Celebrate Pride Month with these new books featured at Howe Library! Check out titles highlighting LGBTQ+ joy, stories, and history.
 

Before we were trans : a new history of gender by Kit Heyam

Explores the history of transgender and gender nonconforming people, with a focus on those who identified in other than a straightforward binary fashion; on communities in West Africa, Asia, and among Native Americans; and on cross-dressing in World War I prison camps and in entertainment.

High-risk homosexual : a memoir by Edgar Gomez

A debut memoir about coming of age as a gay, Latinx man in a culture of machismo, Gomez's High-Risk Homosexual opens in the ultimate anti-gay space: his uncle's cockfighting ring in Nicaragua, where he was sent at twelve years old to become a man. The story then moves through the queer spaces where he learned the joy of 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." With vulnerability, humor, and quick-witted insights into racial, sexual, familial, and professional power dynamics, Gomez shares a hard-won path to taking pride in the parts of himself that he'd kept hidden. It's a hilarious, beautiful reminder of the importance--in a world that is so often oppressive--of leaving space for joy"

Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour ; traducción de Alicia Botella Juan

Cuando Sara Foster se escapa de casa con diecišis ąos, deja atr̀s a la nįa que un d̕a fue, capaz de desarrollar v̕nculos de confianza e intimidad. Ąos despǔs, ya establecida en Los ℓngeles, se ha convertido en una codiciada barman, conocida tanto por sus brillantes c̤cteles como por el misterio que le rodea. Al otro lado de la ciudad, Emilie Dubois est̀ estancada, anhelando la belleza y la comunidad que sus abuelos criollos cultivaron, pero incapaz de comprometerse con nada. En un arrebato, acepta un trabajo componiendo arreglos florales en el glamuroso restaurante Yerba Buena y se embarca en una aventura amorosa con la duęa casada. La mąana en que Emilie y Sara se conocen en Yerba Buena, su conexi̤n es inmediata. Pero el dolor que ambas mujeres albergan y las decisiones que han tomado en el pasado las separan una y otra vez. Cuando la antigua vida de Sara llama a su puerta, poniendo en duda todas sus creencias, lo hace en el preciso momento en que Emilie consigue comprender su prop̤sito vital. Y entonces deber̀n decidir si su amor es m̀s fuerte que sus pasados. Tan exquisita como expansiva, asombrosa en humanidad y sensibilidad, Yerba Buena es una historia de amor de nuestro tiempo y un viaje transformadora trav̌s de las vidas de dos mujeres que intentan encontrar un lugar, o a alguien, a quien llamar hogar.

The novel follows two women on a star-crossed journey toward each other. When Sara Foster runs away from home at sixteen, she leaves behind not only the losses that have shattered her world but the girl she once was, capable of trust and intimacy. Years later, in Los Angeles, she is a sought-after bartender, renowned as much for her brilliant cocktails as for the mystery that clings to her. Across the city, Emilie Dubois is in a holding pattern. In her seventh year and fifth major as an undergraduate, she yearns for the beauty and community her Creole grandparents cultivated but is unable to commit. On a whim, she takes a job arranging flowers at the glamorous restaurant Yerba Buena and embarks on an affair with the married owner. When Sara catches sight of Emilie one morning at Yerba Buena, their connection is immediate. But the damage both women carry, and the choices they have made, pulls them apart again and again. When Sara's old life catches up to her, upending everything she thought she wanted just as Emilie has finally gained her own sense of purpose, they must decide if their love is more powerful than their pasts. At once exquisite and expansive, astonishing in its humanity and heart, Yerba Buena is a love story for our time and a propulsive journey through the lives of two women finding their way in the world.

We are everywhere : protest, power, and pride in the history of Queer Liberation by Matthew Riemer and Leighton Brown ; foreword by Eric Marcus

Through the lenses of protest, power, and pride, We Are Everywhere is an essential and empowering introduction to the history of the fight for queer liberation. Combining exhaustively researched narrative with meticulously curated photographs, the book traces queer activism from its roots in late-nineteenth-century Europe—long before the pivotal Stonewall Riots of 1969—to the gender warriors leading the charge today.

Featuring more than 300 images from more than seventy photographers and twenty archives, this inclusive and intersectional book enables us to truly see queer history unlike anything before, with glimpses of activism in the decades preceding and following Stonewall, family life, marches, protests, celebrations, mourning, and Pride. By challenging many of the assumptions that dominate mainstream LGBTQ+ history, We Are Everywhere shows readers how they can—and must—honor the queer past in order to shape our liberated future.

Gender euphoria : stories of joy from trans, non binary and intersex writers edited by Laura Kate Dale

GENDER EUPHORIA: a powerful feeling of happiness experienced as a result of moving away from one's birth-assigned gender.So often the stories shared by trans people about their transition centre 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 which 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. In this groundbreaking anthology, nineteen trans, non-binary, agender, gender-fluid and intersex writers share their experiences of gender euphoria: an agender dominatrix being called ‘Daddy', an Arab trans man getting his first tattoos, a trans woman embracing her inner fighter. What they have in common are their feelings of elation, pride, confidence, freedom and ecstasy as a direct result of coming out as non-cisgender, and how coming to terms with their gender has brought unimaginable joy into their lives.

The transformative potential of LGBTQ+ children's picture books by Jennifer Miller

In The Transformative Potential of LGBTQ Children's Picture Books, Jennifer Miller identifies an archive of over 150 English-language children's picture books that explicitly represent LGBTQ identities, expressions, and issues. This archive is then analyzed to explore the evolution of LGBTQ characters and content from the 1970s to the present. Miller describes dominant tropes that emerge in the field to analyze historical shifts in representational practices, which she suggests parallel larger sociocultural shifts in the visibility of LGBTQ identities. Additionally, Miller considers material constraints and possibilities affecting the production, distribution, and consumption of LGBTQ children's picture books from the 1970s to the present. This foundational work defines the field of LGBTQ children's picture books thoroughly, yet accessibly. In addition to laying the groundwork for further research, The Transformative Potential of LGBTQ Children's Picture Books presents a reading lens, critical optimism, used to analyze the transformative potential of LGBTQ children's picture books. Many texts remain attached to heteronormative family forms and raced and classed models of success. However, by considering what these books put into the world, as well as problematic aspects of the world reproduced within them, Miller argues that LGBTQ children's picture books are an essential world-making project and seek to usher in a transformed world as well as a significant historical archive that reflects material and representational shifts in dominant and subcultural understandings of gender and sexuality.

Stonewall : the definitive story of the LGBTQ rights uprising that changed America by Martin Duberman

The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village. At a little after one a.m. on the morning of June 28, 1969, the police carried out a routine raid on the bar. But it turned out not to be routine at all. Instead of cowering-- the usual reaction to a police raid-- the patrons inside Stonewall and the crowd that gathered outside the bar fought back against the police. The five days of rioting that followed changed forever the face of lesbian and gay life. In the years since 1969, the Stonewall riots have become the central symbolic event of the modern gay movement. Renowned historian and activist Martin Duberman tells the full story of what happened at Stonewall, focusing on the lives of six people involved in the struggle for LGBTQ rights, and recreating in vivid detail those heady, sweltering nights in June 1969, revealing a wealth of previously unknown material.

Endpapers : a novel  by Jennifer Savran Kelly

In 2003 New York, a genderqueer book conservator who feels trapped by her gender presentation, ill-fitting relationship, and artistic block discovers a decades-old hidden queer love letter and becomes obsessed with tracking down its author.

Juliet takes a breath by Gabby Rivera

Juliet Milagros Palante is leaving the Bronx and headed to Portland, Oregon. She just came out to her family and isn't sure if her mom will ever speak to her again. But Juliet has a plan, sort of, one that's going to help her figure out this whole "Puerto Rican lesbian" thing. She's interning with the author of her favorite book: Harlowe Brisbane, the ultimate authority on feminism, women's bodies, and other gay-sounding stuff. Will Juliet be able to figure out her life over the course of one magical summer? Or is she running away from all the problems that seem too big to handle?

Queer X design : 50 years of signs, symbols, banners, logos, and graphic art of LGBTQ by Andy Campbell

The first-ever illustrated history of the iconic designs, symbols, and graphic art representing more than 5 decades of LGBTQ pride and activism--from the evolution of Gilbert Baker's rainbow flag to the NYC Pride typeface launched in 2017, and beyond. Organized by decade beginning with Pre-Liberation and then spanning the 1970s through the new millennium, QUEER X DESIGN will be an empowering, uplifting, and colorful celebration of the hundreds of graphics--from shapes and symbols to flags and iconic posters--that have stood for the powerful and ever-evolving LGBTQ movement over the last five-plus decades. Included in the collection will be everything from Gilbert Baker's original rainbow flag, ACT-UP's Silence = Death poster, the AIDS quilt, and Keith Haring's "Heritage of Pride" logo, as well as the original Lavender Menace t-shirt design, logos such as "The Pleasure Chest", protest buttons such as "Anita Bryant Sucks Oranges", and so much more. Sidebars throughout will cover important visual groupings such as a "Lexicon of Pride Flags", explaining the now more than a dozen flags that represent segments of the community, and the evolution of the pink triangle.

Pride puppy! by Robin Stevenson ; [illustrated by] Julie McLaughlin

A rhyming alphabet book featuring a family who have lost their dog at a Pride parade.