Showing results for "Brilliance" in Biographies & Memoirs

Michelle, a queer, wannabe writer exasperated by student loans, bad teeth, and the poor decisions of her loveable sitcom-worthy family, believes a sugar daddy is written in her destiny as firmly as she believes her idol, Alanis Morissette, holds the musical blueprint to the life she desires most. With a salt-of-the-earth Chicano father who's convinced aliens will eventually rule the world, a white mother who maxes out her credit cards on fast food, and a sugar-hyped 7-year-old nephew, Michelle diagnoses herself as self-parentified with a core mistrust in the world’s unreliability.

Brian Belovitch has the rare distinction of coming out three times: first as a queer teenager; second as a glamorous transgender woman named Tish, and later, Natalia Gervais; and finally as an HIV-positive gay man surviving the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. From growing up in a barely-working-class first-generation immigrant family in Fall River, Massachusetts, to spinning across the disco dance floor of Studio 54 in New York City, Brian escaped many near-death experiences. Trans Figured chronicles a life lived on the edge with an unforgettable cast of characters.

Do you know me?, the email began, sparking tremors of fear that turned into a full quake of panic when William Dameron discovered that his selfie had been stolen by strangers. On social networks and dating sites, his image and identity - a forty-year-old straight white male - had been used to hook countless women into believing in lies of love and romance.

What’s a sweets-loving young boy growing up gay in North Carolina in the '80s supposed to think when he’s diagnosed with type-1 diabetes? That God is punishing him, naturally. This was, after all, when gay-hating Jesse Helms was his senator, AIDS was still the boogeyman, and no one was saying, "It gets better." And if stealing a copy of a gay porno magazine from the newsagent was a sin, then surely what the men inside were doing to one another was much worse. Sweet Tooth is Tim Anderson’s uproarious memoir of life after his hormones and blood sugar both went berserk.

Paul Burston wasn’t always the iconic voice of LGBTQ+ London that he is today. Paul came out in the mid-1980s, when ‘gay’ still felt like a dirty word, especially in the small Welsh town where he grew up. He moved to London hoping for a happier life, only to watch in horror as his new-found community was decimated by AIDS. But even in the depths of his grief, Paul vowed never to stop fighting back on behalf of his young friends whose lives were cut tragically short.

Born in New York City’s Black ghetto Harlem at the start of World War II, Samuel R. Delany married White poet Marilyn Hacker right out of high school. The interracial couple moved into the city’s new bohemian quarter, the Lower East Side, in 1961. Through the decade’s opening years, new art, new sexual practices, new music, and new political awareness burgeoned. Beautifully, vividly, insightfully, Delany calls up this era of exploration and adventure as he details his development as a Black gay writer in an open marriage, with walk-ons by Bob Dylan, Stokely Carmichael, and more.

Dodging secret police on the daily, and haggling prices for dried fruit and vintage leathers in heroin-laced bazaars, My Kazakhy is filled with all the gems you wouldn't expect to find from a queer Latino boy serving in the Peace Corps in a third world, Muslim country.

Charles Finger’s book efficiently covers Oscar Wilde’s background, his early years and education, and his beginnings as an author, poet, and critic for several magazines. The author then turns to the activities of Wilde that drew the attention of others, culminating in the Marquess of Queensbury calling Wilde out as a homosexual. Wilde sued for slander, but the Marquess was acquitted and materials brought forth during the trial resulted in Wilde being arrested and tried for homosexuality. He was convicted and sentenced to two years of hard labor, from which he never really recovered.