June is Pride Month, when our LGBTQ+ friends and neighbors celebrate and affirm their dignity and freedom to live openly. OWWL2Go recently assembled a curated list of writings and resources that reflect the lives of the LGBTQ+ community. Here are a few of the items on that list:
An NPR Best Book of 2017
An AV Club Favorite Book of 2017
A Barnes & Noble Best Book of 2017
A Goodreads Choice Awards nominee
David Sedaris tells all in a book that is, literally, a lifetime in the making
For forty years, David Sedaris has kept a diary in which he records everything that captures his —overheard comments, salacious gossip, soap opera plot twists, secrets confided by total strangers. These observations are the source code for his finest work, and through them he has honed his cunning, surprising sentences.
Now, Sedaris shares his private writings with the world. Theft by Finding, the first of two volumes, is the story of how a drug-abusing dropout with a weakness for the International House of Pancakes and a chronic inability to hold down a real job became one of the funniest people on the planet.
Written with a sharp eye and ear for the bizarre, the beautiful, and the uncomfortable, and with a generosity of spirit that even a misanthropic sense of humor can’t fully disguise, Theft By Finding proves that Sedaris is one of our great modern observers. It’s a potent reminder that when you’re as perceptive and curious as Sedaris, there’s no such thing as a boring day.
Edie Windsor became internationally famous when she sued the US government, seeking federal recognition for her marriage to Thea Spyer, her partner of more than four decades. The Supreme Court ruled in Edie’s favor, a landmark victory that set the stage for full marriage equality in the US. Beloved by the LGBTQ community, Edie embraced her new role as an icon; she had already been living an extraordinary and groundbreaking life for decades.
In this memoir, which she began before passing away in 2017 and completed by her co-writer, Edie recounts her childhood in Philadelphia, her realization that she was a lesbian, and her active social life in Greenwich Village’s electrifying underground gay scene during the 1950s. Edie was also one of a select group of trailblazing women in computing, working her way up the ladder at IBM and achieving their highest technical ranking while developing software. In the early 1960s Edie met Thea, an expat from a Dutch Jewish family that fled the Nazis, and a widely respected clinical psychologist. Their partnership lasted forty-four years, until Thea died in 2009. Edie found love again, marrying Judith Kasen-Windsor in 2016.
“You’re In the Wrong Bathroom”
Debunks the twenty-one most common myths and misperceptions about transgender issues
From Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner to Thomas Beatie (“the pregnant man”) and transgender youth, coverage of trans lives has been exploding—yet so much misinformation persists. Bringing together the medical, social, psychological, and political aspects of being trans in the United States today, “You’re in the Wrong Bathroom!”: And 20 Other Myths About Transgender and Gender-Nonconforming People unpacks the twenty-one most common myths and misconceptions about transgender and gender-nonconforming people. Authors Laura Erickson-Schroth, MD, a psychiatrist, and Laura A. Jacobs, LCSW-R, a psychotherapist, address a range of fallacies:
Trans People Are “Trapped in the Wrong Body”
You’re Not Really Trans If You Haven’t Had “the Surgery”
Trans People Are a Danger to Others, Especially Children
Trans People Are Mentally Ill and Therapy Can Change Them
Trans People and Feminists Don’t Get Along
Macedon Public Library 