Here are 100 books that Pregnant Butch fans have personally recommended if you like
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Allan D. Hunter came out as genderqueer in 1980, more than 20 years before “genderqueer” was trending. He decided that women's studies in academia was the proper place to discuss these ideas about gender, so he headed to New York to major in women's studies as one of the first male students to do so.
This book is a typical first-person account of a student in a program (medical, in this case) who encounters some discrepancies between the idealistically-drawn portrait of how a medical school is supposed to operate and the actual realities in which jealousies, territoriality, and the ongoing scramble to acquire and defend power within the institution play a major role. The main character is naïve to such considerations until they are made apparent to him.
This is a novel about doctors: what they do to each other and to their patients. And what their patients do to them. The heroes are young doctors, fresh out of medical school and taking the blame for disease and random disaster.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
Allan D. Hunter came out as genderqueer in 1980, more than 20 years before “genderqueer” was trending. He decided that women's studies in academia was the proper place to discuss these ideas about gender, so he headed to New York to major in women's studies as one of the first male students to do so.
This book is a feminist memoir about being in a groundbreaking organization that proclaimed to the world that lesbians exist, refusing to be erased.
They used street theatre to draw attention (the "fire eating" to which the book title refers). The participants faced a lot of litmus testing, such as being targeted as racially offensive for using the phrase "freedom ride" for non-race centric activity; and the author testifies to both misogyny and homophobia in the left in the US, Paris, and Cuba.
When Kelly Cogswell plunged into New York's East Village in 1992, she had just come out. An ex-Southern Baptist born in Kentucky, she was camping in an Avenue B loft, scribbling poems, and playing in an underground band, trying to figure out her next move. A couple of months later she was consumed by the Lesbian Avengers, instigating direct action campaigns, battling cops on Fifth Avenue, mobilizing 20,000 dykes for a march on Washington, D.C., and eating fire-literally-in front of the White House.
At once streetwise and wistful, Eating Fire is a witty and urgent coming-of-age memoir spanning two decades,…
Allan D. Hunter came out as genderqueer in 1980, more than 20 years before “genderqueer” was trending. He decided that women's studies in academia was the proper place to discuss these ideas about gender, so he headed to New York to major in women's studies as one of the first male students to do so.
This book is a feminist memoir that focuses on the passionate experience of being politically connected with others, and juxtaposes that with the divisiveness and the unfortunate polarization of identity politics.
She also makes a strong case for a nuanced reading of political situations, showing how simplistic knee-jerk litmus testing becomes toxic within any movement, no matter how righteous the cause.
When Lise Weil came out in 1976, she came out into a land that was all on fire. Lesbian desire was the pulsing center of an entire way of life, a culture, a movement. The air throbbed with possibility. At the center of In Search of Pure Lust is Weil’s immersion in this culture, this movement: the grand experiment of lesbian feminism of the ’70s and ’80s. She and the women around her lived in a state of heightened erotic intensity that was, she believed, the source of their most vital knowledge. Desire was their guiding light. But after fifteen…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
Allan D. Hunter came out as genderqueer in 1980, more than 20 years before “genderqueer” was trending. He decided that women's studies in academia was the proper place to discuss these ideas about gender, so he headed to New York to major in women's studies as one of the first male students to do so.
This tale is the autobiographical account of a married man who, when his wife gets an especially nice promotion opportunity, agrees with her that it makes more sense for him to stay at home with their young girl child.
He takes his role and its responsibilities seriously. His story is mostly the story of what is involved being the domestic partner on a day-to-day basis, but braided into that is the specifically gendered experience of doing all that as a male person in this society.
Lincoln Menner is finding out just how hard it is to be a woman. When his wife Jo was offered her dream job, Linc supported her wholeheartedly, leaving his thriving landscape business in Los Angeles and moving to Rochester, New York. This was a chance to escape the cloying needs and atrocious tastes of his celebrity clientele, start over in fresh surroundings, and spend a little quality time with their three-year-old daughter, Violet.
But Linc had no idea what it really meant to be a househusband: To stay home every day, folding laundry, cleaning soap scum, and teaching his little…
I am a Cambodian American/Asian American writer who is always concerned/interested/curious by the landscape of our diasporic stories. There is incredible diversity here… in the ways Asian Americanness can look, sound, and feel like a myriad of things. These books aren’t instructed or tethered by gaze but rather born and smartly crafted by unique souls that run deep. These authors and their stories are my heroes. I hope you enjoy these picks as much as I do!
This book sits at the center of my heart. It is personal, vulnerable, and incredibly moving.
It follows Pustata’s relationship with her mother who struggles to acknowledge her daughter’s queer identity. As children of survivors, it’s about the boundaries we must articulate to survive ourselves and the hope we must keep in the secret parts to leave space for transformation.
Her sensitivity and strength are always in conversation with each other and always equally felt.
When Putsata Reang was eleven months old, her family fled war-torn Cambodia, spending twenty-three days on an overcrowded navy vessel before finding sanctuary at an American naval base in the Philippines. Holding what appeared to be a lifeless baby in her arms, Ma resisted the captain's orders to throw her bundle overboard. Instead, on landing, Ma rushed her baby into the arms of American military nurses and doctors, who saved the child's life. "I had hope, just a little, you were still alive," Ma would tell Put in an oft-repeated story that became family legend.
I’ve been studying language and gender since I started graduate school in 1990. I’m an odd gender scholar in some ways in that I am a white cisgendered heterosexual masculine person. I think I’m interested in the topic because conversation and ‘being a man’ has always seemed hard and like a lot of work to me. So, I started studying these things in the 1990s with a project on language use in a college fraternity in the US. Since then I've published many articles on language and masculinities, including a 2004 article on the word dude, which is still popular in introductory linguistics courses today.
When talking about how gender can be disconnected from bodies, I like to tell the story of when my very young son called a Hummer truck ‘masculine’ and then wondered aloud how a car can be masculine. In that vein, this book shows how the idea of masculinity is something much wider and more complicated than a ‘trait of men’ connected to the bodies of men.
With grounded and deeply researched examples, Halberstam shows how these masculine traits not only can be ‘de-linked’ from the ‘male body,’ but how they have been so throughout history. He also shows how female masculinity has often been hidden or forgotten. This book is a classic in gender studies, and once you have read it, it’s impossible to think of gender in the same way as before.
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 nineteenth-century pre-lesbian practices to contemporary drag king performances.
Through detailed textual readings as well as empirical research, Halberstam uncovers a hidden history of female masculinities while arguing for a more nuanced understanding…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I’m passionate about young adult sapphic romance books because this is something I wished I would have read in high school. If I had novels similar to these when I was growing up I might have realized that I identify as queer sooner and it could have helped me understand more about myself. Because of this, I’ve been an avid reader, and writer, of sapphic young adult romances. If it’s sapphic, send it my way. I hope you enjoy these sapphic novels as much as I have!
You Should See Me in a Crown is such a cute sapphic romance story, set around the fact that both the main character, Liz, and her love interest/new girl, Mack, are both running for homecoming queen to win a scholarship.
This book was a breath of fresh air because there were also real problems and insecurities brought up that sometimes are overlooked, making it the characters seem so real.
Liz Lighty has always believed she's too black, too poor, too awkward to shine in her small, rich, prom-obsessed mid-western town. But it's okay-Liz has a plan that will get her out of Campbell, Indiana, forever: attend the uber-elite Pennington College, play in their world-famous orchestra, and become a doctor.But when the financial aid she was counting on unexpectedly falls through, Liz's plans come crashing down... until she's reminded of her school's scholarship for prom King and Queen. There's nothing Liz wants to do less than endure a gauntlet of social media trolls, catty competitors, and humiliating public events, but…
Thirteen years ago, when my partner and I started our family, we didn’t know any other LGBTQ+ parents. We decided to learn all we could about the experiences of LGBTQ+ families. Our interviews with more than 70 families grew into an LGBTQ+ parenting guide called Pride and Joy. These real-life stories blew us away with their diversity; made us laugh, cry and gasp as we saw how families thrived, often against the odds. Yet we rarely saw families like these in the books our children read, so I started writing stories of my own. Thankfully, there are now many more - you’ll find some of my favourites on this list.
I wasn’t sure whether to include this book at first. It’s over twenty years old now - probably one of the first middle-grade titles where a character has same-sex parents. But while some attitudes feel dated, the story is still gripping and relevant. There are still many kids, like Holly, who love their families but feel like they have to keep them hidden to fit in with their friends. Holly learns that keeping secrets leads to bigger problems than the ones she was trying to avoid. Nancy Garden is a pioneer in writing for young adults about LGBTQ+ themes. She is one of my inspirations in becoming a writer. I hope each generation will continue to discover and be inspired by her work, just like I was.
A new town and new classmates, but the same family -- with two moms
Dear Diary, ...Until today I was Holly Lawrence-Jones. But starting tomorrow I'm going to be Yvette Lawrence-Jones. My family doesn't know that yet, but I'll tell them tomorrow, and that's the name I'll tell the people at school, too. Yvette's going to be sophisticated and grownup-feminine enough to have white ruffled curtains, and maybe even a boyfriend. She's also going to have a NORMAL family. Kids are not going to make jokes about her and say mean things, because there won't be any reason for them…
When I was a young child, I lived in stories. However, as I got older, I lost my connection to writing and imagining. It was through a late-identified diagnosis of autism that I was able to reconnect with my creativity. Now, through my work as a children’s publishing specialist and volunteer at children’s book festivals, I am a champion of kids being able to see themselves in the stories that are published and promoted. I believe that young readers can develop a love of reading and a kindness for others through books that show the diversity of humanity.
I feel like I am being hugged by a friend when I read Ronnie Riley’s work. The world within this book is so full of friendship and support, so focused on affirming language around both identity and neurodiversity, that I was grateful to have it in my hands.
Jude’s ADHD is written in a way that makes it easy for those without ADHD to understand and affirming for those who are living with it.
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
As a rebellious woman who is passionate about words and the revolutionary force of books, I know the power of stories. Stories are the seeds that give life to your purpose. Stories give you a reason to fight the good fight, care about something bigger than yourself, and want to be a part of social justice and positive change. The daily grind can kick you down, but a good story can remind you that there's still time to rise up, speak truth to power, help others less fortunate, and commit to what you value most. The books that I’m recommending are meant to be your personal guide to what really matters most in life to you.
Growing up as a hardcore tomboy, the gender binary issue has always been a challenge for me. Why do I have to choose between male or female? I resent being given only one gender with no option to explore a spectrum of gender possibilities. The gender battle is raging at the forefront of American politics. If you don’t understand the debate, this is a great book to start with to learn more about gender and identity. The writing is bold, courageous, and hilarious, and does a great job of smashing gender conformity.
Gender Outlaw is the work of a woman who has been through some changes--a former heterosexual male, a one-time Scientologist and IBM salesperson, now a lesbian woman writer and actress who makes regular rounds on the TV (so to speak) talk shows. In her book, Bornstein covers the "mechanics" of her surgery, everything you've always wanted to know about gender (but were too confused to ask) addresses the place and politics of the transgendered and intterogates the questions of those who give the subject little thought, creating questions of her own.
