Showing results by publisher "Tantor Media" in Biographies & Memoirs

In A Sinner in Mecca, author and filmmaker Parvez chronicles his pilgrimage as a very openly gay Muslim to Saudi Arabia, where Islam's heart beats . . . and where being true to himself is punishable by death. Risking his life, Parvez embarks on a Jihad of the self—filming his experience along the way. Already under fire for his documentary A Jihad for Love, which looks at the coexistence of Islam and homosexuality, he would undoubtedly face savage punishment if exposed—from being thrown off a cliff to public beheading.

After author Harlyn Aizley gave birth to her daughter, she watched in unanticipated horror as her partner scooped up the baby and said, "I'm your new mommy!" While they both had worked to find the perfect sperm donor, Aizley had spent nine months carrying the baby and hours in labor, so how could her partner claim to be their child's mommy? Many diapers later, Aizley began to appreciate the complexity of her partner's new role as the other mother. Together, they searched for stories about families like their own.

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.

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.

Siri Lindley wanted to be a world champion triathlete . . . even though she didn't know how to swim. She wanted to love and be loved . . . even though her father shunned her because she was gay. She wanted to savor every day and enjoy the life she'd made with her wife, her career, and her passion for horses . . . even though in November 2019 she was diagnosed with a rare—and usually fatal—form of acute myeloid leukemia. Every time Siri has faced what seemed impossible, she found a way to not only survive the situation, but to thrive within it.

When Maeve DuVally came out as a transgender woman while working as a corporate communications manager at Goldman Sachs, she knew she couldn't do it quietly. DuVally intimately documents her struggle to be herself in this environment, initially keeping her identity a secret with wardrobe changes in the lobby bathroom after work. Eventually she declares herself and, to her surprise, Goldman Sachs embraces the effort. Surgery follows. When DuVally finally takes those first steps on heels through the corridors of this institution on the way to her first meeting as a woman, the listener cheers.

A trans essayist with a checkered past takes on the big questions of human existence Move over Michel de Montaigne, there's a new girl in town An ABA Indie Next Pick A San Francisco Chronicle Women's History Month Book Pick An Allstora Queer History 101 Book Club Pick Set against a...

When Katrina, a forty-six-year-old Midwestern mother of four, becomes consumed with feelings for her female Pilates instructor, she begins to understand that she is and always has been gay. Her husband suggests they open up their twenty+ year marriage, which appears to be a reasonable solution to their dilemma. But when Katrina and her husband have different ideas of what an open marriage should like, the cracks in their white-picket-fence life are hit with a hurricane-force fury.

The story of Christopher Isherwood's life is one of pilgrimage: away from the constraints of inheritance and empire and toward authenticity and spiritual illumination. Isherwood—the author of Goodbye to Berlin, which inspired Cabaret, and A Single Man—was born the heir to a crumbling English estate. He died an icon of gay liberation in California while his partner, Don Bachardy, painted his death portrait.

While we can all recall Martin Luther King Jr. giving his "I Have a Dream" speech in front of a massive crowd at Lincoln Memorial, few of us remember the man who organized this watershed nonviolent protest in eight short weeks: Bayard Rustin. This was far from Rustin's first foray into the fight for civil rights. As a world-traveling pacifist, he brought Gandhi's protest techniques to the forefront of US civil rights demonstrations, helped build the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led the fight for economic justice, and played a deeply influential role in the life of Dr. King.

Britney Daniels is a Black, masculine-presenting, tattooed lesbian from a working-class background. For the last five years, she has been working as an emergency-room nurse. She began Journal of a Black Queer Nurse as a personal diary, a tool to heal from the day-to-day traumas of seeing too much and caring too much. Hilarious, gut-wrenching, and infuriating by turns, these stories are told from the perspective of a deeply empathetic, no-nonsense young nurse, who highlights the way race, inequality, and a profit-driven healthcare system make the hospital a place where systemic racism is lived.

The Tony Award-nominated writer of The Tale of the Allergist's Wife and the long-running hit Off-Broadway play Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, and a Sundance Festival award winner Charles Busch has created a unique place in the entertainment world as a playwright, LGBT icon, drag actor, director, and cabaret performer, with his extraordinary gift for both connecting with and channeling the leading ladies of show business.

As a journalist in London, William discovered the Eurovision Song Contest—an annual competition known for its extravagant performers and cutthroat politics. Initially just a fan, he started blogging about the contest, ultimately becoming the most sought-after expert on the subject. William was soon jetting across the continent to meet divas, drag queens, and aspiring singers, who welcomed him to their beautiful, if dysfunctional, family of choice.

In this nuanced mix of memoir, motivational musings, and wisdom, legendary celebrity stylist Ty Hunter recounts both the trying times and brightest moments of his life. Faced with physical, mental, and emotional obstacles that range from a gunshot wound to caring for his sick parents to simply existing as a Black, gay man in America, Ty channeled his energy into surmounting the unconquerable, along the way developing a resilient spirit—one that begs to be shared with the world.

After a chance meeting aboard the ocean liner Paris in 1924, Harvard University scholar and activist F. O. Matthiessen and artist Russell Cheney fell in love and remained inseparable until Cheney's death in 1945. During the intervening years, the men traveled throughout Europe and the United States, achieving great professional success while contending with serious personal challenges, including addiction, chronic disease, and severe depression.

In The Future Is Disabled, Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha asks some provocative questions: What if, in the near future, the majority of people will be disabled—and what if that's not a bad thing? And what if disability justice and disabled wisdom are crucial to creating a future in which it's possible to survive fascism, climate change, and pandemics and to bring about liberation?

For decades, our cultural discourse around trans and gender-diverse people has been viewed through a medical lens, through diagnoses and symptoms set down in books by cisgender doctors, or through a political lens, through dangerous caricatures. But those who claim non-binary gender identity deserve their own discourse. In Transit looks forward to a world where being who we are, whatever that looks like, isn't met with tension and long-winded explanations, but rather with acceptance and love. Being non-binary is about finding home in the in-between places.

The body that Robyn Henderson-Espinoza inhabits is a nonbinary body, a trans body, a body in two races—and a body continually in discovery. Theirs is also a body on sojourn invested in experience, body understanding, and engagement in and for human thriving. Henderson-Espinoza relates coming into a new body story, beginning with the deep emotional work of connecting the abstract intelligence of their mind with their body's intelligence, to explore the relationship between living and becoming, doing and listening.

What happens when your gender doesn't fit neatly into the categories of male or female? Even mundane interactions like filling out a form or using a public bathroom can be a struggle when these designations prove inadequate. In this groundbreaking book, 30 authors highlight how our experiences are shaped by a deeply entrenched gender binary.

 Mark Scarbrough has been searching for something his entire life. Whether it’s his birth mother, true love, his purpose, or his sexual identity, Mark has been on a constant quest to find out who he really is, with the great Western texts as his steadfast companions. As a boy with his head constantly in a book, desperate to discover new worlds, he can hardly distinguish between their plots and his own reality.