Showing results for "press" in Biographies & Memoirs

In 2016, Debbie Hayton underwent gender reassignment surgery. Fast forward to today, and Hayton's refusal to validate the standard gender identity orthodoxy has led to excommunication by the trans activist community. What happened? Transsexual Apostate weaves an intimate account of Debbie's story into a forensic critique of trans ideology. Focussing mainly on transwomen, she examines the reality of male autogynephilia and argues that the vast majority of transwomen are men with a psychological disorder that needs to be managed compassionately.

In the turbulent voyage of life, where traumas weigh like anchors and relationships often drift, Remember Who the F*ck You Are raises a clarion call: Keep Going. The message? Amidst life’s tempests, resilience is your compass, and tenacity, your sail. Expect a profound mix of raw vulnerability, tales that might sting with their familiarity, emotional peaks and valleys, and a sprinkle of humor to lighten the darkest corners.

In this brave and thoughtful book, Max Robinson goes beyond the ‘before' and ‘after' of the transition she underwent and takes us through the processes that led her, first, to transition in an attempt to get relief from her distress, and then to detransition as she discovered feminist thought and community.

Jeremy Ivester is a transgender man. Thirty years ago, his parents welcomed him into the world as what they thought was their daughter. As a child, he preferred the toys and games our society views as masculine. He kept his hair short and wore boys’ clothing. They called him a tomboy. That’s what he called himself. By high school, when he showed no interest in flirting, his parents thought he might be lesbian. At 20, he wondered if he was asexual. At 23, he surgically removed his breasts.

Entwined explores the fuzzy lines between friendship, romance, and family with various essay forms, including a play, an advice column, and a love letter. Rather than wallowing in the throes of jealousy, this collection celebrates the hard work, humor, and wisdom needed to create a love life that resists conventional narratives.

Suzette Mullen had been raised to play it safe—and she hated causing others pain. With college and law degrees, a kind and successful husband, two thriving adult sons, and an ocean-view vacation home, she lived a life many people would envy. But beneath the happy facade was a woman who watched her friends walk boldly through their lives and wondered what was holding her back from doing the same.

Abby Stein was raised in a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, isolated in a culture that lives according to the laws and practices of 18th century Eastern Europe, speaking only Yiddish and Hebrew and shunning modern life. Stein was born as the first son in a dynastic rabbinical family, poised to become a leader of the next generation of Hasidic Jews. But Abby felt certain at a young age that she was a girl. She orchestrated a personal exodus from ultra-Orthodox manhood to mainstream femininity - a radical choice that forced her to leave her home, her family, her way of life.

Lorraine Hansberry, who died at thirty-four, was by all accounts a force of nature. Although best-known for her work A Raisin in the Sun, her short life was full of extraordinary experiences and achievements, and she had an unflinching commitment to social justice, which brought her under FBI surveillance when she was barely in her twenties. While her close friends and contemporaries, like James Baldwin and Nina Simone, have been rightly celebrated, her story has been diminished and relegated to one work—until now.

Philippa Ryder's journey to embracing her true self as a transgender woman has left an indelible mark on Irish culture. Growing up as a boy in the 1960s, she felt out of place, drawn to dressing in her sister's and later her wife's clothes. It wasn't until the 1990s that she discovered she wasn't alone in these feelings. Navigating the challenging path of transitioning from male to female, 'My Name is Philippa' tells an extraordinary tale of love, understanding, and the unwavering support of a family who stayed united as Philippa transformed from husband and father to wife and mother.

Robert O’Brien loves cars. Growing up in Dublin, they provided a welcome refuge from the human interaction he found so difficult. His father’s race car, a BMW E30 M3 Sport Evolution he named the Beast, became his alter ego—powerful, admired, confident—and Robert began a quest to become a worthy owner. He completed a university degree, took courses to conquer his stutter and tried to come to terms with his sexuality. But still he remained more comfortable in the fantasy worlds of video games and television.

Making My Pitch tells the story of Ila Jane Borders, who, despite formidable obstacles, became a Little League prodigy, MVP of her otherwise all-male middle school and high school teams, the first woman awarded a baseball scholarship, and the first to pitch and win a complete men’s collegiate game. 

Resilience isn’t inherited. It’s a hard-fought skill forged by our ability to pick up the broken pieces of our past and remake them into something new. Meet four-year-old Delicia, a poor but carefree child who is about to have her world shattered. Along with her seven-year-old brother Nile, she is kidnapped from her Los Angeles home by her estranged father and taken to Iraq, a foreign world she has never known. This is just the beginning of a string of traumas, hardships, and assaults Delicia will endure throughout her tumultuous childhood.

Did I mention I thought I was straight back then? And that I had no clue he was gay? How was I ever that clueless. OMG! I nearly passed out.I mean, after we got naked and . . . Over the next few years, my whole world changed. I went from never-do-anything-wrong preacher’s kid to a wild child sowing his oats.

In this raw yet enchanting collection of poems and essays, Tyler Gaca dreamily navigates themes of magic and queerness, offering readers an intimate look inside his mind and his worlds, real and imagined. The writings in Gentle Chaos reflect on growing up queer and in love with magic, discovering yourself and your place in the world, and daring to seek out love and hope. The result is a whimsical, vulnerable, and transporting journey into the gentle chaos within us all.

In this unflinching and riveting coming-of-age memoir, Patricia Grayhall battles sexism in a male-dominated profession. She plunges into a life that is never boring—and certainly never without passion. Tossed around in the rough seas of medical training, chronically exhausted and emotionally drained, Patricia chafes at the toxic masculinity of the culture of medicine facing many of the same issues women face in male-dominated fields today.

Lorinda Boyer strove continuously to be virtuous in the eyes of God and to live the life she believed He intended for her. She married her high school boyfriend at eighteen and had two kids by twenty-eight. Although she created a perfect Christian home for her family, she never felt wholly content in her role as wife and mother. Then her life intersected with Robin's-the woman who would ultimately awaken her sexuality and show her true love for the first time.

"Why aren't you angry?" people often asked Martin Moran after he told his story of how he came to forgive the man who sexually abused him as a boy. At first the question pissed him off. Then it began to haunt him. Why didn't he have more anger? Why had he never sought redress for the crime committed against him? Was his fury hidden, buried? Was he not man enough? Here he was, an adult in midlife, with an established acting career, a husband. A life. And yet the question of rage began to obsess him.

Midlife Emergence is a revelatory memoir and an inviting guidebook; it is a compassionate companion that belongs in the collection of every woman who finds herself burning to reclaim powerful parts of herself that social conditioning locked away. Midlife doesn’t need to be a crisis or an emergency—rather, it’s an emergence, an opportunity to make those beautiful, unexpressed facets shamelessly visible.

What if your first love was a forbidden one? At 23, Felice Cohen was--like other recent college grads--hesitant about entering the real world with the added stress of coming out in the early '90s. Focused on how to land a full-time position as a writer, falling in love was the last thing on her mind. But fall in love she did. With her boss, a woman 34 years older.

Selling Dead People’s Things is a wry behind-the-curtain peek into the world of antiques and their obsessive owners—while still alive and after their passing. An amusing observer of the human condition, author Duane Scott Cerny entertains in illuminating, scary, sad, or frightfully funny resale tales and essays. Whether processing the estate of a hoarding beekeeper, disassembling the retro remains of an infamous haunted hospital, or conducting an impromptu appraisal during a shiva gone disturbingly wrong, every day is a twisted treasure hunt.