On August 29, 1867, former assistant attorney for the German civil service, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, spoke at a Congress of 500 German Jurists in Munich. It was here that Ulrichs made history by publicly declaring himself to be attracted to men while urging the jurists to repeal the laws against homosexuality (note: the word "homosexual" was coined a year later by journalist Karl-Maria Kertbeny in a letter to Ulrichs 150 years ago, the word ‘homosexual’ was coined in a secret correspondence GVGK Tang GVGK Tang). For his efforts, however, Ulrichs was shouted at and shut down before he could finish speaking. Ulrichs left Germany in 1880 to live in voluntary exile in Italy until his death in 1895. (Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895) and the United States, by Jonathan Ned Katz, Ulrichs, Karl Heinrich (1825-1895) by Hubert Kennedy)
"Until my dying day I will look back with pride that I found the courage to come face to face in battle against the spectre which for time immemorial has been injecting poison into me and into men of my nature. Many have been driven to suicide because all their happiness in life was tainted. Indeed, I am proud that I found the courage to deal the initial blow to the hydra of public contempt.“ — Karl Heinrich Ulrichs
An Official State of Illinois charter was granted to the Society for Human Rights, on December 24, 1924, thus making it America's oldest documented gay rights organization. The Society was founded by Henry Gerber. While stationed in Germany, during WWI, Gerber, became inspired by Magnus Hirschfeld and the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, (the first LGBT emancipation organization), and their attempts to overturn anti-homosexual law in Germany. The Society for Human Rights created Friendship and Freedom, the first gay-interest newsletter in the United States. Only 2 issues were ever published. A few months after being charted the members of the group were arrested on "obscenity" charges, and while the charges were eventually dropped, political pressures forced the group to disband. (The Society for Human Rights, Friendship and Freedom). Gerber moved from Chicago to New York, and eventually re-enlisted in the Army, serving for 17 more years, and then retired to a Soldier's Home in Washington D.C., after WWII. From there Gerber offered his support to organizations such as the Mattachine Society and ONE. (https://www.gerberhart.org/meet-henry-and-pearl/)
January 1st, 1962, Illinois becomes the first state in the U.S. to decriminalize homosexuality. -Celebrating Illinois’ LGBTQ History. In New York, however, they still had laws against serving gay and lesbian customers in bars and restaurants. Gay bars were frequently raided and shut down. Stonewall Inn of Greenwich Village, was one of these bars. The bar was owned by the Mafia and the cops were regularly bribed to stay away. They did not. Police would still come to the bar, make some arrests, and Stonewall Inn would be shut down for a few hours. Then on June 28, 1969 something changed. Instead of overall compliance the crowd fought back. Word spread and the crowd grew. Chants of "Gay Power" accompanied by the sounds of glass breaking as various items were thrown. Having lost control, to police retreated and barricaded themselves within the bar and waited for reinforcements. The Stonewall Riots lasted for six days. One month later a rally was held in New York promoting gay rights. -(Pride : an inspirational history of the LGBTQ+ movement by Caldwell, S. A.)
Copy describing the books listed below is provided by the publishers
After the riots, new groups were formed, such as the Gay Activists Alliance the Gay Liberation Front. Marches for liberation started to spread across the nation and throughout the world. -(Pride Day : celebrating community by Stevenson, Robin)
One year later, on June 28, 1970, what is considered the first Pride parade was held to chants of "Say it clear, Say it loud. Gay is good, gay is proud!", "Two, four, six, eight --gay is just as good and straight!", and "Three, five, seven, nine --lesbians are mighty fine!" ( What was Stonewall? by Medina, Nico) In Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, concurrent marches were being held.The stonewall riots weren't the first attempt at taking a stand, but it is considered the beginning of the Pride movement.
Small Beauty tells the story of Mei, who in coping with the death of her cousin abandons her life in the city to live in his now empty house in a small town. There she connects with his history as well as her own, learns about her aunt's long-term secret relationship, and reflects on the trans women she left behind. She also brushes up against some local trans mysteries and gets advice from departed loved ones with a lot to say.
"When Darnell L. Moore was fourteen years old, three boys from his neighborhood tried to set him on fire as he was walking home from school. Darnell was tall and awkward and constantly bullied for being gay. That afternoon, one of the boys doused him with gasoline and tried lighting a match. It was too windy, and luckily Darnell's aunt arrived in time to grab Darnell and pull him to safety. It was not the last time he would face death. What happens to the black boys who come of age in neglected, poor, heavily policed, and economically desperate cities that the War on Drugs and mass incarceration have created? How do they learn to live, love, and grow up? Darnell was raised in Camden, NJ, the son of two teenagers on welfare struggling to make ends meet. He explored his sexuality during the height of the AIDS epidemic, when being gay was a death sentence. He was beaten down and ignored by white and black America, by his school, and even his church, the supposed place of sanctuary. He made it out, but as he quickly learned, escaping Camden, escaping poverty, and coming out do not guarantee you freedom. It wasn't until Darnell was pushed into the spotlight at a Newark rally after the murder of a young queer woman that he found his voice and his calling. He became a leading organizer with Black Lives Matter, a movement that recognized him and insisted that his life mattered. In recovering the beauty, joy, and love in his own life, No Ashes in the Fire gives voice to the rich, varied experiences of all those who survive on the edges of the margins. In the process, he offers a path toward liberation"-- Provided by publisher.
"A memoir of Karina Manta, the first female member of USA Figure Skating to come out as queer"--. Provided by publisher.
"Lake Geneva, 1816. Nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley is inspired to write a story about a scientist who creates a new life-form. In Brexit Britain, a young transgender doctor called Ry is falling in love with Victor Stein, a celebrated professor leading the public debate around AI and carrying out some experiments of his own in a vast underground network of tunnels. Meanwhile, Ron Lord, just divorced and living with his mom again, is set to make his fortune launching a new generation of sex dolls for lonely men everywhere. Across the Atlantic, in Phoenix, Arizona, a cryogenics facility houses dozens of bodies of men and women who are medically and legally dead ... but waiting to return to life. What will happen when homo sapiens is no longer the smartest being on the planet? In fiercely intelligent prose, Jeanette Winterson shows us how much closer we are to that future than we realize. Funny and furious, bold and clear-sighted, Frankissstein is a love story about life itself"-- Provided by publisher.
Propelled by his best friend's impending move out of state and inspired by Ferris Bueller's Day Off, sixteen-year-old Harrison plans a farewell through Baltimore that includes a road trip, their first Pride, and a rooftop dance party.
"The acclaimed literary essayist T Kira Madden's raw and redemptive debut is a memoir about coming of age as a queer, biracial teenager within the fierce contradictions of Boca Raton, Florida, a place where cult-like privilege, shocking social and racial disparities, rampant white-collar crime, and powerfully destructive standards of beauty hide in plain sight. As a child in Florida, T Kira Madden lived a life of extravagance--from her exclusive private school to her equestrian trophies and designer shoes, she had plenty to envy. But beneath the surface, life in "the rat's mouth" of Boca Raton was dangerous. Left to her own devices as both parents battled drug addiction, Kira navigated the perils of coming of age too quickly, and without guidance--oblivious parents and misguided babysitters at home, tormentors at school, sexual predators at the mall, and the confused, often destructive, desperately loving friendship of fatherless girls. With unflinching honesty and moving, lyrical prose, and spanning from 1960's Hawai'i to the nip and tuck rooms of 1990s Florida to the present-day struggle of a young woman in a culture of harassment, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is the story of families both lost and found, unmade and rebuilt, crooked and beautiful" -- Provided by publisher.
A novel in verse that captures the unbalanced experience of an all-consuming love between two unnamed, queer, Black teen girls who move rapidly from strangerhood into a protective best friendship before becoming dysfunctional lovers and mutually destructive partners in crime. -Provided by Publisher
"[A novel] about three women--transgender and cisgender--whose lives collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces them to confront their deepest desires around gender, motherhood, and sex..."-- Publisher's description.
"On a hot day in Bethlehem, a twelve-year-old Palestinian-American girl is yelled at by a group of men outside the Church of the Nativity. She has exposed her legs in a biblical city, an act they deem forbidden, and their judgment will echo on through her adolescence. When our narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mother's response only intensifies a sense of shame: 'You exist too much,' she tells her daughter. Told in vignettes that flash between the U.S. and the Middle East--from New York to Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine--Zaina Arafat's debut novel traces her protagonist's progress from blushing teen to sought-after DJ and aspiring writer"--Dust jacket flap.
A Jamaican woman leaves her daughter behind to immigrate to New York, where the happier life she expected is difficult to find as an undocumented worker -- adapted from jacket description.
When Patsy gets her long-coveted visa to America, she looks forward leaving Pennyfield, the beautiful but impoverished Jamaican town where they were raised. Her plans don’t include her overzealous, evangelical mother-- or her own five-year-old daughter, Tru. When Patsy arrives in Brooklyn, she survives as an undocumented immigrant, working as a bathroom attendant and nanny. Meanwhile, Tru builds a faltering relationship with her father back in Jamaica, grappling with her own questions of identity and sexuality, and trying desperately to empathize with her mother's decision. -- adapted from jacket
Who says you can't run away from your problems? You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else. You can't say yes--it would be too awkward--and you can't say no--it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world.
QUESTION: How do you arrange to skip town?
ANSWER: You accept them all.
What would possibly go wrong? Arthur Less will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Saharan sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and encounter, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to face. Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. Through it all, there is his first love. And there is his last.
Because, despite all these mishaps, missteps, misunderstandings and mistakes, Less is, above all, a love story.
A scintillating satire of the American abroad, a rumination on time and the human heart, a bittersweet romance of chances lost, by an author The New York Times has hailed as "inspired, lyrical," "elegiac," "ingenious," as well as "too sappy by half," Less shows a writer at the peak of his talents raising the curtain on our shared human comedy. -Provided by Publisher
"Ash has never thought much about being intersex. But when he gets his period and his parents pressure him to 'try being a girl,' he must fight for who he really is"--. Provided by publisher.
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