Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

Mohsin grew up in a deprived pocket of East London; his family was close-knit but very religiously conservative. From a young age Mohsin felt different, but in a home where being gay was inconceivable, he also felt very alone. Outside of home Mohsin went to a failing inner city school where gang violence was a fact of life. As he grew up, life didn’t seem to offer teenage Mohsin any choices: he was disenfranchised as a poor brown boy, and he was isolated from his family as a closet gay Muslim.

Part memoir, part guide, Burning My Roti is essential listening for a new generation of South Asian women. With chapters covering sexual and cultural identity, body hair, colourism and mental health, and a particular focus on the suffocating beauty standards South Asian women are expected to...

In this poignant audio piece, Samantha Allen takes listeners along for the wild ride of her own transition: The good, the bad, but mostly, the funny. Because once she began this life-changing journey in earnest, Samantha realized that while the emotional trials of gender dysphoria and self-discovery could be harrowing, there were so many laugh-out-loud moments along this winding road.

Brought to you by Penguin. An inspiring and intimate self-portrait of the champion of equality that encompasses her brilliant tennis career, unwavering activism, and an ongoing commitment to fairness and social justice. In this spirited account, Billie Jean King details her life's journey to...

So often the stories shared by trans people about their transition center on gender dysphoria: a feeling of deep discomfort with their birth-assigned gender, and a powerful catalyst for coming out or transitioning. But for many non-cisgender people, it's gender euphoria that pushes forward their transition: the joy the first time a parent calls them by their new chosen name, the first time they have the confidence to cut their hair short, the first time they truly embrace themself.

From being misunderstood to making history: The incredible story of Aryan Pasha. On the day Aryan Pasha stepped onto the bodybuilding stage, he wasn't just competing-he was claiming his truth. Born a girl and raised in a body that never felt like his own, Aryan's journey from a suffocating...

In a heartbreaking yet hopeful collection of personal essays and prose poems, blending the confessional, political, and literary, Kai Cheng Thom dives deep into the questions that haunt social movements today. With the author's characteristic eloquence and honesty, I Hope We Choose Love proposes heartfelt solutions on the topics of violence, complicity, family, vengeance, and forgiveness.

Four-time Emmy-nominated actress Laverne Cox shares her journey as a transgender woman in Hollywood, confronting childhood trauma, shame, gender identity, her transition, body image issues, her search for romantic love, deep-seated feelings of unworthiness, and ultimately, healing. Laverne Cox...

In a hugely ambitious study that crosses continents, languages, and almost a century, Gregory Woods identifies the ways in which homosexuality has helped shape Western culture. Extending from the trials of Oscar Wilde to the gay liberation era, this book examines a period in which increased visibility made acceptance of homosexuality one of the measures of modernity.

Ein Satz, der wie eine Selbstverständlichkeit klingt - "Ich bin Linus" -, doch er teilt sein Leben in ein Davor und Danach. Auf beeindruckende Weise erzählt Linus Giese, warum er einunddreißig Jahre alt werden musste, um laut auszusprechen, dass er ein Mann und trans ist und warum sein Leben heute vielleicht nicht einfacher, aber sehr viel glücklicher ist. Eigentlich ahnt er es seit seinem sechsten Lebensjahr. Doch aus Sorge darüber, wie sein Umfeld reagieren könnte und weil ihm Begriffe wie trans, queer, nicht-binär fehlen, verschweigt Linus lange, wer er wirklich ist.

Today, Gigi Gorgeous is beloved for her critically-acclaimed documentary, her outrageous sense of humor, her no-holds-barred honesty, and her glam Hollywood lifestyle. Ten years ago, she was a gawky Canadian teen named Gregory. In He Said, She Said, Gigi brings us on her personal journey from...

Jenn Berney was one of those people who knew she was destined for motherhood - it wasn't a question of if, but when. So when she and her wife, Kelly, decided to start building their family, they took the next logical step: They went to a fertility clinic. But they soon found themselves entrenched in a medical establishment that didn't know what to do with people like them. With no man factoring into their relationship, doctors were at best embarrassed and at worst disparaging of the couple. Soon Jenn found herself stepping outside of the system determined to disregard her. 

Emerson Whitney writes, "Really, I can't explain myself without making a mess." What follows is that mess—electrifying, gorgeous, defiant. At Heaven's center, Whitney seeks to understand their relationship to their mother and grandmother, those first windows into womanhood and all its consequences. Whitney retraces a roving youth in deeply observant, psychedelic prose—all the while folding in the work of thinkers like Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, and C. Riley Snorton—to engage transness and the breathing, morphing nature of selfhood.

'Brave, beautifully written and shrewdly researched . . . this is a riveting read by a writer at the top of her game.' The Times 'Seldom have I read such an enthralling biography.' Literary Review 'An exemplary Life, about a strange English writer of rare gifts and peculiar greatness.'...

Throughout LGBTQ+ history, suburbia has been seen as somewhere to escape from: a place where heterosexuality rules; where difference will not be tolerated; where you'll never find a soulmate. But for many, those streets of twitching curtains and pebble-dashed semis were - or still are - a place to call home. From Addlestone to Wilmslow, Tales of the Suburbs explores the relatively untold twentieth century tale of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer people in suburbia.

'To outsiders, my mom and I should have been enemies. Our house should have been divided -- North vs South, red vs blue, conservative vs progressive, or however you want to put it. Instead, my mom and I fuelled each other. Her oil lit my lamp, and eventually mine lit hers. The tools I'd learned...

The definitive portrait of one of the American Century’s most towering intellectuals: her writing and her radical thought, her public activism and her hidden private face. No writer is as emblematic of the American twentieth century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and...

Fiona Goodwin first kissed a girl at the age of eighteen in 1970. She was as shocked as anyone, and her confession to the pastor led to a failed Linda Blair-style exorcism. The odyssey that followed included training as a nun in Italy, a starring role as Satan with a wandering troupe of missionaries in Honduras, film sets in Hollywood, The Comedy Store in LA, a five-star review at the Edinburgh Festival 2019, and eventually a journey with ayahuasca in Peru.

Read by the author, Roxy Bourdillon. Featuring an exclusive audio Q&A between the author and Laura Kay. 'Courageous, moving, bold and beautifully, brilliantly written.' – Daisy Buchanan I am 13 years old and these are my secrets. 1. I have a crush on Jet from ITV gameshow Gladiators. So strong!...

A BBC History magazine, Esquire, Historia magazine and Waterstones History Book of the Year 'James comes alive in full flamboyance … Russell expertly weaves the bedchamber gossip into the tapestry of a tumultuous reign' SUNDAY TIMES 'Brings the backbiting and power struggles of the Jacobean...