes when you're the posterchild for all of them: greedy, slutty, and constantly confused. Jen draws on personal experiences with sexism and biphobia to understand how we all can and must do better. She sheds light on the reasons women, queer people, and other marginalized groups tend to make ourselves smaller, provoking the question: What would happen if we suddenly stopped? Greedy shows us that being bisexual is about so much more than who you're sleeping with--it's about finding stability in a state of flux and defining yourself on your own terms. This book inspires us to rethink the world as we know it, reminding us that Greedy was a superpower all along.--From statement at Amazon.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
306.766 Win
Gumbo Ya Ya
Author(s):
Description:
Format:
Book
Call Number:
811 Mar
Hani And Ishu's Guide To Fake Dating
Author(s):
Description:
Everyone likes Humaira 'Hani' Khan, she's easy going and one of the most popular girls at school. But when she comes out to her friends as bisexual, they invalidate her identity, saying she can't be bi if she's only dated guys. Panicked, Hani blurts out that she's in a relationship, with a girl her friends absolutely hate. Shita 'Ishu' Dey. Ishu is the complete opposite of Hani. She's an academic overachiever who hopes that becoming head girl will set her on the right track for college. But Ishita agrees to help Hani, if Hani will help her become more popular so that she stands a chance of being elected head girl.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Jai
Hazel Bly And The Deep Blue Sea
Author(s):
Description:
For two years, twelve-year-old Hazel has coped with her Mum's accidental death by overprotecting her sister and Mama, but when Mama reconnects with her first love, roles begin to shift.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
J FIC Bla
How To Wrestle A Girl : Stories
Author(s):
Description:
Venita Blackburn’s characters bully and suffer, spit and tease, mope and blame. They’re hyperaware of their bodies and fiercely observant, fending off the failures and advances of adults with indifferent ease. In “Biology Class,” they torment a teacher to the point of near insanity, while in “Bear Bear HarvestTM,” they prepare to sell their excess fat and skin for food processing. Stark and sharp, hilarious and ominous, these pieces are scabbed, bruised, and prone to scarring. Many of the stories, set in Southern California, follow a teenage girl in the aftermath of her beloved father’s death and capture her sister’s and mother’s encounters with men of all ages, as well as the girl’s budding attraction to her best friend, Esperanza. In and out of school, participating in wrestling and softball, attending church with her hysterically complicated family, and dominating boys in arm wrestling, she grapples with her burgeoning queerness and her emerging body, becoming wary of clarity rather than hoping for it.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Bla
Let The Record Show : A Political History Of Act Up New York, 1987-1993
Author(s):
Description:
Based on more than two hundred interviews with ACT UP members and rich with lessons for today's activists, Let the Record Show is a revelatory exploration--and long-overdue reassessment--of the coalition's inner workings, conflicts, achievements, and ultimate fracture. Sarah Schulman explores the how and the why, examining, with her characteristic rigor and bite, how a group of desperate outcasts changed America forever, and in the process created a livable future for generations of people across the world.-- From statement provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
362.19 Sch
Lies With Man
Author(s):
Description:
"Los Angeles, 1986. A group of right-wing Christians has put an initiative on the November ballot to allow health officials to force people with HIV into quarantine camps. It looks like it's going to pass. Rios, now living in LA, agrees to be counsel for a group of young activists who call themselves QUEER [Queers United to End Erasure and Repression]. QUEER claims to be committed to peaceful civil disobedience. But when one of its members is implicated in the bombing of an evangelical church that kills its pastor, who publicly supported the quarantine initiative, Rios finds himself with a client suddenly facing the death penalty."--Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Nav
Love, Violet
Author(s):
Charlotte Sullivan Wild
Charlene Chua
Description:
Shy Violet attempts to show another girl how she feels on Valentine's Day.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
E Wil
Margaret And The Mystery Of The Missing Body
Author(s):
Description:
Meet Margaret. At age twelve, she was head detective of the mystery club Girls Can Solve Anything. Margaret and her three best friends led exciting lives solving crimes, having adventures, and laughing a lot. But now that she's entered high school, the club has disbanded, and Margaret is unmoored—she doesn't want to grow up, and she wishes her friends wouldn't either. Instead, she opts out, developing an eating disorder that quickly takes over her life. When she lands in a treatment center, Margaret finds her path to recovery twisting sideways as she pursues a string of new mysteries involving a ghost, a hidden passage, disturbing desires, and her own vexed relationship with herself. Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body reimagines nineties adolescence—mashing up girl group series, choose-your-own-adventures, and chronicles of anorexia—in a queer and trans coming-of-age tale like no other. An interrogation of girlhood and nostalgia, dysmorphia and dysphoria, this debut novel puzzles through the weird, ever-evasive questions of growing up.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Mil
Master Suffering : Poems
Author(s):
Description:
"The poems of Master Suffering pendulate between yield and command; the bodies of this book are supplicant yet seething - they want nothing more than to survive. But how does a woman survive? One's own healthy body helps, but illness is one of the masters of this book. Faith can be a salve for the inscrutable ailments of the body, but God is unreliable in these poems. The female bodies of Master Suffering want power; they want to control and to correct the suffering they witness and withstand." --Back cover
Format:
Book
Call Number:
811 Bur
Matrix
Author(s):
Description:
"Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions. Marie, born the last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will the sheer force of Marie's vision be bulwark enough? Equally alive to the sacred and the profane, Matrix gathers currents of violence, sensuality, and religious ecstasy in a mesmerizing portrait of consuming passion, aberrant faith, and a woman that history moves both through and around" -- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Gro
Milk Fed : A Novel
Author(s):
Description:
Rachel is twenty-four, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of existential control, by way of obsessive food rituals, while working as an underling at a Los Angeles talent management agency. At night, she pedals nowhere on the elliptical machine. Rachel is content to carry on subsisting--until her therapist encourages her to take a ninety-day communication detox from her mother, who raised her in the tradition of calorie counting. Early in the detox, Rachel meets Miriam, a zaftig young Orthodox Jewish woman who works at her favorite frozen yogurt shop and is intent upon feeding her. Rachel is suddenly and powerfully entranced by Miriam--by her sundaes and her body, her faith and her family--and as the two grow closer, Rachel embarks on a journey marked by mirrors, mysticism, mothers, milk, and honey.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Bro
Monster In The Middle
Author(s):
Description:
When Fly and Stela meet in 21st Century New York City, it seems like fate. He is a Black American musician from a mixed-religious background who knows all about heartbreak. She is a Catholic science teacher from the Caribbean, looking for lasting love. Their story moves across decades, from the U.S. to the Virgin Islands to Ghana and back again, to show how one couple's romance is intrinsically influenced by the family lore and love stories that preceded their own pairing. What challenges and traumas must this new couple inherit, what hopes and ambitions will keep them moving forward? -- adapted from jacket
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Yan
Mouths Of Rain : An Anthology Of Black Lesbian Thought
Author(s):
Description:
A collection tracing the history of intellectual thought by Black Lesbian writers, spanning the nineteenth century through the twenty-first century.-- From statement provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
810.8 Mou
My Good Son : A Novel
Author(s):
Description:
"From award-winning author Yang Huang, My Good Son explores the power-and the cost-of parental love. A tailor in post-Tiananmen China, Mr. Cai has one ambition: for his son, Feng, to make something of himself. With harsh discipline and relentless pressure, Mr. Cai succeeds in getting Feng ready to attend a U.S. college, but Feng needs a sponsor. When Mr. Cai meets a closeted American art student named Jude, they hatch a plan to benefit them both: get Feng to the US and help Jude come out to his conservative father. Their scheme will expose the fault lines in both Chinese and American cultures-father-son relationships, familial expectations, gender and sexuality, social status and mobility. Huang's writing abounds with sharp insights and a quiet humor, revealing the complexity of family relationships amidst two rapidly changing cultures"-- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
Never Silent : Act Up And My Life In Activism
Author(s):
Description:
Previously untold stories of the life of Peter Staley, including his continuing activism. In 1987, Staley had been four years on Wall Street as a closeted gay man, and was familiar with the homophobia common on trading floors. He knew that he was not beyond the reach of HIV, having recently been diagnosed with AIDS-Related Complex. A week after a massive AIDS 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. ACT UP would change the course of AIDS, pressuring the National Institutes of Health, the FDA, and three administrations to finally respond with research that ultimately saved millions of lives. Staley, a shrewd strategist with nerves of steel, organized some of the group's most spectacular actions. This is the inside story of what brought Staley to ACT UP and the explosive and sometimes painful years to follow--years filled with triumph, humiliation, joy, loss, and persistence.-- From statement provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
362.19 Sta
Our Work Is Everywhere : An Illustrated Oral History Of Queer & Trans Resistance
Author(s):
Description:
"Over the past ten years, we have witnessed the rise of queer and trans communities that have defied and challenged those who have historically opposed them. Through bold, symbolic imagery and surrealist, overlapping landscapes, queer illustrator and curator Syan Rose shines a light on the faces and voices of these diverse, amorphous, messy, real and imagined queer and trans communities"-- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
Rainbow Milk : A Novel
Author(s):
Description:
"In the 1950s, ex-boxer Norman Alonso is a determined and humble Jamaican who has immigrated to Britain with his wife and children to secure a brighter future. Blighted with unexpected illness and racism, Norman and his family are resilient, but are all too aware that their family will need more than just hope to survive in their new country. At the turn of the millennium, Jesse seeks a fresh start in London, escaping a broken immediate family, a repressive religious community and his depressed hometown in the industrial Black Country. But once he arrives he finds himself at a loss for a new center of gravity, and turns to sex work, music and art to create his own notions of love, masculinity and spirituality. A wholly original novel as tender as it is visceral, Rainbow Milk is a bold reckoning with race, class, sexuality, freedom and religion across generations, time and cultures" -- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Men
Shadow Life
Author(s):
Description:
When Kumiko's well-meaning adult daughters place her in an assisted living home, the seventy-six-year-old widow gives it a try, but it's not where she wants to be. She goes on the lam and finds a cozy bachelor apartment, keeping the location secret even while communicating online with her eldest daughter. Kumiko revels in the small, daily pleasures: decorating as she pleases, eating what she wants, and swimming in the community pool. But something has followed her from her former residence--Death's shadow. Kumiko's sweet life is shattered when Death's shadow swoops in to collect her. With her quick mind and sense of humor, Kumiko, with the help of friends new and old, is prepared for the fight of her life. But how long can an old woman thwart fate?
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Got
She Who Became The Sun
Author(s):
Description:
"Mulan meets The Song of Achilles in Shelley Parker-Chan's She Who Became the Sun, a bold, queer, and lyrical reimagining of the rise of the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty. In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness. In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family's eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family's clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected. When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate. After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness" -- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Par
Skye Falling : A Novel
Author(s):
Description:
"Twenty-six and broke, Skye didn't think twice before selling her eggs and happily pocketing the cash. Now approaching forty, Skye moves through life entirely--and unrepentantly--on her own terms, living out of a suitcase and avoiding all manner of serious relationships. Her personal life might be a mess, and no one would be surprised if she died alone in a hotel room, but at least she's free to do as she pleases. But then a twelve-year-old girl shows up during one of Skye's brief visits to her hometown of Philadelphia, and tells Skye that she's "her egg." Skye's life is thrown into sharp relief and she decides that it might be time to actually try to have a meaningful relationship with another human being. Spoiler alert: It's not easy. Things gets even more complicated when Skye realizes that the woman she tried and failed to pick up the other day is the girl's aunt and now it's awkward. All the while, her brother is trying to get in touch, her problematic mother is being bewilderingly kind, and the West Philly pool halls and hoagie shops of her youth have been replaced by hipster cafes"-- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC McK
Stitch By Stitch : Cleve Jones And The Aids Memorial Quilt
Author(s):
Rob Sanders
Jamey Christoph
Description:
Determined not to let history forget those who died of AIDS, activist Cleve Jones creates a memorial quilt to commemorate the lives of those lost and bring awareness to the disease. Includes a Names Project timeline.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
J 306.76 San
Stone Fruit
Author(s):
Description:
"Bron and Ray are a queer couple who enjoy their role as the fun weirdo aunties to Ray's niece, six-year-old Nessie. Their playdates are little oases of wildness, joy, and ease in all three of their lives, which ping-pong between familial tensions and deep-seeded personal stumbling blocks. As their emotional intimacy erodes, Ray and Bron isolate from each other and attempt to repair their broken family ties -- Ray with her overworked, resentful single-mother sister and Bron with her religious teenage sister who doesn't fully grasp the complexities of gender identity. Taking a leap of faith, each opens up and learns they have more in common with their siblings than they ever knew" --Publisher's description.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Lai
Summer Fun
Author(s):
Description:
"Gala, a young trans woman, works at a hostel in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. She is obsessed with the Get Happies, the quintessential 1960s Californian band, helmed by its resident genius, B--. Why did the band stop making music? Why did they never release their rumored album, Summer Fun? Gala writes letters to B-- that shed light not only on the Get Happies, but paint an extraordinary portrait of Gala. The parallel narratives of B-- and Gala form a dialogue about creation--of music, identity, self, culture, and counterculture" -- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Tho
The 2000s Made Me Gay : Essays On Pop Culture
Author(s):
Description:
This collection of essays is a nostalgic trip through beloved 2000s media, interweaving cultural criticism and personal narrative to examine how a very straight decade forged a very queer woman Today's gay youth have dozens of queer peer heroes, both fictional and real, but Grace Perry did not have that luxury. Instead, she had to search for queerness in the teen cultural phenomena that the early aughts had to offer. These touch points shaped her identity, and she came out on the other side, gay.Join Grace on a journey back through the pop culture moments of the early 2000's, before the cataclysmic shift in LGBTQ representation and acceptance--a time not so long ago, that people seem to forget.-- From statement provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
306.766 Per
The City Beautiful
Author(s):
Description:
"Chicago, 1893. For Alter Rosen, this is the land of opportunity, and he dreams of the day he'll have enough money to bring his mother and sisters to America, freeing them from the oppression they face in his native Romania. But when Alter's best friend, Yakov, becomes the latest victim in a long line of murdered Jewish boys, his dream begins to slip away. While the rest of the city is busy celebrating the World's Fair, Alter is now living a nightmare: possessed by Yakov's dybbuk, he is plunged into a world of corruption and deceit, and thrown back into the arms of a dangerous boy from his past. A boy who means more to Alter than anyone knows. Now, with only days to spare until the dybbuk takes over Alter's body completely, the two boys must race to track down the killer--before the killer claims them next." -- Amazon.com.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Pol
The Daring Life And Dangerous Times Of Eve Adams
Author(s):
Jonathan Katz
Eve 1891-1943. Lesbian love Adams
Description:
Jonathan Ned Katz uncovers the forgotten story of radical lesbian feminist Eve Adams, and her long-lost book Lesbian Love. Born Chawa Zloczewer into a Jewish family in Poland, Eve Adams emigrated to the United States in 1912, took a new name, befriended anarchists, sold radical publications, and ran lesbian-and-gay-friendly speakeasies in Chicago and New York. Then, in 1925, Adams risked all to write and publish a book titled Lesbian Love. Adams's bold activism caught the attention of the young J. Edgar Hoover and the US Bureau of Investigation, leading to her surveillance and arrest. Adams was convicted of publishing an obscene book and of attempted sex with a policewoman sent to entrap her. Adams was jailed and then deported back to Europe, and ultimately murdered by Nazis in Auschwitz. Katz has recovered the story of an early, daring activist, and the publisher reprints the long-lost text of Adams's rare, unique book Lesbian Love.--From publisher's website.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
306.766 Kat
The Five Wounds : A Novel
Author(s):
Description:
"It's Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans. Their reunion sets her own life down a startling path. Vivid, tender, darkly funny, and beautifully rendered, The Five Wounds spans the baby's first year as five generations of the Padilla family converge: Amadeo's mother, Yolanda, reeling from a recent discovery; Angel's mother, whom Angel isn't speaking to; and disapproving Tio Tive, Yolanda’s uncle and keeper of the family’s history. Each brings expectations that Amadeo, who often solves his problems with a beer in his hand, doesn’t think he can live up to" -- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Qua
The Heartbreak Bakery
Author(s):
Description:
Syd (no pronouns, please) has always dealt with big, hard-to-talk-about things by baking. Being dumped is no different, except now Syd is baking at the Proud Muffin, a queer bakery and community space in Austin. And everyone who eats Syd's breakup brownies...breaks up. Even Vin and Alec, who own the Proud Muffin. And their breakup might take the bakery down with it. Being dumped is one thing; causing ripples of queer heartbreak through the community is another. But the cute bike delivery person, Harley (he or they, check the pronoun pin, it's probably on the messenger bag), is the first person to really believe in Syd's magical baking--not to mention the first person to see that Syd is an agender cupcake. And together, Syd and Harley are going to fix the romantic disasters caused by those brownies--one recipe at a time.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Cap
The Kissing Bug : A True Story Of A Family, An Insect, And A Nation's Neglect Of A Deadly Disease
Author(s):
Description:
"Growing up in a New Jersey factory town in the 1980s, Daisy Hernández believed that her aunt had become deathly ill from eating an apple. No one in her family, in either the United States or Colombia, spoke of infectious diseases, and even into her thirties, she only knew that her aunt had died of a rare illness called Chagas. But as Hernández dug deeper, she discovered that Chagas--or the kissing bug disease--is more prevalent in the United States than the Zika virus. Today, more than three hundred thousand Americans have Chagas. After her aunt's death, Hernández begins searching for answers about who our nation chooses to take care of and who we ignore. Her book tells the story of how poverty, racism, and public policies have conspired to keep this disease hidden--and how the disease intersects with Hernández's own identity as a niece, sister, and daughter; a queer woman; a writer and researcher; and a citizen of a country that is only beginning to address the harms caused by Chagas, and the dangers it poses. An investigation into racial politics and for-profit healthcare in the United States, this book reveals the intimate history of a marginalized disease and connects us to the lives at the center of it all.-- From statement provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
616.9363 Her
The Passing Playbook
Author(s):
Description:
"Fifteen-year-old Spencer Harris is a proud nerd, an awesome big brother, and a David Beckham in training. He's also transgender. After transitioning at his old school leads to a year of isolation and bullying, Spencer gets a fresh start at Oakley, the most liberal private school in Ohio. At Oakley, Spencer seems to have it all: more accepting classmates, a decent shot at a starting position on the boy's soccer team, great new friends, and maybe even something more than friendship with one of his teammates. The problem is, no one at Oakley knows Spencer is trans--he's passing. So when a discriminatory law forces Spencer's coach to bench him after he discovers the "F" on Spencer's birth certificate, Spencer has to make a choice: cheer his team on from the sidelines or publicly fight for his right to play, even though it would mean coming out to everyone-- including the guy he's falling for."-- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Fit
The Renunciations : Poems
Author(s):
Description:
"These poems construct life rafts and sanctuaries even in their most devastating confrontations with what a person can bear, with how families harm themselves. With the companionship of "the oracle"--an observer of memory who knows how each close call with oblivion ends--the act of remembrance becomes curative, and personal mythologies give way to a future defined less by wounds than by possibility"-- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
811 Kel
The Sunflower Cast A Spell To Save Us From The Void
Author(s):
Jackie Wang
Kalan Sherrard
Description:
These poems read like dispatches from the dream world, with Jackie Wang acting as our trusted comrade reporting across time and space. By sharing her personal index of dreams with its scenes of solidarity and resilience, interpersonal conflict and outlaw jouissance, Wang embodies historical trauma and communal memory. Here, the all-too-familiar interplay between crisis and resistance becomes first distorted, then clarified and refreshed. With a light touch and invigorating sense of humor, Wang illustrates the social dimension of dreams and their ability to inform and reshape the dreamer's waking world with renewed energy and insight.--From publisher's description.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
811 Wan
The Way She Feels : My Life On The Borderline In Pictures And Pieces
Author(s):
Description:
"A witty and one-of-a-kind debut graphic memoir detailing and drawing the life of a girl with borderline personality disorder finding her way-and herself-one day at a time. What does it feel like to fall in love too hard and too fast, to hate yourself inequal and opposite measure? To live in such fear of rejection that you drive friends and lovers away? Welcome to my world. I'm Courtney, and I have borderline personality disorder (BPD), along with over four million other people in the United States. Though I've shown every classic symptom of the disorder since childhood, I wasn't properly diagnosed until nearly a decade later, because the prevailing theory is that most people simply "grow out of it." Not me. In my illustrated memoir The Way She Feels: MyLife on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces, I share what it's been like to live and love with this disorder. Not just the hospitalizations, treatments, and residential therapy, but the moments I found comfort in cereal, the color pink, or mini corn dogs; the days I couldn't style my hair because I thought the blow-dryer was going to hurt me; the peace I found when someone I love held me. This is a book about vulnerability, honesty, acceptance, and how to speak openly-not only with doctors, co-patients, friends, family, or partners, but also with ourselves"-- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
Thirsty Mermaids
Author(s):
Description:
"Fresh out of shipwreck wine, three tipsy mermaids decide to magically masquerade as humans and sneak onto land to indulge in much more drinking and a whole lot of fun in the heart of a local seaside tourist trap. But the good times abruptly end the next morning as, through the haze of killer hangovers, the trio realizes they never actually learned how to break the spell, and are now stuck on land for the foreseeable future. Which means everything from: enlisting the aid of their I-know-we-just-met-can-we-crash-with-you bartender friend, struggling to make sense of the world around them, and even trying to get a job with no skill set ... all while attempting to somehow return to the sea and making the most of their current situation with tenacity and camaraderie (especially if someone else is buying)."--back cover.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Ley
We Play Ourselves : A Novel
Author(s):
Description:
"Not too long ago, Cass was a promising young playwright in New York, hailed as 'a fierce new voice' and 'queer, feminist, and ready to spill the tea.' But at the height of all this attention, Cass finds herself at the center of a searing public shaming, and flees to Los Angeles to escape -- and reinvent herself. There she meets her next-door neighbor Caroline, a magnetic filmmaker on the rise, as well as the pack of teenage girls who hang around her house. They are the subjects of Caroline's next semidocumentary movie, which follows the girls' clandestine activity: a Fight Club inspired by the violent classic. As Cass is drawn into the film's orbit, she is awed by Caroline's ambition and confidence. But over time, she becomes troubled by how deeply Caroline is manipulating the teens in the name of art -- especially as the consequences become increasingly disturbing. With her past proving hard to shake and her future one she's no longer sure she wants, Cass is forced to reckon with her own ambitions and confront what she has come to believe about the steep price of success" --Publisher descirption.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Sil
We Want What We Want : Stories
Author(s):
Description:
"Thirteen glittering, surprising, darkly funny stories of women testing the boundaries of their lives. In the mordantly funny 'Money, Geography, Youth,' Vanessa arrives home from a gap year volunteering in Ghana to find that her father is engaged to her childhood best friend. Unable to reconcile the girl she went to dances with in the eighth grade and the woman in her father's bed, Vanessa turns to a different old friendship for her own, unique diversion. In the subversive 'The Brooks Brothers Guru,' Amanda drives to upstate New York to rescue her gawky cousin from a cult, only to discover clean-cut, well-dressed men living in a beautiful home, discussing the classics, and drinking sophisticated cocktails, moving her to wonder what freedoms she might willingly trade away for a life of such elegant comfort. And in 'The Universal Particular,' Tamar welcomes her husband's young stepcousin into their home, imagining they are saving this young woman from Somalia by way of Stockholm, only to find their cool suburban life of potlucks and air-conditioning knocked askew in ways they cannot quite understand. Populated with imperfect families, burned potential, and inescapable old flames, the thirteen stories in We Want What We Want are, each one, diamond-sharp—sparkling with pain, humor, and beauty"-- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Ohl
What We Devour
Author(s):
Description:
"Lorena Adler has a secret -- she holds the power of the banished gods, the Noble and the Vile, inside her. She has hidden her entire life - both from the world and from her past. She's content to spend her days as an undertaker in a small town, marry her best friend, Julian, and live an unfulfilling life so long as no one uncovers her true nature. But when the notoriously bloodthirsty crown prince comes to arrest Julian's father, he immediately recognizes Lorena for what she is. So she makes a deal -- a fair trial for her betrothed's father in exchange for her service to the crown. The prince is desperate for her help. He's spent years trying to repair the weakening Door that holds back the Vile... and he's losing the battle. As Lorena learns more about the Door and the horrifying price it takes to keep it closed, she'll have to embrace both parts of herself to survive" --Back cover.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Mil
With Teeth : A Novel
Author(s):
Description:
"If she's being honest, Sammie Lucas is scared of her son. Working from home in the close quarters of their Florida house, she lives with one wary eye peeled on Samson, a sullen, unknowable boy who resists her every attempt to bond with him. Uncertain in her own feelings about motherhood, she tries her best--driving, cleaning, cooking, prodding him to finish projects for school--while growing increasingly resentful of Monika, her confident but absent wife. As Samson grows from feral toddler to surly teenager, Sammie's life begins to deteriorate into a mess of unruly behavior, and her struggle to create a picture-perfect queer family unravels. When her son's hostility finally spills over into physical aggression, Sammie must confront her role in the mess--and the possibility that it will never be clean again"-- Provided by publisher.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Arn