Adult Books

Follow

• 

  All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated

  Nell Bernstein

  In this "moving condemnation of the U.S. penal system and its effect on families" (Parents’ Press), award-winning journalist Nell Bernstein takes an intimate look at parents and children—over two million of them—torn apart by our current incarceration policy. Described as "meticulously reported and sensitively written" by Salon, the book is "brimming with compelling case studies...and recommendations for change" (Orlando Sentinel); Our Weekly Los Angelescalls it "a must-read for lawmakers as well as for lawbreakers."

• 

  All You Can Ever Know

  Nicole Chung

  Nicole Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. From childhood, she heard the story of her adoption as a comforting, prepackaged myth. She believed that her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice in the hope of giving her a better life, that forever feeling slightly out of place was her fate as a transracial adoptee. But as Nicole grew up―facing prejudice her adoptive family couldn’t see, finding her identity as an Asian American and as a writer, becoming ever more curious about where she came from―she wondered if the story she’d been told was the whole truth.

• 

  April Witch

  Majgull Azelsson and Linda Schenck

  Desirée lies in a hospital bed thinking, dreaming. Born severely disabled, she cannot walk or talk, but she has other capabilities. Desirée is an April witch, clairvoyant and omniscient, traveling through time and space into the world denied her. The woman who gave Desirée up at birth subsequently took in three foster daughters, who know nothing of the existence of their fourth “sister.” Sensing that her own time is short, Desirée has decided that one of the others has lived the life she herself deserved. One day, each of the three women receives a mysterious letter that forces her to examine her past and her present—setting in motion a complex fugue of memory, regret, and confrontation that builds to a shattering climax.

• 

  As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who was Raised as a Girl

  John Colapinto

  In 1967, after a baby boy suffered a botched circumcision, his family agreed to a radical treatment. On the advice of a renowned expert in gender identity and sexual reassignment, the boy was surgically altered to live as a girl. This book is the human drama of one man's - and one family's - amazing survival in the face of odds.

• 

  Born Both: An Intersex Life

  Hida Viloria

  From Hida Viloria, writer and intersex activist, a candid, provocative, and eye-opening memoir of life, love, and gender identity as an intact intersex person, as well as a call to action for justice for intersex people. Hida Viloria was raised as a girl but discovered early on that he/r body was different. Unlike most people who are born intersex in the first world--meaning they have genitals, reproductive organs, hormones, and/or chromosomal patterns that do not fit standard definitions of male or female--Hida had the freedom to explore the person s/he was born to be because he/r parents did not agree to have he/r sex characteristics surgically altered at birth. It wasn't until s/he was 26 and encountered the term "intersex" in a San Francisco newspaper that s/he finally had a name for he/r difference. That's when s/he began to explore what it means to live in the space between genders--to be both and neither. As s/he began to reach out to others like he/r, however, Hida discovered that most intersex people had been scarred, both physically and psychologically, by infant surgeries and hormone treatments meant to "correct" their bodies. Eager to help end this practice, Hida came out as intersex at a national and then international level. By answering the question "Are you a boy or a girl?" with "I'm both," Hida's helped blaze a trail for people--particularly intersex and genderqueer/non-binary people--to celebrate the middle space where male and female are not separate and opposite but entwined. Born Both is an intimate and powerful account of Hida's search for authentic identity and love in a world that insists on categorizing people into either/or.

• 

  Boy Erased

  Garrard Conley

  A poignant account by a survivor of a church-supported sexual orientation conversion therapy facility that claimed to 'cure' homosexuality describes its intense Bible study program and the daily threats of his abandonment by family, friends and God, an experience that transformed the author's relationships and self-understandings.

• 

  Come Rain or Come Shine: A White Parent's Guide to Adopting and Parenting Black Children

  Rachel Garlinghouse

  Are you prepared to adopt and parent transracially? Transracial adoption can be a daunting and exhilarating journey. At times you feel incredibly isolated and lost. However, with this conversational and practical guide in hand, you will be able to adopt with confidence and parent with education and enthusiasm.

• 

  Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Volume 1

  Jeff Sheng

  "Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Volume 1,' is the first ever photobook featuring the portraits and stories of closeted service members in the United States armed forces who are still currently serving and affected by the laws that mandate the discharge of openly gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender service members in the United Sates military. In 2009, American artist Jeff Sheng gained the trust of seventeen closeted service members and flew over 30,000 miles back and forth across the country to photograph these individuals at either their homes or local hotel rooms near where they were stationed.

• 

  Everything Under

  Daisy Johnson

  The dictionary doesn’t contain every word. Gretel, a lexicographer by trade, knows this better than most. She grew up on a houseboat with her mother, wandering the canals of Oxford and speaking a private language of their own invention. Her mother disappeared when Gretel was a teen, abandoning her to foster care, and Gretel has tried to move on, spending her days updating dictionary entries. One phone call from her mother is all it takes for the past to come rushing back. To find her, Gretel will have to recover buried memories of her final, fateful winter on the canals. A runaway boy had found community and shelter with them, and all three were haunted by their past and stalked by an ominous creature lurking in the canal: the bonak. Everything and nothing at once, the bonak was Gretel’s name for the thing she feared most. And now that she’s searching for her mother, she’ll have to face it.

• 

  Families of Value: Gay and Lesbian Parents and Their Children Speak Out

  Jane Drucker

  Drawing upon stories by and about nearly two dozen families in which gay fathers and lesbian mothers are raising children in a wide variety of settings and styles, the author defines the meaning of family and discusses concerns such as interpersonal relationships, sexual and psychological development, coming out, facing prejudice, and finding a spiritual foundation, the lesson being that children thrive in an environment of love regardless of the number, gender, or sexual orientation of the adults who provide it.

• 

  Families of Value: Personal Profiles of Pioneering Lesbian and Gay Parents

  Robert Bernstein

  Families of Value offers a poignant defense of families with same-sex parents. Former attorney and award-winning author Robert Bernstein tells powerful stories of families with gay and lesbian parents who are at the forefront of social change in America. By turns hard-hitting and affecting, these stories portray the resistance these brave parents have faced, their views of the current cultural climate, and, most importantly, the intense passion and dedication that they have demonstrated in the course of raising sound, healthy, and well-adjusted children.

• 

  Far From the Tree

  Virginia Deberry and Donna Grant

  Two African-American sisters, Celeste, a doctor's wife trying to maintain a facade of normalcy, and Ronnie, a struggling actress, inherit a North Carolina house at the death of their father and face a painful encounter with long- suppressed family secrets.

• 

  Hello, Sailor!: The Hidden History of Gay Life at Sea

  Paul Baker and Jo Stanley

  Explores the meaning of gay life for sea-faring men. This book presents a strand of British history, and tells stories of lives lived against the odds.

• 

  Ilario: The Lion's Eye

  Mary Gentle

  Abandoned and alone, the fosterling Ilario grows up as the King's Freak, surrounded by all the pomp, intrigue, and danger of the Iberian court. Fleeing a failed treacherous attack, Ilario crosses the sea to Carthage, where the mysterious Penitence shrouds the sky in darkness. There, a strange and awful destiny awaits the would-be painter, one that spans continents and kingdoms.

• 

  Intersex

  Catherine Harper

  Intersex is the condition whereby an individual is born with biological features that are simultaneously perceived as male and female. This book draws on the personal testimony of intersexed individuals, their loved ones and medical carers. It deepens our understanding of a condition that has itself only been medically understood.

• 

  Intersex

  Thea Hillman

  Intersex (For Lack of a Better Word) chronicles one person’s search for self in a world obsessed with normal. What is “intersex”? According to the Intersex Society of North America, the word describes someone born with sex chromosomes, genitalia, or an internal reproductive system that are neither clearly male nor clearly female. In first-person prose as intimate as a diary, Thea Hillman redefines memoir in a series of compelling stories that take a no-holds-barred look at sex, gender, family, and community. Whether she’s pondering quirky family tendencies (“Drag”), reflecting on “queerness” (“Another”), or recounting scintillating adventures in San Francisco’s sex clubs, Hillman’s brave and fierce vision for cultural and societal change shines through.

• 

  In the Country We Love: My Family Divided

  Diane Guerrero

  The star of Orange is the New Black and Jane the Virgin presents her personal story of the real plight of undocumented immigrants in this country.

• 

  Kicked Out

  Sassafras Lowrey

  This volume is collection of essays written by young people who were kicked out of their homes as minors for identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT), as well as a few policy essays from service providers. Diverse contributors ranging in age, experience, and current living situation share stories of perseverance and abuse with poignant accounts of survival. The editors point out that very few urban areas have recognized the need to serve dispossessed LGBT youth by establishing shelters or safe houses; money is tight and public support is often hard to muster. They feel that homelessness of these kids is but a symptom of a larger and more pervasive cultural problem: we are a society that does not value all people, and somehow there seems to be a tacit belief that parents of LGBT youth are entitled to abdicate their responsibility to love and protect the children they have created. They feel that such a mindset is due to a homophobic and transphobic culture. This anthology intends to present the points-of-view of the voiceless and also to challenge the stereotypical face of homelessness.

• 

  Lucky Girl: A Memoir

  Mei-Ling Hopgood

  In a true story of family ties, journalist Hopgood, one of the first wave of Asian adoptees to arrive in America, comes face to face with her past when her Chinese birth family suddenly requests a reunion after more than two decades.

• 

  Making Toast: A Family Story

  Roger Rosenblatt

  When his daughter, Amy, collapses and dies from an asymptomatic heart condition, Rosenblatt and his wife leave their home on Long Island to move in with their son-in-law and their three young grandchildren. He peels back the layers on this most personal of losses to create a testament to familial love.

• 

  Map of Ireland

  Stephanie Grant

  In 1974, when Ann Ahern begins her junior year of high school, South Boston is in crisis -- Catholic mothers are blockading buses to keep Black children from the public schools, and teenagers are raising havoc in the streets. Ann, an outsider in her own Irish-American community, is infatuated with her beautiful French teacher, Mademoiselle Eugénie, who hails from Paris but is of African descent. Spurred by her adoration for Eugénie, Ann embarks on a journey that leads her beyond South Boston, through the fringes of the Black Power movement, toward love, and ultimately to the truth about herself.

• 

  Mixed Heritage: Your Source for Books for Children and Teens About Persons and Families of Mixed Racial, Ethnic, and/or Religious Heritage

  Catherine Blakemore

  Presents annotated lists of juvenile books on individuals and families with mixed ethnic, religious, and racial identities.

• 

  My New Gender Workbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving World Peace Through Gender Anarchy and Sex Positivity

  Kate Bornstein

  In My Gender Workbook, transgender activist Kate Bornstein brings theory down to Earth and provides a practical approach to living with or without a gender. Bornstein starts from the premise that there are not just two genders performed in today's world, but countless genders lumped under the two-gender framework. Using a unique, deceptively simple and always entertaining workbook format, complete with quizzes, exercises, and puzzles, Bornstein gently but firmly guides readers toward discovering their own unique gender identity. Since its first publication in 1997, My Gender Workbook has been challenging, encouraging, questionning, and handholding those trying to figure out how to become a "real man," a "real woman," or "something else entirely." In this updated edition of her classic text, Bornstein re-examines gender in light of issues like race and class. With new quizzes, new puzzles, new exercises, and plenty of Kate's over-the-top style, My Gender Workbook, 2e promises to help a new generation create their own unique place on the gender spectrum.

• 

  Oddly Normal: One Family's Struggle to Help Their Teenage Son Come to Terms with His Sexuality

  John Schwartz

  A heartfelt memoir by the father of a gay teen, and an eye-opening guide for families who hope to bring up well-adjusted gay adults. Three years ago, John Schwartz, a national correspondent at The New York Times, got the call that every parent hopes never to receive: his thirteen-year-old son, Joe, was in the hospital following a suicide attempt. Mustering the courage to come out to his classmates, Joe's disclosure--delivered in a tirade about homophobic attitudes--was greeted with unease and confusion by his fellow students. Hours later, he took an overdose of pills. In the aftermath, John and his wife, Jeanne, determined to help Joe feel more comfortable in his own skin, launched a search for services and groups that could help Joe understand that he wasn't alone. This book is Schwartz's very personal attempt to address his family's struggles within a culture that is changing fast, but not fast enough to help gay kids like Joe.

• 

  Our Son, a Stranger: Adoption Breakdown and its Effects on Parents

  Marie Adams

  In 1973 Marie and Rod Adams, brimming with idealism and keenly aware of the plight of disadvantaged aboriginal children, adopted Tim, a young Cree boy, two and one-half years old. Tim began displaying severe behavioural problems almost immediately, problems that, despite their efforts to find help, only became worse over the years. He left home at the age of twelve and died on the streets when he was twenty-one.