Lesbisch

Failure to Appear: Resistance, Identity and Loss is a memoir about a gay woman of conscience who became a fugitive, on the run for over nineteen years using several fake names. This book is a gripping story about finding your real self and your sexual truth. It delves into family rejection for being a lesbian, the price of ideals, lost love, the agony of an underground existence, and personal renewal. The final, suspenseful chapters describe the author's voluntary surrender and re-sentencing. It takes place in the turbulent late sixties through the late eighties, against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, the Nixon and Reagan years, the women's and gay liberation movements, and the AIDS crisis. This story is very relevant to our time, as injustice and bigotry remain fundamental societal ills. As one reader described it, "I couldn't put it down. It has it all: coming of age, coming out, sex scenes, close calls, and gripping life choices. I sunk deeper under my comforter and deeper into an amazing true story."

Honorable Mention, Isis Duarte Book Prize (Latin American Studies Association¿)<BR><BR>Streetwalking: LGBTQ Lives and Protest in the Dominican Republic is an exploration of the ways that lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer persons exercise power in a Catholic Hispanic heteropatriarchal nation-state, namely the Dominican Republic. Lara presents the specific strategies employed by LGBTQ community leaders in the Dominican Republic in their struggle for subjectivity, recognition, and rights. Drawing on ethnographic encounters, film and video, and interviews, LGBTQ community leaders teach readers about streetwalking, confrontaciÓn, flipping the script, cuentos, and the use of strategic universalisms in the exercise of power and agency. Rooted in Maria Lugones's theorization of streetwalker strategies and Audre Lorde's theorization of silence and action, this text re-imagines the exercise and locus of power in examples provided by the living, thriving LGBTQ community of the Dominican Republic.

A joyful celebration of the LGBTQ+ community’s development, history, and culture, packed with facts, trivia, timelines, and charts, and featuring 100 full-color illustrations.Compiled and designed by queer power couple and illustrators extraordinaire, Ashley Molesso and Chess Needham, founders of the popular stationery company Ash + Chess, The Gay Agenda is an inviting and entertaining guide that pays tribute to the LGBTQ+ community. Filled with engaging descriptions, interesting facts, helpful features—such as historical queer icons and events and LGBTQ+ acronym definitions—this fabulous compendium illuminates the transformation of the community, highlighting its struggles, achievements, landmarks, and contributions. It also salutes iconic members of the LGBTQ+ community—the celebrities, politicians, entrepreneurs and ordinary citizens who have made a notable impact on gay life and society itself.The Gay Agenda is a nostalgic look back for older generations, an archive for younger people, and a helpful introduction for those interested in learning more about the community and its contributions. From James Baldwin and Emma Goldman to Marsha P. Johnson and Jodie Foster; the Pink Triangle and the Rainbow Flag to Stonewall and the AIDS crisis; Matthew Shepard and Pulse Nightclub to Sodomy Laws and Obergefell; Drag and Transitioning to The L Word and The Kinsey Scale, Freddie Mercury and Ellen Degeneres to Laverne Cox and David Bowie, this magnificent digest is a keepsake honoring all LGBTQ+, and the ongoing fight to gain—and maintain—equality for all.

Living Behind the Façade is a revealing and captivating story about and by a gay man – George E. Somers – whose rich and talented life as an artist spanned most of the 20th Century. Born in the Philippines following the Spanish-American War to an American G.I. from Kansas and a beautiful Spanish girl living in Manila’s Spanish military garrison, George realized early in life that he was "different" from other boys his age – and that being "gay" was never "a choice" but an orientation he inherited from birth. Long before the term "Gay Rights" was coined and minted in the American vernacular, and before the Gay Liberation Movement brought millions of gays and lesbians out of the closet into a still homophobic society, George’s life mirrored a shadowy era in which virtually all homosexuals were coerced into lives "behind the façade" – an ersatz heterosexual identity. Yet, in the shadows of the façade, George was part of the first gay rights organization in the United States — Society for Individual Rights. George’s frank narrative describes the gay world and culture he has always lived in, from its obscure closeted beginnings to its more liberated present, providing gay and straight readers alike with an important and transparent portrayal of life behind, and from without, the gay façade of American society. Living Behind the Façade is more than a myth breaker, it is a significant contribution to the diverse ethnography of American Culture and Humanities. George passed away at 101 in the San Francisco Bay Area. His book was edited and published posthumously by his nephew, Jaime Jackson .

It's Not Love, Unfortunately is a volume of poetry that explores experiences with relationships over a span of a lifetime; from finding out early on that moms and dads are not all like Ward and June Cleaver, to learning that boys are after more than friendship in junior high, to marrying at eighteen and learning what an abusive relationship is all about, to finding the survivor within, divorcing, and after years of searching for love...finally coming out around forty years old, the poet finds that relationships with women can be just as frustrating and abusive as those with men...and that no matter what station you are in life, and no matter what side of the fence you sit on...love never comes easy and is even harder to find. Nevertheless, this volume of poems will leave you with a few tears and a few smiles, but will never leave you feeling alone. No matter who you are, if you've ever loved or searched for love you will recognize yourself in these poems. If you're a Baby Boomer, you will find that the poet incorporates a lot of pop culture from the 1960s and 1970s that will bring memories rushing back, if you're a GenXer or a Millennial, you will find there's some familiar territory here for you too, but all readers will find the clear connection is relationships, for better or worse, make us into who we are. If we're lucky, we will have interesting stories (poems) to tell, even if "it's not love, unfortunately."

A rural expatriate’s struggle to reconcile family, home, love, and faith with the silence of the prairie land and its people<BR> <BR>Melanie Hoffert longs for her North Dakota childhood home, with its grain trucks and empty main streets. A land where she imagines standing at the bottom of the ancient lake that preceded the prairie: crop rows become the patterned sand ripples of the lake floor; trees are the large alien plants reaching for the light; and the sky is the water’s vast surface, reflecting the sun. Like most rural kids, she followed the out-migration pattern to a better life. The prairie is a hard place to stay—particularly if you are gay, and your home state is the last to know.<BR> <BR>For Hoffert, returning home has not been easy. When the farmers ask if she’s found a “fella,” rather than explain that—actually—she dates women, she stops breathing and changes the subject. Meanwhile, as time passes, her hometown continues to lose more buildings to decay, growing to resemble the mouth of an old woman missing teeth. This loss prompts Hoffert to take a break from the city and spend a harvest season at her family’s farm. While home, working alongside her dad in the shop and listening to her mom warn, “Honey, you do not want to be a farmer,” Hoffert meets the people of the prairie. Her stories about returning home and exploring abandoned towns are woven into a coming-of-age tale about falling in love, making peace with faith, and belonging to a place where neighbors are as close as blood but are often unable to share their deepest truths. <BR> <BR>In this evocative memoir, Hoffert offers a deeply personal and poignant meditation on land and community, taking readers on a journey of self-acceptance and reconciliation.