#black on both sides: a racial history of trans identity

[transbookoftheday]

Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton

The story of Christine Jorgensen, America’s first prominent transsexual, famously narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives—ones lived by African Americans such as Lucy Hicks Anderson and James McHarris. Their erasure from trans history masks the profound ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence.

Drawing on a deep and varied archive of materials—early sexological texts, fugitive slave narratives, Afro-modernist literature, sensationalist journalism, Hollywood films—Snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable. In tracing the twinned genealogies of blackness and transness, Snorton follows multiple trajectories, from the medical experiments conducted on enslaved black women by J. Marion Sims, the “father of American gynecology,” to the negation of blackness that makes transnormativity possible.

Revealing instances of personal sovereignty among blacks living in the antebellum North that were mapped in terms of “cross dressing” and canonical black literary works that express black men’s access to the “female within,” Black on Both Sides concludes with a reading of the fate of Phillip DeVine, who was murdered alongside Brandon Teena in 1993, a fact omitted from the film Boys Don’t Cry out of narrative convenience. Reconstructing these theoretical and historical trajectories furthers our imaginative capacities to conceive more livable black and trans worlds.

[pluralsword]

Joy in Expansive Variation

https://www.tumblr.com/conarcoin/707384949821538304/nah-fuck-this-im-not-white-but-we-do-not-need-to?source=share

Yeah to add to what conarcoin says (had to do a separate post to make it clear we weren’t endorsing the video because the video is ridiculous), so we’re gonna pretend now that the overlap between ND and trans folks across racial categories during the ramp up of trans genocide in the USA means that white trans people with mental issues aren’t oppressed huh?

We’re sorry but like, the body we have is white but on account of gender and our brain we still went through hell and still get hell on occasion in a society structurally designed to wear us down either onto the streets or into an institution or dead etc. etc. Like, what? Did we not get sexually harassed several times and freeze up even though our oldest headmate before most of us were around knew martial arts because she had never really been prepared for the way things happened? Did we not get traumatized in school and experience ostracism and end up suicidal? Have we not experienced microagressions at work and threats in the public bathroom? Were we not categorically denied knowledge and actuation that would have made us happy when we were younger? What is this shit. Us talking about it and reclaiming it isn’t social currency- it is agency, it is trying to make a little joy in this often miserable world of hegemonies that we and so many struggle against. We will grant that there are white people who try to do oppression Olympics and who have a puritan punitive policing mentality about liberation which does a disservice to the very idea of liberation and solidarity, but celebrating parts of us that hegemonic masculinity (the international systems of the patriarchy and all the imperial and capitalist stuff that comes with it) wants us tokenised, bled dry from alienated labor, dead, shunned, or repeatedly abused for is not something that is not trying to claim something that isn’t ours.

So there you have our life- but brown and black people like us have it much worse than we do. We’re not going to get into that, they can do that if they want. If people really need to know about some of the messed up imperial shit, go read Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton, Deviant Care for Deviant Futures: QTBIPoC Radical Relationism as Mutual Aid Against Carceral Care by Ren Yo-Hwang, Anarcho-Blackness by Marquis Bey, Giuseppe Campuzano’s Afterlife: Toward a Travesti Methodology for Critique, Care, and Radical Resistance by Malú Machuca Rose, I Monster: Embodying Trans and Travesti Resistance in Latin America by Joseph M. Pierce and OVERCOMING HETERONORMATIVE HEGEMONY: QUEER RESISTANCE TO NEOLIBERALISM IN CHILE by SHYAM ANAND SINGH  to start to get a picture of it (this is not at all an exhaustive list nor could it ever be, also we are out of spoons after a generally awful day). Would also just generally recommend Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis.

So yeah, with all due respect, no. While we are more on the aesthetic read of gender (a discussion for another time) we think Gender as Accumulation Strategy by Kay Gabriel is very relevant in regards to how the fight for trans rights must be framed in a pluralistic form of solidarity.

And we haven’t even talked about plurality!?! Because we honestly don’t know what literature to recommend on plural BiPoC oppression or plural oppression generally. We have not gotten around to reading about it we can only speak to community knowledge and personal experiences and what we can infer from the ND community not getting treated very well by the medical system or by police and many other institutions e.g. with anxiety and ADD (things we have). We will at least say that if you want a non-western, spiritual look at a much older understanding of systems than the recent word plural that also tangles with aesthetic stuff, go read Freshwater by  Akwaeke Emezi.

[haveyoureadthistransbook]

Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton

goodreads

The story of Christine Jorgensen, America’s first prominent transsexual, famously narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives—ones lived by African Americans such as Lucy Hicks Anderson and James McHarris. Their erasure from trans history masks the profound ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence.

Drawing on a deep and varied archive of materials—early sexological texts, fugitive slave narratives, Afro-modernist literature, sensationalist journalism, Hollywood films—Snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable. In tracing the twinned genealogies of blackness and transness, Snorton follows multiple trajectories, from the medical experiments conducted on enslaved black women by J. Marion Sims, the “father of American gynecology,” to the negation of blackness that makes transnormativity possible.

Revealing instances of personal sovereignty among blacks living in the antebellum North that were mapped in terms of “cross dressing” and canonical black literary works that express black men’s access to the “female within,” Black on Both Sides concludes with a reading of the fate of Phillip DeVine, who was murdered alongside Brandon Teena in 1993, a fact omitted from the film Boys Don’t Cry out of narrative convenience. Reconstructing these theoretical and historical trajectories furthers our imaginative capacities to conceive more livable black and trans worlds.

Mod opinion: I haven't read this book yet, but it sounds very interesting and is on my tbr.

[albertserra]

my trans/faggot reading list

The Queer Art of Failure by Jack Halbertsam

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and U.S. Surveillance Practices by Toby Beauchamp

Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano

gay masculinities by peter nardi

Homosexuality in Cold War America : Resistance and the Crisis of Masculinity by Robert J Corber

Out of the Shadows: Reimagining Gay Men's Lives by Walt Odets

nevada by imogen binnie

gender nihilism by alyson escalante + addendum

Trans-in-Asia, Asia-in-Trans: An Introduction 

Trans Exploits: Trans of Color Cultures and Technologies in Movement by  Jian Neo Chen

The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment by Cameron Awkward-Rich

Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity (various)

Acceptable femininity? Gay male misogyny and the policing of queer femininities Sadie E Hale and Tomás Ojeda

Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis by grace e lavery

delusions of gender by cordelia fine

a failed man by michael v smith (part of persistence: all ways butch and femme)

time is the thing a body moves through by T. Fleischmann

kai cheng thom’s writing

we want it all: an anthology of trans radical poetics

second skins: the body narratives of transsexuality by jay prossner

transgender warriors by leslie feinberg

the faggots and their friends between revolutions by larry mitchell

translating the queer: body politics and transnational conversations by hector dominguez ruvalcaba

captive genders: trans embodiment and the prison industrial complex

we both laughed in pleasure: the selected diaries of lou sullivan

how we get free: black feminism and the combahee river collective

trans girl suicide museum by hannah baer

dagger: on butch women by lily burana

black queer studies: a critical anthology by e patrick johnson and mae g Henderson

queer sex by juno roche

black on both sides: a racial history of trans identities by C. Riley Snorton

transgender liberation by leslie feinberg

female masculinity by jack halberstam

transecology by douglas a vakoch

street transvestite action revolutionaries : survival, revolt, and queer antagonistic struggle (Sylvia Rivera , Marsha P. Johnson)

a body that is ultra body: in conversation with fred moten and elysia crampton

building an abolitionist trans and queer movement with everything we’ve got (morgan bassichis, alexander lee and dean spade, 2011)

feminism and the (trans)gender entrapment of gender nonconforming prisoners (julia oparah, 2012)

normal life: administrative violence, critical trans politics, and the limits of law (dean spade, 2015)

Tseng Kwong Chi: Performing for the Camera by Việt Lê

detransition, baby by torrey peters

paul takes the form of a mortal girl by andrea lawlor

a failed man by michael v. smith (part of persistence: all ways butch and femme)

my new vagina wont make me happy by andrea long chu

sexing the body by Anne Fausto-Sterling

something that may shock and discredit you by danny lavery

the argonauts by maggie nelson

gender outlaws by kate bornstein

special mentions for articles ive read that were already very formative for me

Masquerading As the American Male in the Fifties: Picnic, William Holden and the Spectacle of Masculinity in Hollywood Film by Steven Cohan

The Production and Display of the Closet: Making Minnelli's "Tea and Sympathy” by David Gerstner

huge thanks to @mypocketsnug who sent #20-40

this is not at all intended to be some kind of definitive resource as ive literally read none of these yet save for the two i mention at the bottom and im compiling this for my personal use, im only publishing this bc an anon asked me to! feel free to reblog and also recommend me more but keep this disclaimer in mind

[blood-choke]

Don’t know if this has been asked before but do u have any book recs for exploring butch identity, lesbian-ism, and queerness in general? Love your work by the way! Both blood choke and northern passage are my top favs right now and the way you navigate and explore gender identity is just chefs kiss

thank you!

i've recommended a few books here and there... stone butch blues, obviously, and then s/he by minnie bruce pratt, the persistent desire: a butch/femme reader, transgender warriors by leslie feinberg, whipping girl by julia serano, sister outsider by audre lorde, we both laughed in pleasure by lou sullivan, gender outlaw by kate bornstein... some of these are dated of course but still worth the read. when it comes to reading dated queer literature i always approach it with compassion and remind myself that the community was different back then, and the community will be different twenty years from now, and that it's worthwhile to understand these differences and respect them. also a lot of these authors have huge catalogues of work, i'm just suggesting their more well-known pieces.

some more "modern" books i'd suggest are gender failure by ivan coyote and rae spoon, tomboy survival guide by ivan coyote, black on both sides: a racial history of trans identity by c. riley snorton, hijab butch blues by lamya h, the will to change: men, masculinity, and love by bell hooks, miss major speaks with toshio meronek, my lesbian experience with loneliness by kabi nagata, burning butch by r/b mertz, the secret diaries of miss anne lister (not modern but the presentation is)

i haven't read all of these myself, most of these are lifted right from my to read shelf, but hopefully you see something that interests you! also keep an eye out for content warnings, i think a few of these are pretty heavy reads.

for the older work i always suggest checking if it's on the internet archive (i think almost if not all of them are, i'm just too lazy to look and link them myself rn) there's also the digital transgender archives which are fun to explore!

[silverity]

"science says that human beings are either female or male" science is a tool used and defined by humans (and the societies/cultures they live in) to interpret the world around them. claiming "x is objective fact because Science Says So" is an extremely lazy argument (& implies that there is just one singular belief to be drawn from whatever is being researched in the first place). what actual function does it serve to categorize humans into "male" and "female"? who benefits from the enforcement of "male" and "female" categories? what traits do we ascribe to these categories and why?

im not claiming science is completely objective. as you've said, cultural biases can affect the way things are interpreted and understood. women know this more than anyone with the way biological essentialism has been used to define us as physically inferior and solely in existence only to reproduce. i'm also Black, and well aware of scientific racism and the history of pseudoscience claiming we are racially inferior on account of our skulls. so you really don't have to tell me anything about this.

what isn't a product of the biases of human culture or human society, however, is that humans are either one of the two sexes or a rare variation of the two. science is empirical observation, and we have observed this to be true, not just in humans but in other mammalian species. it's not a product of human society if it exists and is observable in nature. our interpretation and understanding of the two sexes, however, is what can become distorted through biases or misinterpretation. a good example being how scientists determined sperm in fertilization "conquers" the egg, but modern studies suggest the egg is actually extremely selective, and entraps/pulls the sperm inside. right? nobody can disagree humans don't reproduce via eggs and sperm. it's the interpretation of the process of it that is affected by cultural bias— particularly the assumption that anything female is inherently passive, and anything male must be active/aggressive.

"what actual function does it serve to categorize humans into male and female?".

most radfems, and a lot of marxfems such as myself, support gender abolition. sex, in our view, is a neutral thing that exists in nature and need not say anything about how you should behave or of your role in society. it is only through the social imposition of gender (which radfems define as a system of hierarchy of males over females and everything that reinforces this, not an innate identity as trans people would say) and it's maintenance via the enforcement of "femininity" (infantilization, sexualisation, submission) for women and of "masculinity" (aggression, control, dominance) for men, that certain traits, roles, behaviours are assigned to men and women. natural sex and it's observation through science do not assign any traits to the sexes. since humans have evolved to become civilized social beings we are no longer ruled by our animal instincts or natural biology.

so in relation to your latter questions, i think we are probably in agreement? we both disagree with the current social order of the sexes, but we disagree about how to eradicate this. the pro-trans side argues in favour of gender identity and the irrelevance of sex. but this doesn't really do away with gender stereotypes, does it? it just allows a few to switch to the opposite side of the gender binary. and making sex irrelevant (though, interestingly, "gender affirming care" is completely about mimicking biological sex markers associated with your "gender identity", so that's rather contradictory) would serve only to invisibilize women's oppression, which unfortunately occurs on a sexual basis. if you disagree that women's oppression is rooted in how men have sought to control and police women's reproduction and sexuality, please read some radical or marxist feminist theory.

the radfem side argues that treating gender as an "identity" in the trans way naturalizes the traits ascribed to the sexes as innate qualities to the sexes. womanhood is femininity, such that any feminine man or man who prefers feminine forms of expression is really a woman. & manhood is masculinity, such that any masculine women or women who wear their hair short are really men. this idea of "gender identity" also tries to pretend women are only oppressed because we adhere to femininity, so it's our own fault for not simply "opting out" of femininity and womanhood as "trans men" do. and when "trans women" present as feminine, they are oppressed just as women are. neither are true, when masculine-presenting women still face female oppression (including "trans men") and femininity (worn by the "trans woman") is only demeaned because the female body it is assigned to is demeaned. "trans women" may experience oppression bc of their gender non-conformity as males but never female oppression nor anything of female experiences.

the radfem position is that you can dress however you want and express yourself however you want, but on the basis of your sex you are still either a man or a woman. man = male human, woman = female human, that's all these terms should mean. we should stop gendering the sexes, essentially. we think gender dysphoria (as in genuine distress over your natural sex and a disconnect with your physical body) is a condition resulting from the oppressive system of gender that restricts both women and men, and think people should receive treatment, not affirmation. there's no issue with gender non-conformity, and if anything radfems encourage gnc especially where femininity is concerned, only that it is harmful to insist your gender non-conformity as a man makes you a woman. men are not the default of the species and women are not non-men, we are not an identity for men to claim when they feel repressed by other men or the standards of masculinity.

intersex people are the only people who may be assigned the wrong sex at birth, and i realise this is probably a very complicated experience for them and so im not really interested in policing what intersex people consider themselves. but most intersex people can still be defined as either male or female in terms of their biology (and so male intersex people should not enter women's sports, for example). the language of "AFAB/AMAB" has been bastardized and taken from the intersex community and applied to people who are NOT in any way intersex. for the rest of us our sex is not wrongly assigned, it is correctly observed.

in an ideal world sex should not be important beyond healthcare, sports, and other instances where it is necessary to take into account the physical differences between men and women e.g. for the safety of passengers in vehicles, which is commonly tested using only larger male measurements. while we still live in a society where women are oppressed on the basis of sex, it is necessary to recognise sex in order to combat this exploitation and inequality, via safeguarding women and female children, providing safe single-sex spaces (something the UN describes as essential in ensuring women have a right to public life), opportunities for women to boost our representation and participation in society, policies aimed at assisting women in male-dominated careers and so on. this is essentially the same thing as recognising the reality of race and how non-white people face disadvantages and discrimination. just as it would not help Black people to invisibilize the social reality of race (note the SCOTUS has just struck down affirmative action on the basis of race) it would not help women to invisibilize sex, nor the sexual dynamics (the threat and reality of sexual assault, abuse, sexual exploitation) that exist between men and women.

[whilereadingandwalking]

Oof! Ok, so I admit that while I do read a lot of nonfiction, Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity was a little deeper into academic theory than I expected or was prepared for. There were large parts where it was a difficult book for me to follow. I think the subject matter is exciting enough and we're starved enough for good trans histories and nonfiction by people of color, that this one is being passed around as being more accessible than it is, to no fault of the author or publisher.

Still, I think I gained a sense of the argument and I gained a really good look into some histories of Black cross-dressers and trans people over time, which was my goal on picking up this book. I also gained some, if not nearly as much as author C. Riley Snorton aimed for, understanding of the linkages between Blackness and transness, particularly when it comes to the idea of "passing" in society and how it inherently questions the very binary and structure of what you're passing into—for example, how a slave who looks white could challenge the very premise of racial superiority and obvious difference, or how a person who lives as a woman and is accepted as one but has not had surgery to change their genitals challenges the premise of a cis, hetero patriarchy.

One fun note also was that I realized that Snorton wrote this book at Cornell University, and is now at University of Chicago. I began reading it while visiting a friend for their wedding in Ithaca, and finished it at home in Hyde Park, so this was a fun coincidence.

[thottybrucewayne]

Thotty's Spring-Summer TBR

To be started

Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive by Julia Serano Darkly: Black History and America's Gothic Soul by Leila Taylor Toward the African Revolution by Fanon Black Disability Politics by Samantha Dawn Schalk and Sami Schalk Notre Histoire: The First Hundred Years of Haitian Independence by Ghislain Gouraige Jr. Sexed Up by Julia Serano The Color of Kink: Black Women, BDSM, and Pornography by Ariane Cruz Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa Miss Major Speaks: The Life and Legacy of a Black Trans Revolutionary by Toshio Meronek Revolution is Love: A Year of Black Trans Liberation by Qween Jean and Joela Rivera Sisters in the Life: A History of Out African American Lesbian Media-Making Editor(s): Yvonne Welbon and Alexandra Juhasz Keith Haring's Line Race and the Performance of Desire by Ricardo Montez Queer Latino Testimonio, Keith Haring, and Juanito Xtravaganza: Hard Tails by A. Cruz-Malavé

To Be Finished

When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost by Joan Morgan Whipping Girl by Julia Serano Black Trans Feminism by Marquis Bey Reel to Real: Race, class, and sex at the movies by Bell Hooks Culture and Imperialism by Edward Said

Re-reads

Black Marxism by Cedric Robinson Anarcho-Blackness Notes Toward a Black Anarchism by Marquis Bey Anarchism and Black Revolution by Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire Cistem Failure by Marquis Bey Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk-tales from the Gulf States by Zora Neale Hurston The Book of Negro Folklore Editor(s) Langston Hughes & Arna Bontemps

Reccs

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon The Deep by Rivers Solomon Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton Some Wear Leather, Some Wear Lace: The Worldwide Compendium of Postpunk and Goth in the 1980s by Marloes Bontje The Blood of A Thousand Roots by Dane Figueroa Edidi My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite Street Style by Ted Polhemu Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blacknes By Da’Shaun L. Harrison The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi Insights: Film & Television by TRUDY Shuckin' and Jivin': Folklore from Contemporary Black Americans by Daryl Cumber Dance

[chaosacademia]

after the biggest identity crisis, feelings of failure and major breakdowns, i've decided that my next academic year will be... different. i need a break from uni, which still hurts to admit. i intend to make learning enjoyable again, so i will start my year of rest and slow learning. the idea is to go back to learning at my own pace about whatever im curious about and NOT for obligation. so! this is a list of nonfic titles i am considering picking up!

- Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex, by Angela Chen

- An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, by Ed Yong

- Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation, by Sunaura Taylor

- Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity, by C. Riley Snorton

- Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space, by Amanda Leduc

- Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures, by Merlin Sheldrake

- Having and Being Had, by Eula Biss

- Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology, by Deirdre Cooper Owens

- Messalina: Empress, Adulteress, Libertine: The Story of the Most Notorious Woman of the Roman World, by Honor Cargill-Martin

- Off with Her Head: Three Thousand Years of Demonizing Women in Power, Eleanor Herman

- Sentient: How Animals Illuminate the Wonder of Our Human Senses, by Jackie Higgins

- The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World, by Michael Pollan

- The Psychopath Factory: How Capitalism Organizes Empathy, by Tristam Adams

- Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World, by Elinor Cleghorn

- Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?, by Linda Nochlin

- Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English

- Without Children: The Long History of Not Being a Mother, by Peggy O'Donnell Heffington

[arwainian]

Reading This Week 2023 #40

Started and Finished:

62 fatt fics for the marathon

various zines from the massachusetts independent comics expo:

A*R*T CRITIC by Giles Crawford May 3rd, 1996 by Giles Crawford New York City, words by They Might Be Giants, art by Giles Crawford Basilisk by Erin Roseberry

The City of God, Book XXII by Augustine, translated by Marcus Dods

"Those Who Cannot See the Whole Are Offended by the Apparent Deformity of a Part": Disability in Augustine's City of God by Alexander Massmann

Chapter 4 of Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity: "A Nightmare Silhouette: Racialization and the Long Exposure of Transition" by C. Riley Snorton

The Rediscovered Life of St. Francis of Assisi by Thomas of Celano, translated by Timothy J. Johnson

"Biocultures: An Emerging Paradigm" by Jay Clayton, Lennard J. Davis, Jonathan M Metsl, Priscilla Ward, and Bernice L. Hausman

"Kinesthetic Empathy, Physical Recoil: The Conflicting Embodied Affects of Samuel Beckett's Quad" by Hannah Simpson

"Border Crossing by Hearing Children of Deaf Parents: The Lost History of Codas" by Robert Hoffmeister in Open Your Eyes: Deaf Studies Talking

"An Intimate History of Slavery and Freedom" from Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiment by Saidiya Hartman

"Two Erotic Lessons I Learned from My Mother (and Other Women Who Nourished Me)" by Shoniqua Roach

"The Black Living Room" by Shoniqua Roach

Select poem from Ibn Arabi, Giacomo De Lentini, & Guittone d'Arezzo, as well as "Song of Creatures" by San Francesco

"Metaphor as Experimental Medicine" from Blindness and Therapy in Late Medieval French and Italian Poetry by Julie Singer

Ongoing:

Vanishing Rooms by Melvin Dixon

[bookclub4m]

30 LGBTQ+ Non-Fiction by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) Authors

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors - to help readers to diversify their reading and library professionals to diversify their readers' advisory. All of the lists can be found here.

Angry Queer Somali Boy: A Complicated Memoir by Mohamed Abdulkarim Ali

Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas

A History of My Brief Body by Billy-Ray Belcourt

¡Hola Papi!: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons by John Paul Brammer

Punch Me Up to the Gods by Brian Broome

A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder by Ma-Nee Chacaby

When We Were Outlaws: A Memoir of Love and Revolution by Jeanne Cordova

Asegi Stories: Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory by Qwo-Li Driskill

Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution by Shiri Eisner

Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir by Akwaeke Emezi

Brown Trans Figurations: Rethinking Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Chicanx/Latinx Studies by Francisco J. Galarte

Histories of the Transgender Child by Jules Gill-Peterson

We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir by Samra Habib

Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness by Da'Shaun Harrison

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals by Saidiya Hartman

Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World by Zakiyyah Iman Jackson

All Boys Aren't Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto by George M. Johnson

How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones

Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays by June Jordan

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde

Continuum by Chella Man

The Black Trans Prayer Book edited by J Mase III and Dane Figueroa Edidi

Antiman: A Hybrid Memoir by Rajiv Mohabir

nîtisânak by Jas M. Morgan

Borealis by Aisha Sabatini Sloan

Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton

I'm Afraid of Men by Vivek Shraya

I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World by Kai Cheng Thom

Beyond the Gender Binary by Alok Vaid-Menon

Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights by Kenji Yoshino

[projectotb]

MEMORY MONDAY'S: TRANS PAST

Hello and welcome to the final week of our daily events! We hope you found these informative. This Monday, let us have a look at the past of our trans siblings.

“I couldn’t find myself in history,”

Prior to the emergence of trans history in the academy, much of the writing on the lived experiences of trans people was written either by medical professionals and psychologists, or by trans people themselves as autobiographies. Many trans people encountered themselves as historical subjects through such popular works as Leslie Feinberg’s Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman (1996)— Feinberg wrote, “No one like me seemed to have ever existed.” x

Here's some material we found for you to read!

The Trans History You Weren’t Taught in Schools

Trans People Have Existed For Thousands Of Years And Other Things You Should Know About Trans People

TRANSGENDER PEOPLE HAVE ALWAYS EXISTED

Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity

Transgender History The Roots of Today’s Revolution

Happy Pride!

[books-in-media]

Emma Watson, (Instagram, May 05, 2020)

—Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity, C. Riley Snorton (2017)

[happyprinceling]

the rush while buying books for 111€ 😳

[padawan-historian]

Decolonized Booklist - Queer Edition

Lil Nas X is letting y'all know that queerness is not a "white people thing." 💁🏾‍♀️🌈

Queerness is ancestral || queer folks existed in pre-colonial spaces, struggled and resisted under colonialism, and are kicking down barriers in the 21st century.

Here are some must reads by scholars, poets, and activists who are sharing the histories, lived experiences, and ancestral-liberation work of those who came before and those blooming and yet to come~

Find their works listed below on my Neighborhood Historian bookshop.

Top Picks

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches - Audre Lorde (1984)

Freedom To Love For ALL: Homosexuality is not Un-African - Yemisi Ilesanmi (2013)

Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity -  C Riley Snorton (2017)

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous - Ocean Vuong (2019)

Black Girl, Call Home - Jasmine Mans (2021)

The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice - Shon Faye (Pre-Order)

Queer History, Activism, and Liberation in the United States (by time period)

Female Husbands: A Trans History - Jen Manion (2020)

Arresting Dress: Cross-Dressing, Law, and Fascination in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco - Clare Sears (2014)

We've Been Here All Along: Wisconsin's Early Gay History - R. Richard Wagner (2019)        

Welcome to Fairyland: Queer Miami Before 1940 - Julio Capó (2017)

Her Neighbor's Wife: A History of Lesbian Desire Within Marriage - Lauren Jae Gutterman (2019) 

Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics - Timothy Stewart-Winter (2017)        

The Deviant's War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America - Erin Cervini (2021)

We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation - Matthew Riemer and Leighton Brown (2019)

Queer Twin Cities - collected by Twin Cities Glbt Oral History Project (2010)

Queerness Across Borders and Generations

We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir - Samra Habib (2019)

Queer and Trans Migrations: Dynamics of Illegalization, Detention, and Deportation - (2020)

Tolerance and Risk: How U.S. Liberalism Racializes Muslims - Mitra Rastegar (Pre-Order)

Lived Experiences and Memories in Marginalized Spaces

Visibility Interrupted: Rural Queer Life and the Politics of Unbecoming - Carly Thomsen (2021)

Living Queer History: Remembrance and Belonging in a Southern City - Gregory Samantha Rosenthal (Pre-order)

Girl, Woman, Other: A Novel - Bernardine Evaristo (2019)

On Being Different: What It Means to Be a Homosexual - Merle Miller (1971)

Black Girl Dangerous on Race, Queerness, Class and Gender - Mia McKenzie (2014)

Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers - Anne Balay (2016)

Rust Belt Burlesque: The Softer Side of a Heavy Metal Town - Erin O'Brien and Bob Perkoski (2019)

Study Resources

We Will Always Be Here: A Guide to Exploring and Understanding the History of LGBTQ+ Activism in Wisconsin - Jenny Kalvaitis and Kristen Whitson (2021)

New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent - edited by Margaret Busby (2019)

Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology - E. Patrick Johnson (2005)

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Radical Feminist Reading Masterpost

This is a list of books I want to read on the subject of radical feminism. It’s definitely a long journey since many of these books can be difficult to make it through, but I wanted to share this list for anyone else interested.

Let me know if there are any broken links.

Abortion and Pornography: the Sexual Liberals’ “Gotcha” Against Women’s Equality (by Twiss Butler)

A Collection of Essays on Feminism and Sexism in the Anarchist Movement

A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century (by Donna Haraway)

A Deafening Silence: Hidden Violence Against Women and Children (by Patrizia Romito)

A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (by Chimamanda Ngozi Achidie)

A Voice from the South (by Anna Julia Cooper) 

All About Love (by bell hooks)

African Gender Studies (edited by Oyeronke Oyewumi)

African Women & Feminism (by Oyeronke Oyewumi)

Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life (by Tavia Nyong’o)

Against Our Will: Men, Women, Rape (by Susan Brownmiller)

Ain’t I a Woman (by bell hooks)

A Mercy (by Toni Morrison)

Americanah (by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)

An American Marriage (by Tayari Jones)

An Autobiography (by Angela Davis)

An Autobiography (by Assata Shakur)

Ancient Hatred and Its Contemporary Manifestation: the Torture of Lesbians (by Susan Hawthorne)

An End to the Neglect of the Negro Woman (by Claudia Jones)

Angela Davis: a Biography (by Angela Davis)

Anonymous is a Woman: A Global Chronicle of Gender Inequality (by Nina Ansary)

An Orchestra of Minorities (by Chigozie Obioma)

Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution (by Sheila Jeffreys)

Are Prisons Obsolete? (by Angela Davis)

The Art of Protest: Culture and Activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the Streets of Seattle (by T.V. Reed)

Assata Shakur (by Assata Shakur)

Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain (by Abby Norman)

A Vindication of the Rights of Women (by Mary Wollstonecraft)

Backlash: the Undeclared War Against American Women (by Susan Faludi)

Bad Feminist (by Roxanne Gay)

Beauty and Misogryny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West (by Sheila Jeffreys)

The Beauty Myth (by Naomi Wolf)

Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World (edited with John J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin)

Being Lolita (by Alisson Wood)

The Bell Jar (by Sylvia Plath)

Beloved (by Toni Morrison)

Bewitching: Recalling the Archimagica Powers of Women (by Mary Daly)

Beyond Beautiful (by Anuschka Rees)

Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation (by Mary Day)

Beyond the Frame: Women of Color and Visual Representation (by Angela Davis and Neferti Tadiar)

Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Conscioussness, and the Politics of Empowerment (by Patricia Hill Collins)

Black Feminist Voices in Politics (by Evelyn M. Simien)

Black Looks: Race and Representation (by bell hooks)

Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity (by C. Riley Snorton)

Black. Queer. Southern. Women.: An Oral History (by E. Patrick Johnson)

Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology (by E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson)

Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (by Patricia Hill Collins)

The Black Unicorn (by Audre Lorde)

The Bluest Eye (by Toni Morrison)

The Boundaries of Her Body: A Shocking History of Women’s Rights in America (by Debran Rowland)

Breaking Out Of The "Man Box" (by Tony Porter)

This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (edited by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua)

Bringing Together Feminist Theory and Practice: A Collective Interview

Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit (by Marlon M. Bailey)

Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation (by Sylvia Federici)

The Chalice and the Blade (by Diane Eisler)

Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture (by Peggy Orenstein)

Colonialism and Homosexuality (Robert Aldrich)

Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism (edited by Bushra Rehman and Daisy Hernadez)

The Colour Purple (by Alice Walker)

The Combahee River Collective Statement

Combatting Cult Mind Control (by Steven Hassan

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Erasure (by Adrienne Rich)

Confronting the Liberal Lies About Prostitution (by Evelina Giobbe)

Consciousness Raising: A Radical Weapon (by Kathie Sarachild)

The Creation of Patriarchy (by Gerda Lerner)

Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody (by James Lindsay)

Damned Whores and God's Police: The Colonization of Women in Australia (by Anne Summers)

Daring Greatly (by Brené Brown)

Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967-1975 (by Alice Echols)

Dear Ijeawele (by Chimamanda Ngozi Achidie)

Delusions of Gender (by Cordelia Fine)

Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders (by Alicia Gaspar De Alba)

Desert Flower (by Waris Dirie)

The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (by Carol F. Karlsen)

The Dialect of Sex: A Case for Feminist Revolution (by Shulamith Firestone)

Disappearing Ink: Early Modern Women Philosophers and Their Fate in History (by Eileen O’Neill)

The Disappearing L: Erasure of Lesbian Spaces and Culture (by Bonnie J Morris)

Discrimination by Design: A Feminist Critique of the Man-made Environment (by Leslie Kanes Weisman)

Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy (by Grace Chang)

Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick (by Maya Dusenbery)

Doublethink: A Feminist Challenge to Transgenderism (by Janice Raymond)

Drag = Blackface (by Kelly Kleiman)

Epistemology of the Closet (by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick)

Erotic Island: Art and Activism in the Queer Caribbean (by London K. Gill)

The Erotics of Talk: Women’s Writing and Feminist Paradigms (by Carla Kaplan)

Everyday Male Chauvinism: Intimate Partner Violence Which is Not Called Violence (by Luis Bonino and Peter Szil, with contribution from Gabor Kuszing)

The Evolutionary Origins of Patriarchy (by Barbara Smuts)

Ezili’s Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders (by Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley)

Fasting Girls: A History of Anorexia Nervosa (by Joan Jacobs Brumberg)

Fat is a Feminist Issue (by Susie Orbach)

Father-Daughter Incest (by Judith Lewis Herman)

Female Chauvinist Pigs (by Ariel Levy)

The Feminine Mystique (by Betty Friedan)

Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression (by Sandra Lee Martky)

Feminism Confronts Technology (Judy Wajcman)

Feminism is for Everybody (by bell hooks)

Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (by Catherine A. MacKinnon)

Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (by Chandra Mohanty)

Feminist Pedagogy: Looking Back to Move Forward (editors Robbin Crabtree, David Sapp, and Adela Licona, 2009)

The Feminist Revolution: Second Wave Feminism and the Struggle for Women’s Liberation (by Bonnie J. Morris and D.M. Withers)

The Fifth Season (by N.K. Jemisin)

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (by Hallie Rubenhold)

Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery (by Virginia Blum)

For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts’ Advice to Women (by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English)

Forced to Care: Coercion and Caregiving in America (by Evelyn Nakano Glenn)

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle (by Angela Davis)

Free Space: A Perspective on the Small Group in Women’s Liberation (by Pamela Allen)

From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers (by Marina Warner)

From Fashion to Politics: Hadassah and Jewish American Women and the Post World War II Era (by Shirli Brautbar)

Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and One Scholar’s Search for Justice (by Alice Dreger)

Gay Shame (edited with Valerie Traub)

Gender Epistemologies in Africa: Gendering Traditions, Spaces, Social Institutions, and Identities (edited by Oyeronke Oyewumi)

Gender Trouble (by Judith Butler)

The Girl With the Louding Voice (by Abi Daré)

Girl, Woman, Other (by Bernadine Evaristo)

Global Women: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy (edited by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild)

Going Out of Our Minds: The Metaphysics of Liberation (by Sonia Johnson)

The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth (by Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor)

Gyn/ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (by Mary Daly)

Hands, Tools, and Weapons (by Paola Tabet)

Heterosexualism and the Colonial Modern Gender System (by Maria Lugones)

The History of Patriarchy (by Gerda Lerner)

Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (by Barbara Smith)

How Porn Fuels Sex Trafficking

How to Suppress Women’s Writing (by Joanna Russ)

How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective (by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor)

Hunger Makes Me (by Jess Zimmerman)

The Husband Stitch (by Carmen Maria Machado)

I Am Your Sister (by Audre Lorde)

The Icarus Girl (by Helen Oyeyemi)

The Imaginative Argument: A Practical Manifesto for Writers (by Frank Cioffi)

Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (by Anne McClintock)

Incidents in the Life of a Slave GIrl (by Harriet Jacobs)

The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade (by Sheila Jeffreys)

In Harm’s Way: the Pornography Civil Rights Hearing (by Catherine A MacKinnon et Andrea Dworkin)

In Our Time (by Susan Brownmiller)

Intercourse (by Andrea Dworkin)

The Invention of Women: Making African Sense of Western Gender DIscourse (by Oyeronke Oyewumi)

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men (by Caroline Criado Perez)

Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (by Abigail Shrier)

Is Art Creating Patriarchy or is Patriarchy Creating Art? (By Mary Daly)

Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray (by Rosalind Rosenberg)

Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right (by Angela Nagle)

Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (by Dorothy Roberts)

Kindred  (by Octavia E. Butler)

Lactivism (by Courtney Jung)

Ladyparts (by Deborah Copaken)

Learning From the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought (by Patricia Hill Collins)

The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (edited with Henry Abelove and Michele Aina Barale)

The Lesbian Heresy (by Sheila Jeffreys)

Letters From a Warzone (by Andrea Dworkin)

Liberalism and the Death of Feminism (by Catherine MacKinnon)

Liberals, Libertarianism, and the Liberal Arts Establishment (by Susanne Kappeler)

Life and Death (by Andrea Dworkin)

The Light of the World (by Elizabeth Alexander)

Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organization 1968-1980 (by Kimberly Springer)

Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry (by Imani Perry)

Look Me in the Eye: Old Women, Aging, and Ageism (by Barbara Macdonald, with Cynthia Rich)

Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (by Saidiya Hartman)

Love and Politics: Radical Feminist and Lesbian Theories (by Carol Anne Douglas)

Loving to Survive: Sexual Terror, Male Violence, and Women’s Lives (by Dee Graham)

The Madwoman in the Attic (by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar)

The Maid’s Daughter: Living Inside and Outside the American Dream (by Mary Romero)

The Many Faces of Backlash (by Florence Rush)

Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality , Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color (by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw)

Marx and Ghandi Were Liberals (by Andrea Dworkin)

Medical Apartheid (by Harriet Washington)

Medieval Households (by David Herlihy)

Men Who Hate Women (by Laura Bates)

Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them: When Loving Hurts and You Don’t Know Why (by Susan Forward

Mindful Teaching and Teaching Mindfulness: A Guide for Anyone Who Teaches Anything (by Deborah Schoeberlein and Suki Sheth)

Modern Motherhood: Women and Family in England, c. 1945-2000 (by Angela Davis)

More Work for Mother (by Ruth Schwarz Cowan)

Mortgaging Women's Lives: Feminist Critiques of Structural Adjustment (by Pamela Sparr)

My Sister, the Serial Killer (by Oyinkan Braithwaite)

Natural Liberty (by the Sage Femme Collective)

The New Reproductive Technologies (by Gena Corea)

No Angel in the Classroom (by Berenice Malka Fisher)

Nobody’s Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs, and Trolls (by Carrie Goldberg)

NW (by Zadie Smith)

Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (by Adrienne Rich)

Off Our Backs: The Feminist Newsjournal Issue on Mary Daly

The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context (by Grant Kester)

Only Words (by Catherine MacKinnon)

Origins of the Family, Private Property, and State (by Friedrich Engels)

Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics (by Andrea Dworkin)

Outlaw Women: A Memoir of the War Years 1960-1975 (by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz)

Outsiders: Five Women Writers Who Changed the World (by Lundall Gordon)

Paid For: My Journey Through Prositution (by Rachel Moran)

Paradise (by Toni Morrison)

Pedagogy of the Oppressed (by Paulo Freire)

Periods Gone Public: Taking a Stand for Menstrual Equality (by Jennifer Weiss-Wolf)

The Pimping of Prostitution (by Julie Bindel)

Pleasure Activism (by Adrienne Maree Brown)

Plucked (by Rebecca M. Herzig)

Points Against Postmodernism (by Catherine MacKinnon)

The Politics of Women’s Studies: Testimony from Thirty Founding Mothers (edited by Florence How)

The Porn Industry's Dark Secrets

Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality (by Gail Dines)

Pornography: Men Possessing Women (by Andrea Dworkin)

Post-Mortems: Representations of Female Suicide by Drowning in Victorian Culture (by Valerie Messen)

Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome America’s (by Joy Degruy)

The Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970s, History and Impact (edited by Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard)

Prostitution and Trafficking in Nine Countries (by Melissa Farley, Ann Cotton, Jacqueline Lynne, Sybille Zumbeck, Frida Spiwak, Maria E. Reyes, Dinorah Alvarez, and Ufuk Sezgin)

Queenie (by Candice Carty-Williams)

Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology (by Margaret L. Andersen)

Racism, Birth Control, and Reproductive Rights (by Angela Davis) 

Radical Feminist Therapy: Working in the Context of Violence (by Bonnie Burstow)

Rape and Sexual Power in Early America (by Sharon Block)

Red at the Bone (by Jacqueline Woodson)

Refusing to be a Man: Essays on Sex and Justice (by John Stoltenberg)

Regretting Motherhood: A Study by Dr Orna Donath (by Dr Orna Donath)

Rethinking Women’s and Gender Studies, (edited by Catherine M. Orr, Ann Braithwaite, and Diane Lichtenstein)

The Right to Sex (by Amia Srinivasan)

Right-Wing Women: The Politics of Domesticated Females (by Andrea Dworkin)

Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore (by Elizabeth Rush)

The Robber Bride (by Margaret Atwood)

The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (by Paula Gunn Allen)

The Roots of Lesbian & Gay Oppression: A Marxist View (by Bob McCubbin; link)

Sadomasochism: Not About Condemnation (an interview with Audre Lorde by Susan Leigh Star)

Sassafrass, Cypress, & Indigo: A Novel (by Ntozake Shange)

Science as Salvation: A Modern Myth and its Making (by Mary Midgley)

SCUM Manifesto (by Valerie Solanas)

The Second Coming of Joan of Arc (by Carolyn Gage)

The Second Sex (by Simone de Beauvoir)

Segregated Sisterhood: Racism and the Politics of American Feminism (by Nancie Caraway)

Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement (by Sally G. McMillen)

Sex Matters: How Male-Centric Medicine Endangers Women's Health and What We Can Do About It (by Alyson J. McGregor)

Sexology and Antifeminism (by Sheila Jeffreys)

Sex Trafficking of Women in the United States (by Janice G. Raymond & Donna M. Hughes)

The Sexualized Body and the Medicalized Authority of Pornography (by Heather Brunskell-Evans)

Sexual Discretion: Black Masculinity and the Politics of Passing (by Jeffrey Q. McCune)

Sexual Liberalism and Survivors of Sexual Abuse (by Valerie Heller)

The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism (edited by Dorchen Leidhodt and Janice G. Raymond)

Sexual Politics (by Kate Millett)

She Has Her Mother’s Laugh (by Carl Zimmer)

The Silent Patient (by Alex Michaelids)

Sinister Wisdom: A Gathering of Spirit (by North American Indian Women’s Issue)

Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America (by Melissa V. Harris-Perry)

Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women’s Liberation Movement (by Robin Morgan)

Social Justice Pedagogy Across the Curriculum: The Practice of Freedom (editors Thandeka K. Chapman and Nikola Hobbel)

Sold: A Story of Modern-Day Slavery (by Sana Muhsen)

Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America and Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century (by Laura Shapiro)

Sophia Tolstoy’s diary

The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations (by Toni Morrison)

The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880–1930 (by Sheila Jeffreys)

Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity (by Alexis Pauline Gumbs)

Spiritual Midwifery (by Ina May Gaskin)

Stone Butch Blues (by Leslie Feinberg)

The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service (by Laura Kaplan)

The Subjection of Women (by Harriet Taylor)

The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalized Economy (by Maria Mies and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen)

Sula (by Toni Morrison)

Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation (by Renate Klein)

Susan B Anthony’s Daybook

Taking Charge of Your Fertility (by Toni Weschler)

Taking Our Eyes Off of the Guys (by Sonia Johnson)

Tales of the Lavender Menace: a Memoir of Liberation (by Karla Jay)

Teaching transformation: transcultural classroom dialogues (by AnaLouise Keating)

Territories of the Soul: Queered Belonging in the Black DIaspora (by Nadia Ellis)

Terrorizing women: Femicide in the Americas (by Rosa-Linda Fregoso and Cynthia Bejarano)

Their Eyes Were Watching God (by Zora Neale Hurston)

Them Goon Rules: Fugitive Essays on Radical Black Feminism (by Marquise Bey)

They Say / I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing (by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein)

They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers)

Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism Between Women in Caribbean Literature (by Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley)

Things Fall Apart (by Chinua Achebe)

Towards a Feminist Theory of the State (by Catherine MacKinnon)

The Transexual Empire (by Janice Raymond)

Transforming Scholarship: Why Women’s and Gender Studies Students Are Changing Themselves and the World (by Michele Tracy Berger and Cheryl Radeloff)

Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence–From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (by Judith Herman)

The Trouble Between Us: An Uneasy History of White and Black Women in the Feminist Movement (by Winifred Breines)

Truth About Porn (by Karen Countryman-Roswurm)

Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements (by Charlene A. Carruthers)

Unpacking Gender Dysphoria: A How-To Guide

Unpacking Queer Politics (by Sheila Jeffreys)

Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies, and Revolution (by Laurie Penny)

Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World (by Elinor Cleghorn)

The Use of Erotic as Power (by Audre Lorde)

The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine (by Jennifer Gunter)

The Vagina Monologues (by Eve Ensler)

Truth Behind the Fantasy of Porn (by Shelley Lubben)

Varat Och Varan: Prostitution, Surrogatmodraskap Och Den Delade Manniskan (by Kajsa Ekis Ekman)

Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self (Studies in Feminist Philosophy) (by Linda Alcoff)

The Visual Culture Reader, 2nd edition, (edited by Nicholas Mirzoeff)

Voices of African American Women in Prison (by Paula C. Johnson)

Virginia Woolf: the Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work (by Louise A. DeSalvo)

Welcome to Fairyland: Queer Miami Before 1940 (by Julio Capo Jr.)

We Should All Be Feminists (by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours (by Helen Oyeyemi)

Where the Wild Ladies Are (by Aoko Matsuda)

White Fragility

White Teeth (by Zadie Smith)

Who Cooked the Last Supper: A Women’s History of the World (by Rosalind Miles)

The Whole Woman (by Germaine Greer)

Who Look At Me: Shifting the Gaze of Education Through Blackness, Queerness, and the Body (Durrell Callier and Damonique C. Hill)

Why a Materialist Feminism is (Still) Possible and Necessary (by Stevi Jackson)

Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men (by Lundy Bancroft)

Why Women Are Blamed For Everything (by Dr Jessica Taylor)

Wide Sargasso Sea (by Jean Rhys)

Wildfire: Igniting the She/Volution (by Sonia Johnson)

The Wind in My Hair: My Fight for Freedom in Modern Iran (by Masih Alinejad)

Witch (by Lisa Lister)

Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A history of Women Healers (by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English)

Woman on the Edge of Time (by Marge Piercy)

Women and Civil Liberties (by Kathleen A. Lahey)

Women and their Bodies (by Boston Women’s Health Collective)

Women and War (by Jean Bethke Elshtain)

Women as a Force in History: A Study in Traditions and Realities (by Mary Beard)

Woman Hating (by Andrea Dworkin)

Women in the Yoruba Religious Sphere (by Oyeronke Olajubu)

The Women of Brewster Place (by Gloria Naylor)

Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype (by Clarrissa Pinkola Estes)

Women, Race, and Class (by Angela Davis)

Women’s Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle (by Thomas Sankara)

The Women’s Room (by Marilyn French)

Women’s Studies for the Future: Foundations, Interrogations, Politcs (edited by Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Agatha Beins)

Women With Mustaches and Men Without Beards: Gender and Secual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (by Afsaneh Najmabadi)

The World We Have Lost (by Peter Laslett)

This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (edited by Cherie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua)

Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (by bell hooks)

Zami Sister Outsider Undersong (by Audre Lorde)