Showing titles in Gay Studies

Jason Okundaye meets an elder generation of Black gay men and finds a spirited community full of courage, charisma and good humour, hungry to tell its past - of nightlife, resistance, political fights, loss, gossip, sex, romance and vulgarity. Through their conversations he seeks to reconcile the Black and gay narratives of Britain, narratives frequently cleaved as distinct and unrelated. Tracing these men's journeys and arrivals to South London through the seventies, eighties and nineties from the present day, Okundaye relays their stories with rare compassion.

Beyond Stonewall: 10 Inspiring LGBTQ+ Trailblazers You Should Know is a powerful and heartfelt exploration of queer courage, resilience, and legacy. More than a history lesson, this book is a tribute to the remarkable individuals who shaped a movement—not only through protests and public speeches but through everyday acts of defiance, vision, and pride. While the 1969 Stonewall Uprising marked a crucial turning point in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights, it was neither the beginning nor the end.

The Queer Art of Failure is about finding alternatives - to conventional understandings of success in a heteronormative, capitalist society; to academic disciplines that confirm what is already known according to approved methods of knowing; and to cultural criticism that claims to break new ground but cleaves to conventional archives.  

In this quintessential work of queer theory, Jack Halberstam takes aim at the protected status of male masculinity and shows that female masculinity has offered a distinct alternative to it for well over two centuries. Demonstrating how female masculinity is not some bad imitation of virility, but a lively and dramatic staging of hybrid and minority genders, Halberstam catalogs the diversity of gender expressions among masculine women from 19th-century pre-lesbian practices to contemporary drag-king performances.

Set between Los Angeles, San Francisco and London, Gay Bar takes us on a time-traveling, transatlantic bar hop through pulsing nightclubs, after-work dives, hardcore leather bars, gay cafes and saunas, asking what these places meant to their original clientele, what they meant to the author as a younger man and what they mean now.

Lawrence Chaney is a testament to the strength that comes from drag. Lawrence (Drag) Queen of Scots celebrates the little boy learning to sew at age seven and his journey to taking the UK by storm. From growing up as the gay class clown and being bullied to finding an outlet in performance and drag, celebrating both his outer curves and inner beauty. The book will showcase valuable life lessons and tricks of the trade, all told in Chaney's trademark charming style and will resonate with anyone who holds dreams and aspirations that are bigger than the town they grew up in.

What if Christianity was far more liberating than the culture wars suggest? Can the conflict concerning Christianity and homosexuality be viewed from a more interpretative lens? James Alison, a Catholic priest who is also a gay man, has been wrestling with the matter for over forty years. This luminous and rigorous book dismantles the fear-based binaries which have dominated conversations in the Church.

Straight Jacket is a revolutionary clarion call for gay men, the wider LGBT community, their friends and family. Part memoir, part groundbreaking polemic, it looks beneath the shiny facade of contemporary gay culture and asks if gay people are as happy as they could be - and if not, why not? Meticulously researched, courageous and life-affirming, Straight Jacket offers invaluable practical advice on how to overcome a range of difficult issues.

The term killjoy has been used to dismiss feminism by claiming that it causes misery. But by naming ourselves feminist killjoys, we recover a feminist history, turning it into a source of strength as well as an inspiration. Drawing on her own stories and those of others, especially Black and brown feminists and queer thinkers, Sara Ahmed combines depth of thought with honesty and intimacy. The Feminist Killjoy Handbook unpicks the lies our culture tells us and provides a form of solidarity and companionship that can be returned to over a lifetime.

In Patient Zero, Richard A. McKay presents a carefully documented and sensitively written account of the life of Gaetan Dugas, a gay man whose skin cancer diagnosis in 1980 took on very different meanings as the HIV/AIDS epidemic developed - and who received widespread posthumous infamy when he was incorrectly identified as patient zero of the North American outbreak.

Winner of The Green Carnation Prize for LGBTQ literature Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT non-fiction Shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize 2017 'This superbly written chronicle will stand as a towering work in its field' Sunday Times 'Inspiring, uplifting and necessary reading' -...

This explosively entertaining memoir abounds in gossip, satire, historical apercus, and trenchant observations. Vidal’s compelling narrative weaves back and forth in time, providing a whole view of the author’s celebrated life, from his birth in 1925 to today, and features a cast of memorable characters - including the Kennedy family, Marlon Brando, Anais Nin, and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Brought to you by Penguin. THE MILLION COPY BESTSELLER Paul O'Grady is one of Britain's very best loved entertainers. He is known and adored by millions, whether as the creator of the acid-tongued Blonde Bombsite, Lily Savage, the presenter of the fantastically successful, award-winning Paul...

Scholars of US and transatlantic slavery have largely ignored or dismissed accusations that Black Americans were cannibalized. Vincent Woodard takes the enslaved person's claims of human consumption seriously, focusing on both the starvation of the slave and the tropes of cannibalism on the part of the slaveholder, and further draws attention to the ways in which Blacks experienced their consumption as a fundamentally homoerotic occurrence.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Out of the Shadows: Re imagining Gay Men's Lives by Walt Odets read by Will Damron. Even in our modern progressive world, it's not easy to be a gay man. While young men often come out more readily, even those from the most liberal of backgrounds still...

In this groundbreaking work, Sara Ahmed demonstrates how queer studies can put phenomenology to productive use. Focusing on the “orientation” aspect of “sexual orientation” and the “orient” in “orientalism,” Ahmed examines what it means for bodies to be situated in space and time. Bodies take shape as they move through the world directing themselves toward or away from objects and others. Being “orientated” means feeling at home, knowing where one stands, or having certain objects within reach. Orientations affect what is proximate to the body or what can be reached.

White tears possess a potency that is rarely acknowledged or commented upon, but they have long been used as a dangerous and insidious tool against people of colour. Taking us from the slave era, when white women fought in court to keep 'ownership' of their slaves, through centuries of colonialism, when women offered a soft face for brutal tactics, to the modern workplace, in which tears serve as a defense to counter accusations of bias and microaggressions, White Tears/Brown Scars tells a charged story of white women's active participation in campaigns of oppression. 

THE BOOK OF PRIDE captures the true story of the gay rights movement from the 1960s to the present, through richly detailed, stunning interviews with the leaders, activists, and ordinary people who witnessed the movement and made it happen. These individuals fought battles both personal and...

Brought to you by Penguin. It’s 1996, and Jeremy has met the British boy of his dreams — just as, amid a media frenzy, US Congress prepares the Defense of Marriage Act, denying same-sex couples federal rights, including immigration. The pair snatch time in forests and deserts, London fashion...

Presenting an original audiobook performance of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, starring the cast of the National Theatre's 2018 Broadway revival. In this production, adapted especially for the listening experience, Andrew Garfield, Nathan Lane, and the entire cast recreate their acclaimed...