June is Pride Month! Check out this Spotlight for the newest books in our collection highlighting the stories and histories of the LGBTQIA+ community. See the physical display in Howe Library lobby for even more books.
Roaming by Mariko Tamaki
"Spring Break, 2009: Five days, three friends, and one big city. Roaming marks a triumphant return to the graphic novel and deft foray into new adult fiction for Caldecott Medal-winning authors Jillian Tamaki (Boundless) and Mariko Tamaki (Cold). Over the course of a much-anticipated trip to New York, an unexpected fling blossoms between casual acquaintances and throws a long-term friendship off-balance. Emotional tensions vibrate wildly against the resplendently illustrated backdrop of the city, capturing a spontaneous queer romance in all of its fledgling glory. Slick attention to the details of a bustling, intimidating metropolis are softened with a palette of muted pastels, as though seen through the eyes of first-time travelers. The awe, wonder, and occasional stumble along the way all come to life with stunning accuracy in this sumptuous softcover with gorgeous jacket. Roaming is the third collaboration from the critically acclaimed team behind Skim and Governor General's Literary Award winner This One Summer. Moody, atmospheric, and teeming with life, the magic of this comics duo leaks through the pages with lush and exquisite pen work. The Tamakis' singular, elegant vision of an urban paradise slowly revealing its imperfections to the tune of its visitors' rhythms is a masterpiece-a future classic for generations to come."
A last supper of queer apostles : selected essays by Pedro Lemebel
"A galvanizing look at life on the margins of society by a crowning figure of Latin America's queer counterculture who celebrated "melodrama, kitsch, extravagance, and vulgarity of all kinds" (Garth Greenwell) in playful, performative, linguistically inventive essays, now available in English for the first time."
A guest in the house by Emily Carroll
"After many lonely years, Abby's just gotten married. She met her new husband--a recently widowed dentist--when he arrived in town with his young daughter, seeking a new start. Although it's strange living in the shadow of her predecessor, Abby does her best to be a good wife and mother. But the more she learns about her new husband's first wife, the more things don't add up. And Abby starts to wonder ... was Sheila's death really by natural causes? As Abby sinks deeper into confusion, Sheila's memory seems to become a force all its own, ensnaring Abby in a mystery that leaves her obsessed, fascinated, and desperately in love for the first time in her life."
The out side : trans & nonbinary comics
"The Out Side: Trans & Nonbinary Comics includes 29 creators' tales of self-love and affirmation that detail their experiences with gender and identity. Originally published as a successful kickstarter campaign, this expanded edition includes comics by Dana Simpson (bestselling author of Phoebe and Her Unicorn), Aidyn Huynh (Snailords), Sage Coffey, Kyla Aiko, Coco Ouwerkerk, and many others. As editor The Kao writes in the book's introduction, 'My hope is that this collection will inspire anyone who may be struggling with their own identity and educate those who seek greater understanding.”
In the lives of puppets by TJ Klune
"New York Times bestselling author TJ Klune invites you deep into the heart of a peculiar forest and on the extraordinary journey of a family assembled from spare parts. In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees, live three robots--fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They're a family, hidden and safe. The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled "HAP," he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio--a past spent hunting humans. When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio's former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe. Gio is captured and taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. So together, the rest of Vic's assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommission, or worse, reprogramming. Along the way to save Gio, amid conflicted feelings of betrayal and affection for Hap, Vic must decide for himself: Can he accept love with strings attached? Inspired by Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio, and like Swiss Family Robinson meets Wall-E, In the Lives of Puppets is a masterful stand-alone fantasy adventure from the beloved author who brought you The House in the Cerulean Sea and Under the Whispering Door."
Miss Major speaks : conversations with a Black trans revolutionary by Toshio Meronek
"The future of Black, queer, and trans liberation explored by a legendary transgender elder and activist. Miss Major Griffin-Gracy is a veteran of the infamous Stonewall Riots, a former sex worker, and a transgender elder and activist who survived Bellevue psychiatric hospital, New York's jail system, and the HIV/AIDS crisis. For over fifty years, she has been on the front lines of struggles for queer liberation. In this brilliant and moving conversation with Toshio Meronek, she presents a remarkable life -- told with intimacy, warmth, and an irresistable levity -- and a road map for those navigating the challenges Black, brown, queer and trans youth face."
Queer then and now : the David R. Kessler lectures, 2002-2020
"QUEER THEN AND NOW: THE DAVID R. KESSLER LECTURES, 2002-2020 includes seventeen lectures, reflections, and two scholarly roundtables by prominent queer and trans scholars, activists, and artists-including Adrienne Rich, Amber Hollibaugh, Cathy J. Cohen, Cheryl Clarke, Dean Spade, Douglas Crimp, Gayle Rubin, Isaac Julien, Jasbir K. Puar, Jonathan Ned Katz, Martin Duberman, Richard Fung, Roderick A. Ferguson, Sara Ahmed, Sarah Schulman, Susan Stryker, and Urvashi Vaid-on the past, present, and future of queer studies."
The famous lady lovers : Black women and queer desire before Stonewall by Cookie Woolner
"Black queer women have shaped American culture since long before the era of gay liberation. Decades prior to the Stonewall Uprising, in the 1920s and 1930s, Black 'lady lovers'-as women who loved women were then called-crafted a queer world. In the cabarets, rent parties, speakeasies, literary salons, and universities of the Jazz Age and Great Depression, communities of Black lady lovers grew, and queer flirtations flourished. Cookie Woolner here uncovers the intimate lives of performers, writers, and educators such as Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, Gladys Bentley, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and Lucy Diggs Slowe, along with the many everyday women she encountered in the archives. Examining blues songs, Black newspapers, vice reports, memoirs, sexology case studies, and more, Woolner illuminates the unconventional lives Black lady lovers formed to suit their desires. In the urban North, as the Great Migration gave rise to increasingly racially mixed cities, Black lady lovers fashioned and participated in emerging sexual subcultures. During this time, Black queer women came to represent anxieties about the deterioration of the heteronormative family. Negotiating shifting notions of sexuality and respectability, Black lady lovers strategically established queer networks, built careers, created families, and were vital cultural contributors to the US interwar era."
Suffering Sappho! : lesbian camp in American popular culture by Barbara Jane Brickman
"An ever-expanding and panicked Wonder Woman crashes through a city skyline begging Steve to stop her. A twisted queen of sorority row crashes her convertible trying to escape her queer shame. A suave butch emcee introduces the sequined and feathered stars of the era's most celebrated drag revue. For an unsettled and retrenching postwar America, these startling figures betrayed the failure of promised consensus and appeasing conformity. They could also be cruel, painful, and disciplinary jokes. It turns out that an obsession with managing gender and female sexuality after the war would hardly contain them. On the contrary, it spread their campy manifestations throughout mainstream culture. Offering the first major consideration of lesbian camp in American popular culture, Suffering Sappho! traces a larger-than-life lesbian menace across mid-century media forms to propose five prototypical queer icons-the sicko, the monster, the spinster, the Amazon, and the rebel. On the pages of comics and sensational pulp fiction and the dramas of television and drive-in movies, Barbara Jane Brickman discovers evidence not just of campy sexual deviants but of troubling female performers, whose failures could be epic but whose subversive potential could inspire."
You are my happy ending : Schitt's Creek and the legacy of queer television by Emily Garside
"From its modest beginnings to its massive Emmy sweep, You Are My Happy Ending tells the story of how Schitt's Creek became the surprise hit that changed the way we think about LGBTQ relationships."
Deviant hollers : queering Appalachian ecologies for a sustainable future
"Deviant Hollers: Queering Appalachian Ecologies for a Sustainable Future uses the lens of queer ecologies to explore environmental destruction in Appalachia while mapping out alternative futures that follow from critical queer perspectives on the United States' exploitation of the land. With essays by Lis Regula, Jessica Cory, Chet Pancake, Tijah Bumgarner, MJ Eckhouse, and other essential thinkers, this collection brings to light both emergent and long-standing marginalized perspectives that give renewed energy to the struggle for a sustainable future. A new and valuable contribution to the field of Appalachian studies, rural queer studies, Indigenous studies, and ethnographic studies of the United States, Deviant Hollers presents a much-needed objection to the status quo of academic work, as well as to the American exceptionalism and white supremacy pervading US politics and the broader geopolitical climate. By focusing on queer critiques and acknowledging the status of Appalachia as a settler colony, Deviant Hollers offers new possibilities for a reimagined way of life."
Funny boy : the Richard Hunt biography by Jessica Max Stein
"Funny Boy: The Richard Hunt Biography is the life story of Muppet performer Richard Hunt. As one of the "Original Five" performers in the Muppet troupe, Hunt's characteristic irreverence was an integral part of Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, three major Muppet movies, a handful of short-lived shows, countless specials and even a couple of non-Muppet films. Hunt died in the AIDS epidemic at just 40 years old, predeceased by many friends as well as the love of his life. Yet day after day, in the face of grief and tragedy, Hunt showed up to work and was reliably funny. Was he just that talented, that driven, that resilient, or what? Yes, yes, and yes. And yet this caustic smart mouth was hardly the sanitized saint of many AIDS narratives. Hunt would sneer at being called "inspiring" but his life story exemplifies how to follow your passion, adapt to life's surprises, genuinely connect with everyone from glitzy celebrities to gruff cab drivers--and have a hell of a lot of fun along the way."
All the Things They Said We Couldn't Have: Stories of Trans Joy by Tash Oakes-Monger
“Transition has not been something linear for me, my joy has come in seasons.'Now, more than ever, trans people deserve to hear stories of joy and hope, where being trans doesn't have to be defined by fear and dysphoria, but can be experienced through courage, freedom, and the love and acceptance of their chosen families.Through a series of uplifting, generous and beautifully crafted vignettes, T. C. Oakes-Monger gently leads you through the cycle of the seasons - beginning in Autumn and the shedding of leaves and identity, moving through the darkness of Winter, its cold days, and the reality of daily life, into Spring, newness, and change, and ending with the joy of long Summer days and being out and proud - and invites you to find similar moments of joy in your life.Celebratory and empowering, these stories are a reminder of the power joy can bring.”
This Arab is queer : an anthology by LGBTQ+ arab writers
“This ground-breaking anthology features the compelling and courageous memoirs of eighteen queer Arab writers - some internationally bestselling, others using pseudonyms. Here, we find heart-warming connections and moments of celebration alongside essays exploring the challenges of being LGBTQ+ and Arab. From a military base in the Gulf to loving whispers caught between the bedsheets; and from touring overseas as a drag queen to a concert in Cairo where the rainbow flag was raised to a crowd of thousands, this collection celebrates the true colours of a vibrant Arab queer experience. 'A vital addition to what it means to be Arab. We can sometimes lose sight of the fact, in the Arab world, that what we want are spaces of freedom and tolerance, dignity, equality, and, above all, of love. Let this anthology serve as a beautiful reminder of that.'--Layla AlAmmar.”
Queer Blues: The Hidden Figures of Early Blues Music by Darryl W Bullock
“From the very beginning, the blues has had a close connection with the LGBTQ community. There is a long and decorated history of so-called 'dirty blues' songs, stretching back beyond the earliest attempts to capture the blues on record. The 1920s and 30s saw the release of dozens of raunchy, bawdy blues recordings aimed at a knowing LGBTQ audience. Queer Blues tells the story of the pioneering LGBTQ composers and entertainers that wrote, performed, and recorded these wonderfully outlandish, life-affirming songs and chronicles, including: Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Josephine Baker to Frankie 'Half-Pint' Jaxon and many more. This is the definitive account of the LGBTQ trailblazers of early blues and a fascinating consideration of the intersection between music and LGBTQ history, from the award-winning Darryl W. Bullock.”