Here are 100 books that Queer Ducks (and Other Animals) fans have personally recommended if you like
Queer Ducks (and Other Animals).
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In post-Roe America, gay people face the very real possibility of our rights being stripped from us, underscoring the importance of this adage: “Those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it.” That's why years ago, when I realize that many gay men were ignorant about gay history before Stonewall, I began editing anthologies of gay writings from the past. That led me to writing biographies and histories in which I explore gay men’s experiences, hoping my work shines a light on our forgotten past.
Gay American History was an epiphany for me and thousands of other gay men and women who were eager to learn about our history because books about it were few. I can’t describe the wonder I felt as I opened the book to thousands of rare documents (letters, diary entries, newspaper articles, book excerpts, medical and legal reports, etc.) that connected me to LGBT individuals who lived centuries earlier. Puritans, indigenous people, cross-dressing (“passing”) women, military personnel, artists of every ilk, government officials—their struggles, their defeats, and their victories, I learned, were no different in essence from those of the LGBT individual of the 21st Century. Gay American History is, in short, a treasure trove of information.
A collection of documents provides a continuous chronicle of homosexuality in America, from colonial times to the present, and of the persecution of gay males and lesbians throughout American history
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…
My first true religion was being a boy alone in the woods and feeling a deep connection to nature in all its aspects. I felt a connection with all life and knew myself to be an animal—and gloried in it. Since then, I've learned how vigorously humans fight our animal nature, estranging us from ourselves and the planet. Each of these books invites us to get over ourselves and connect with all life on Earth.
I loved the setting of a remote near-future research facility where the fascinating personalities of our primate brethren are being explored.
The focus is on lusty bonobos and their mating choices, but when there's an abrupt societal collapse and human researchers, and simian subjects are cut off from the world, it becomes a dystopian survival story like no other. I was deeply moved and left feeling oddly hopeful about the human ape.
The Philip K. Dick Award–winning sci-fi novel: “A riveting page-turner” about the behavior of primates―human and otherwise―“in a very near and dire future” (The Washington Post).
Winner of the 2019 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award for Speculative Fiction
One of The Washington Post’s 50 Notable Works of fiction in 2018
In a world where coastal cities flood, dust storms plague the Midwest, and implants connect humans directly to the Web, Dr. Francine Burk has broken new ground in the study of primate sexuality. While in recovery from a long-needed surgery―paid for with a portion of her McArthur “genius” award money―Frankie…
I'm an immigrant child-survivor of the Holocaust, came to America after living in a DP camp in Linz, Austria in 1947 with my wonderful parents. We lost 25 members of our family to the Nazis so I “know evil”. I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, went to Washington High School, University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, and Northwestern University where I received a Ph.D. in sociology and studied with one of the best sociologists of deviance (Howie Becker). I combined sociology with deviance, evil, the Holocaust, and genocide, but as a progressive Zionist, I added socialist and kibbutz-life. All these things make up my memoir If Only You Could Bottle It: Memoirs of a Radical Son.
Here again I mean not only the sexuality of deviance or the deviance of sexuality such as crossdressers, transvestites, homosexuals, and lesbians but also historical phenomena such as the gay rights movement or the suppression of gays in Nazi Germany.
The book that most influenced me in the 1970s was Laud Humphrey’s “Tea-Room Trade”. His book was so radical, so astounding in its utter chutzpah that it could never be replicated today at research universities. It was a time when gay consciousness was erupting. The problem was that those gay activists were out in the open, but what about the closeted man? (His study dealt only with men.)
These men may not even label themselves as homosexual or bisexual or Trans. I am speaking of men who go to “hidden” bathrooms in parks or buildings and wait for anonymous sex; then go home to their wives and children and live…
From the time of its first publication, 'Tearoom Trade' engendered controversy. It was also accorded an unusual amount of praise for a first book on a marginal, intentionally self-effacing population by a previously unknown sociologist. The book was quickly recognized as an important, imaginative, and useful contribution to our understanding of "deviant" sexual activity. Describing impersonal, anonymous sexual encounters in public restrooms-"tearooms" in the argot-the book explored the behavior of men whose closet homosexuality was kept from their families and neighbors. By posing as an initiate, the author was able to engage in systematic observation of homosexual acts in public…
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
I am an evolutionary ecologist with a lifelong fascination with mating behavior in animals, particularly fishes. The core of my doctoral thesis was trying to understand why some males mate with females of a different species, a behavior that I thought could not be adaptive. This was the starting point of my work on male mate choice, but also mate choice more generally. Originally from Germany, I have lived and worked in the US for a long time. Most of my work is on neotropical fishes so moving to America made sense.
Written by one of the great experts in the field this wonderful book takes a look at animal sexual behavior broadly. It introduces the amazing complexity of adaptations to sex and how they evolved. What is plain fascinating to the biologist may be a little odd to humans from time to time, but we have to learn not to view everything from a human perspective. This book is written for a broad audience and is very easy to read.
Scientific discoveries about the animal kingdom fuel ideological battles on many fronts, especially battles about sex and gender. We now know that male marmosets help take care of their offspring. Is this heartening news for today's stay-at-home dads? Recent studies show that many female birds once thought to be monogamous actually have chicks that are fathered outside the primary breeding pair. Does this information spell doom for traditional marriages? And bonobo apes take part in female-female sexual encounters. Does this mean that human homosexuality is natural? This highly provocative book clearly shows that these are the wrong kinds of questions…
My memoir Performance Anxiety, about my adolescence, is a true story. But I realize that writing it, I created a character. He has my name and attributes, but is at least partly invented. That's inevitable because the source material, memory, is fluid. And he is nuanced by what I chose to emphasize about my past and those times.
These five memoirs depict—and, at least partly, invent—boyhoods wildly different from mine. I've never met the writers, but I know these guys. Our challenges and fears, and hopefully triumphs, are common to queer kids. Are they shared by all kids, regardless of orientation? I'll keep reading memoirs to find out.
Sexual desire, acted on or repressed, is either the text or subtext of every gay man's life.
Edmund White treats sex explicitly and with bracing honesty. His frankness—for example, in describing his fumbling, agonized, danger-courting attempts as a kid to find love—recalled my own youthful risks and failures, but freed those memories of shame.
I've read few of White's many books. (Guess I was jealous of his output and acclaim; better I should have emulated his driving curiosity and intelligence.) His recent death, at 85, prompted me to read this narrative of his long, unruly, ceaselessly questing life.
A sharp observer of trends and sub-cultures, White moved among the famous—writers, artists, intellectuals—and descriptions of and dish about them are an extra, but only slightly guilty, pleasure.
No one has been more frank, lucid, rueful and entertaining about growing up gay in Middle America than Edmund White. Best known for his autobiographical novels, starting with A Boy's Own Story, White here takes fiction out of his story and delivers the facts of his life in all their shocking and absorbing verity.
From an adolescence in the 1950s, an era that tried to "cure his homosexuality" but found him "unsalvageable," he emerged into a 1960s society that redesignated his orientation as "acceptable (nearly)." He describes a life touched by psychotherapy in every decade, starting with his flamboyant and…
Following mysterious trails and uncovering esoteric stories: it’s what I love to do, and it’s also what I love to read about. Before I released Extreme Music, I wrote extensively about unusual music subcultures and audiological anomalies, for example artists who put out hourlong blocks of unchanging white noise. I’ve learned that the most interesting ideas – and tales – exist in these outer fringes.
Tony Parker was a British writer dedicated to telling the stories of marginalized members of society. Many of his books took the form of transcripts of interviews with murders, career criminals, lighthouse keepers, and occupants of social housing. This book was his most controversial: interviews with institutionalized sex offenders, who tell their stories in their own words. Parker was skilled at getting people to broach shameful topics and talk candidly about their lives, and this book is no exception. His transcripts capture each speaker’s unique parlance, as well as the offenders’ varying levels of self-reflection. Published in 1969, there is even the sad story of a man who was imprisoned for homosexuality.
Few crimes provoke such outrage and upset as the sex offence, making the subject - including the problems it poses to our society and criminal justice system - a natural one for sociologist Tony Parker, whose work consistently shed light into dark corners of human behaviour.
The Twisting Lane, first published in 1969, presents the testimonies of eight men aged between 20 and 70 who had been convicted - most of them repeatedly - for eight different types of offence, from assault or rape of adults or minors, to indecent exposure and 'living on immoral earnings'. Each man offers, in…
A wind sorcerer. A dark spirit. An unsolved murder.
On the haunted Draakensky Windmill Estate, sketch artist Charlotte Knight arrives to live on the property, hired to illustrate the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke—a bright and lucrative opportunity to boost her struggling art career.
I am a writer who loves writing about women. All sorts of women. Strong, witty, complicated, unlikeable, and intelligent. It is important for me to understand the lived experience of women both inside and outside my own time and cultural context. So many women live with intersecting social characteristics, norms, expectations, nearly all of which hinder or harm. Yet so many women resist and rebel to change life for others. It is this sense of solidarity through history, one group of women paving the way for others, that I find especially fascinating and hopeful. And it is why rebellious women are so crucial. They cannot, and will not, be ignored.
This book about the ultimate rebel woman Patricia Highsmith explores in depth the many ways Highsmith rejected social expectations of her time in terms of her gender, sexuality, and writing material. The biography does not shy away from presenting Highsmith in all her glorious complexity – equal parts humorous, wry, loathsome, disturbing. This was one of the first biographies that I read where I realized the power of archives, what they can reveal, and how enlightening they can be when used so brilliantly, as Andrew Wilson does here.
Patricia Highsmith - author of STRANGERS ON A TRAIN and THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY - had more than her fair share of secrets. During her life, she felt uncomfortable about discussing the source of her fiction and refused to answer questions about her private life. Yet after her death in February 1995, Highsmith left behind a vast archive of personal documents - diaries, notebooks and letters - which detail the links between her life and her work. Drawing on these intimate papers, together with material gleaned from her closest friends and lovers, Andrew Wilson has written the first biography of…
As a gay father of two transracially adopted daughters, I am constantly searching for books that feature families like mine. It is important for children to see families that look like theirs represented in their storybooks. Unfortunately, there is a limited number of children’s books spotlighting adoption and even less featuring LGBTQ+ families. I am happy to share this list of some of my favorites that represent diverse/LGBTQ+ families.
This is the first book to feature gay grandfathers, an overlooked and under-represented population in the literature. It is based on the author’s actual family experience, which allows the reader to experience the real emotions experienced by the characters. The author carefully takes the reader on a journey that will be relatable to anyone with an LGBTQ+ family member. This is a story that needs to be told and Schanke and Schanke do it beautifully.
Katy's world is so much brighter because of her gay grampas! She is SO excited to bring them to school for Grandparent's Day. However, Katy discovers that she has to introduce them to the class. Katy has a lisp and is terrified everyone will make fun of her, usually choosing to remain silent. Discover how the help of her big sister and support of her grampas gives Katy the confidence to speak in front of the class and introduce the class to two of her favorite people.
Katy Has Two Grampas is based on a true story, featuring dynamic and…
I am an anthropologist who has written or edited more than a dozen books on topics that range from the lives of trans sex workers, to the anthropology of fat. I have conducted extensive fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, Brazil, and Scandinavia. I work at Uppsala University in Sweden, where I am a Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology, and where I direct a research program titled Engaging Vulnerability.
As befitting the cheeky title, this book – about what it means to be, and to become, a gay man – is incisive, erudite, and a lot of fun to read. A pioneer of queer theory (and with this intervention, I suspect, a renegade from it), David Halperin is an unapologetic camp. He challenges received wisdom about how gay sensibility supposedly is misogynist, passé, irrelevant or dead, and his reflections on everything from Joan Crawford’s pizazz,to the current state of gay marriage, vacillate between being capacious and withering. “Sometimes I think homosexuality is wasted on gay people” he sniffs at one point, dispensing a delightful, and typically barbed, aperçu.
No one raises an eyebrow if you suggest that a guy who arranges his furniture just so, rolls his eyes in exaggerated disbelief, likes techno music or show tunes, and knows all of Bette Davis's best lines by heart might, just possibly, be gay. But if you assert that male homosexuality is a cultural practice, expressive of a unique subjectivity and a distinctive relation to mainstream society, people will immediately protest. Such an idea, they will say, is just a stereotype-ridiculously simplistic, politically irresponsible, and morally suspect. The world acknowledges gay male culture as a fact but denies it as…
The epic saga continues. Jarnland is in a frenzy of excitement. After the eccentric demise of Old King Wyllard, his co-Majesty, young Queen Esmeralda, announces a Royal Tournament to celebrate the return of our heroes from their perilous quest. The Main Event will be a duel between the legendary warrior…
There are so many ways to make friends—and to be friends. As a painfully shy person for most of my life, I’ve learned that words aren’t always necessary, and that shared interests and non-verbal (or differently-verbal) communication can take you a long way. It’s probably why so many of my books focus on unconventional friendships, like that between a boy and a funny-talking fruit bat (in Megabat), a boy and his emotional support duck (in Quack), or even a bee and a flea (in Bee and Flea and the Compost Caper). Not surprisingly, I also love reading books that celebrate unlikely friends. These are just a few of my favorites.
I love bugs, and there just aren’t enough books out there about them. Harry the Poisonous Centipede is one my kids asked for over and over when they were little, and that I happily read them again and again.
When Harry and his best friend George go up the Up Pipe, they find themselves in the dangerous world of the hoo-mans. My kids loved seeing the world through a centipede’s eyes, not to mention their unique centipedish way of speaking, and the scrapes Harry and George get themselves into (and out of) are incredibly entertaining.
Winner of the Smarties Silver medal, and best-selling title, Harry the Poisonous Centipede is the delightfully squirmy story of a little centipede's adventures in the scary world of the dreaded Hoo-Mins!
"It's a Hoo-Min!" crackled George. "Walking on its hairy-biter feet!" But now it was Harry who felt brave. "Come on! Let's peep at it!" They crawled the rest of the way up the tunnel towards the light.
Harry is a poisonous centipede but he's not very brave. Still, he is the star of this seriously squirmy story. Harry likes to eat things that wriggle and crackle, and…
