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Pride Month 2023: Digital Resources

Celebrating the LGBTQIA+ Community

e-Books

Black on Both Sides

The story of Christine Jorgensen, America's first prominent transsexual, famously narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives--ones lived by African Americans such as Lucy Hicks Anderson and James McHarris. Their erasure from trans history masks the profound ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence.

Dear Senthuran

Through candid, intimate correspondence with friends, lovers, and family, Emezi traces the unfolding of a self and the unforgettable journey of a creative spirit stepping into power in the human world. Their story weaves through transformative decisions about their gender and body, their precipitous path to success as a writer, and the turmoil of relationships on an emotional, romantic, and spiritual plane, culminating in a book that is as tender as it is brutal. Electrifying and inspiring, animated by the same voracious intelligence that distinguishes Emezi's fiction, Dear Senthuran is a revelatory account of storytelling, self, and survival.

Tomorrow Will Be Different

With emotional depth and unparalleled honesty, Sarah McBride shares her personal struggle with gender identity, coming out to her supportive but distraught parents, and finding her way as a woman. She inspires readers with her barrier-breaking political journey that took her, in just four years, from a frightened, closeted college student to one of the nation's most prominent transgender activists walking the halls of the White House, passing laws, and addressing the country in the midst of a heated presidential election. Sarah's story of identity, love, and tragic loss serves as a powerful entry point for readers who want to gain a deeper understanding of gender identity and what it means to be openly transgender. From issues like bathroom access to healthcare, identification and schools, Sarah weaves the important political milestones, cultural and political debates, and historical context into a personal journey that will open hearts and change minds.

The Natural Mother of the Child

Krys Malcolm Belc has thought a lot about the interplay between parenthood and gender. As a nonbinary, transmasculine parent, giving birth to his son Samson clarified his gender identity. And yet, when his partner, Anna, adopted Samson, the legal documents listed Belc as "the natural mother of the child." By considering how the experiences contained under the umbrella of "motherhood" don't fully align with Belc's own experience, The Natural Mother of the Child journeys both toward and through common perceptions of what it means to have a body and how that body can influence the perception of a family. With this visual memoir in essays, Belc has created a new kind of life record, one that engages directly with the documentation often thought to constitute a record of one's life--childhood photos, birth certificates--and addresses his deep ambivalence about the "before" and "after" so prevalent in trans stories, which feels apart from his own experience. 

Sissy

Through revisiting their childhood and calling out the stereotypes that each of us have faced, Jacob Tobia invites us to rethink what we know about gender and offers a blueprint for a world free from gender-based trauma. Sissy takes you on a gender odyssey you won't soon forget. Writing with the fierce honesty, wildly irreverent humour, and wrenching vulnerability that have made them a media sensation, Jacob shatters the long-held notion that people are easily sortable into men and women and guarantees that you'll never think about gender - both other people's and your own - the same way again.

Gender Identity, Sexuality and Autism

Bringing together a collection of narratives from those who are on the autism spectrum whilst also identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and/or asexual (LGBTQIA), this book explores the intersection of the two spectrums as well as the diverse experiences that come with it. By providing knowledge and advice based on in-depth research and personal accounts, the narratives will be immensely valuable to teenagers, adults, partners and families. The authors round these stories with a discussion of themes across narratives, and implications for the issues discussed.

The A-Z of Gender and Sexuality

There can be confusion around the appropriate terminology for trans and queer identities, even within the trans community itself. As language is constantly evolving, it can be especially difficult to know what to say. As a thorough A-Z glossary of trans and queer words from 'ace' to 'xe', this dictionary guide will help to dispel the anxiety around using the "wrong" words, while explaining the weight of using certain labels and providing individuals with a vocabulary for personal identification. 

Quiver

Libby is the oldest child of six, going on seven, in a family that adheres to the "quiverfull" lifestyle: strict evangelical Christians who believe that they should have as many children as God allows because children are like arrows in the quiver of "God's righteous warriors." Meanwhile, her new neighbor, Zo is a gender fluid teen whose feminist, socialist, vegetarian family recently relocated from the city in search of a less stressful life. Zo and hir family are as far to the left ideologically as Libby's family is to the right, and yet Libby and Zo, who are the same age, feel a connection that leads them to friendship--a friendship that seems doomed from the start because of their families' differences. 

The Queering of Corporate America

What do Apple, Coca Cola, Google, Wal-Mart and Dow Chemical have in common? Aside from being a few of the nation's largest employers, they are among the nearly 400 companies to file an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in the seminal Obergefell v Hodges case explaining that discrimination against LGBT people was harmful to business. Legal scholar Carlos Ball tells the story of how LGBT rights activism aimed at corporations during the twentieth century helped turn them from enterprises either indifferent to or openly hostile toward LGBT equality and into reliable and powerful allies of their movement. 

Queer Cinema in America: an Encyclopedia of LGBTQ Films, Characters, and Stories

Just as American society has changed dramatically from decade to decade, so has queer cinema. Taking us from a time when LGBTQ characters were often represented as either caricatures or figures of farce, this lively yet authoritative reference explores the sea change ushered in by such stars as Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich in the 1930s and '40s, androgynous figures such as Montgomery Clift, James Dean, and Marlon Brando in the '50s, and closeted gay men such as Rock Hudson and Liberace, whose double lives were exposed by the scourge of AIDS. 

The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried

Dino doesn't mind spending time with the dead. His parents own a funeral home, and death is literally the family business. He's just not used to them talking back. Until Dino's ex-best friend July dies suddenly--and then comes back to life. Except not exactly. Somehow July is not quite alive, and not quite dead. As Dino and July attempt to figure out what's happening, they must also confront why and how their friendship ended so badly, and what they have left to understand about themselves, each other, and all those grand mysteries of life.

The Children of Harvey Milk

Part political thriller, part meditation on social change, part love story, The Children of Harvey Milk tells the epic stories of courageous men and women around the world who came forward to make their voices heard during the struggle for equal rights. Featuring LGBTQ icons from America to Ireland, Britain to New Zealand; Reynolds documents their successes and failures, heartwarming stories of acceptance and heartbreaking stories of ostracism, demonstrating the ways in which an individual can change the views and voting behaviors of those around them. 

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