Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

Brought to you by Penguin. My friends will respect me, I hope, just as much under my jacket as under my dress... So take me for a man or a woman as you wish. By the age of thirty, the novelist who had been born Aurore Dupin in 1804 had become the internationally renowned George Sand. In English...

Rita Gigante grew up in a world swirling with secrets, lies, and multiple sins. Her father, notorious Mafia boss Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, was the leader of the Genovese crime clan and the head of all five New York crime families for decades. But until Rita was sixteen, she was kept in the dark about his underworld activities. She unknowingly hung out at mob headquarters and witnessed her dad's whispered meetings around the dinner table, but only knew what she was told by her mother and siblings about his odd behavior: Dad's sick. Keep your mouth shut. Don't talk about the family.

This is a story about survival that is raw and uninhibited. It is a true story of heartbreak and grief, but it is also a story about heroism, change, and above all, love.

She didn't have an engagement ring, or get down on one knee, or ask that magical four-word question, but Adriana Forsman knew her secret girlfriend had essentially just proposed. Their forbidden love had led Forsman to the greatest crossroads moment of her life. Would she choose to serve Jesus or be with the woman she loved? Or could she choose both?

I'm Prancing as Fast as I Can is a coming of Gay story that takes us from a scared, self-hating kid who spends most of his time under his desk staring at the hunky man on the Doan's Pills box, to becoming a writer on Will & Grace, helping to make it a little easier for other scared, self-hating kids who might also be hiding and staring at their secret desire.

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.

'Compelling, heartfelt and inspiring. I found this book so real. so honest. It has taught me about drive, ambition, persistence and love. And what it means to be really Irish! A triumphant story of achievement in a world made for men!' - Katriona O'Sullivan, author of Poor Jackie McCarthy...

A timely and thought-provoking memoir about the trans experience. Was I always trans, part boy beneath my skin, or was it that I landed in a place where 'girl' was a container so small it could break your bones? I learn that a ready smile and sympathetic ear are the only props required to...

Forgive For You is a story about learning to live well with reality, even (and especially) when it doesn’t come with clarity, closure, or apology. Blending sharp insight and raw honesty, the author reflects on love, loss, kinship, trauma, marriage, divorce, and what it means to forgive it all–not for others, but for ourselves. This isn’t a tale of tidy resolution. It’s a winding, at times bewildering, emotional journey through secrets kept and truths uncovered. It’s the reckoning of a rage that could burn the world, and the forging of resilience from fury and surrender.

In this tell-all memoir, a woman in her eighties, born during the Great Depression to Jewish immigrants, unveils her intimate self-transformations in the course of nine decades. Determined at an early age to prove herself a free spirit in a male-dominated world, as a young adult Kahane went on the road, hitchhiking her way into and out of risky adventures and romantic affairs, ceaselessly chasing new experiences. But what started out as a “road book” takes a different turn in midlife when she became a feminist professor, mother, and wife.

In a crawlspace at the offices of Switchboard, a queer helpline in operation since 1974, lie dozens of log books kept by volunteers describing the phone calls they had taken: a teenager kicked out of home for dressing as the wrong gender; a lesbian terrified of having her baby taken away from her; a man arrested for chatting up another man; a young person wanting to know how to come out. These logs documented traces of tens of thousands of queer lives, captured by people who lent an ear to those in need.

« J'écris cette suite parce que l'histoire ne s'est pas arrêtée à la naissance d'Ezio. Parce qu'un combat ne s'éteint pas quand l'enfant vient au monde – il change simplement de visage. Parce qu'il ne suffit pas d'être devenu père… il faut le devenir chaque jour. » Après Mon combat...

'In stunning detail . . . Baconi traces a story of personal and communal alienation, longing, and liberation' Omar El Akkad, author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This 'Moving and generous' Isabella Hammad, author of Enter Ghost 'Outstanding' Raja Shehadeh, author of We Could...

Charlotte Bellows wrote The Definition of Beautiful between the ages of 15 and 17, in the wake of lockdown and in recovery from anorexia. In the tradition of Sylvia Plath in The Bell Jar and Françoise Sagan in Bonjour Tristesse, Bellows writes with deceptively straightforward urgency, pushing through society's constraints on the bodies and minds of girls and women to offer a story both achingly familiar and devastatingly new.

Funny Boy: The Richard Hunt Biography tells the life story of a gifted performer whose gleeful irreverence, sharp wit, and generous spirit inspired millions. Richard Hunt was one of the original main five performers in the Muppet troupe. He brought to life an impressive range of characters on The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, and various Muppet movies, everyone from eager gofer Scooter to elderly heckler Statler, groovy girl Janice to freaked-out lab helper Beaker, even early versions of Miss Piggy and Elmo.

Chief Warrant Officer Necole Belanger created a professional persona that was no-nonsense and highly put-together. But the truth was much more complex. Necole's story is a tale of two lives, the CWO raised in a military family, and the woman coming to terms with her sexuality, in a time where the two could not coexist. A lesbian member of the military police during the LGBTQ Purge in the Canadian Armed Forces, Necole would achieve success and promotion in her career despite a near-constant struggle. But the higher she rose in rank within the Canadian Armed Forces, the less her voice was heard.

A stunning memoir of coming of age and coming out bisexual by award-winning writer and teacher Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew.

Brought to you by Penguin. The hilarious and piercing memoir about growing up gay in a not-so-gay world. I’m just a man, standing in front of a salad, asking it to be a cake. What do you do when you’re too gay for Pakistan, too Pakistani to be gay in America and you’re ashamed of your body...

The long-awaited memoir from one of the most acclaimed radical writers in American literature. Gary Indiana is a true radical whose caustic voice has by turns haunted and influenced the literary and artistic establishments. With I Can Give You Anything but Love, Gary has composed literary and revealing montage of excursions into his life and work—from his early days growing up gay in rural New Hampshire to his escape to Haight-Ashbury in the post-summer-of-love era, the sweltering 1970s in Los Angeles, and ultimately his existence in New York in the 1980s as a bona fide downtown personality.

Comedian Stephen K Amos is one of eight children, whose parents came to London from Nigeria in the 60s. In these three series, co-written with multi-award-winning British playwright Jonathan Harvey, he takes us back in time to the 1980s, as he reminisces about his dysfunctional childhood and formative experiences, and shares the dramas and traumas of his teenage years.