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What Obergefell v. Hodges Should Have Said: The Nation's Top Legal Experts Rewrite America's Same-Sex Marriage Decision
by Jack M. BalkinRewriting the Supreme Court’s landmark gay rights decision Jack Balkin and an all-star cast of legal scholars, sitting as a hypothetical Supreme Court, rewrite the famous 2015 opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, which guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry. In eleven incisive opinions, the authors offer the best constitutional arguments for and against the right to same-sex marriage, and debate what Obergefell should mean for the future. In addition to serving as Chief Justice of this imaginary court, Balkin provides a critical introduction to the case. He recounts the story of the gay rights litigation that led to Obergefell, and he explains how courts respond to political mobilizations for new rights claims. The social movement for gay rights and marriage equality is a powerful example of how—through legal imagination and political struggle—arguments once dismissed as “off-the-wall” can later become established in American constitutional law.
What It Feels Like for a Girl
by Paris Lees"Fresh, original, heartbreaking" Reni Eddo-Lodge"Devastating, hilarious, unlike anything I have ever read. Destined to be a classic" Pandora Sykes'A must-read ... as mesmerising as it is poignant' Stylist, SPRING MUST-READ BOOKS TO FEEL EMPOWERED'This utterly distinctive memoir, written almost out loud in Nottinghamshire vernacular, hauls you into the world Lees grew up in... it's shocking, funny, heart-rending and totally brilliant' The Bookseller, EDITOR'S CHOICE MAY 2021'What It Feels Like for a Girl says it like it is' Evening Standard, BEST NEW BOOKS IN 2021Thirteen-year-old Byron needs to get away, and doesn't care how. Sick of being beaten up by lads for "talkin' like a poof" after school. Sick of dad - the weightlifting, womanising Gaz - and Mam, who pissed off to Turkey like Shirley Valentine. Sick of all the people in Hucknall who shuffle about like the living dead, going on about kitchens they're too skint to do up and marriages they're too scared to leave.It's a new millennium, Madonna's 'Music' is top of the charts and there's a whole world to explore - and Byron's happy to beg, steal and skank onto a rollercoaster ride of hedonism. Life explodes like a rush of ecstasy when Byron escapes into Nottingham's kinetic underworld and discovers the East Midlands' premier podium-dancer-cum-hellraiser, the mesmerising Lady Die. But when the comedown finally kicks in, Byron arrives at a shocking encounter that will change life forever. Bold, poignant and riotously funny, What It Feels Like For a Girl is the unique, hotly-anticipated and addictively-readable debut from one of Britain's most exciting young writers.
What Happens in Berlin (Adventures Abroad)
by Jen McConnelFour countries.Three girls.Three loves.One adventure abroad they'll never forget.Interrupting a summer of fun, Joelle takes a detour to Berlin for her older brother's wedding. Spending time with her family is enough to make anyone go a little crazy. She's ready to lose it...until she meets Vi, a girl ready to turn her world upside down.Follow her journey in the third installment of the New Adult series, Adventures Abroad!
What Does Consent Really Mean? (PDF)
by Pete Wallis Joseph Wilkins Thalia Wallis"Consent is not the absence of 'NO', it is an enthusiastic YES!!" While seemingly straightforward, Tia and Bryony hadn't considered this subject too seriously until it comes up in conversation with their friends and they realise just how important it is. Following the sexual assault of a classmate, a group of teenage girls find themselves discussing the term consent, what it actually means for them in their current relationships, and how they act and make decisions with peer influence. Joined by their male friends who offer another perspective, this rich graphic novel uncovers the need for more informed conversations with young people around consent and healthy relationships. Accompanying the graphics are sexual health resources for students and teachers, which make this a perfect tool for broaching the subject with teens.
What Do Gay Men Want?: An Essay on Sex, Risk, and Subjectivity
by David Halperin“Compelling, timely, and provocative. The writing is sleek and exhilarating. It doesn’t waste time telling us what it will do or what it has just done—it just does it.” —Don Kulick, Professor of Anthropology, New York University How we can talk about sex and risk in the age of barebacking—or condomless sex—without invoking the usual bogus and punitive clichés about gay men’s alleged low self-esteem, lack of self-control, and other psychological “deficits”? Are there queer alternatives to psychology for thinking about the inner life of homosexuality? What Do Gay Men Want? explores some of the possibilities. Unlike most writers on the topic of gay men and risky sex, David Halperin liberates gay male subjectivity from psychology, demonstrating the insidious ways in which psychology’s defining opposition between the normal and the pathological subjects homosexuality to medical reasoning and revives a whole set of unexamined moral assumptions about “good” sex and “bad” sex. In particular, Halperin champions neglected traditions of queer thought, including both literary and popular discourses, by drawing on the work of well-known figures like Jean Genet and neglected ones like Marcel Jouhandeau. He shows how the long history of of gay men’s uses of “abjection” can offer an alternative, nonmoralistic model for thinking about gay male subjectivity, something which is urgently needed in the age of barebacking. Anyone searching for nondisciplinary ways to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS among gay men—or interested in new modes of thinking about gay male subjectivity—should read this book. David M. Halperin is W. H. Auden Collegiate Professor of the History and Theory of Sexuality, Professor of English, Professor of Women’s Studies, Professor of Comparative Literature, and Adjunct Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan.
What Belongs to You: A Novel
by Garth GreenwellWinner of the Debut of the Year Award at the British Book Awards.Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize.On an unseasonably warm autumn day, an American teacher enters a public bathroom beneath Sofia's National Palace of Culture. There he meets Mitko, a charismatic young hustler, and pays him for sex. He returns to Mitko again and again over the next few months, their relationship growing increasingly intimate and unnerving.As he struggles to reconcile his longing with the anguish it creates, he's forced to grapple with his own fraught history: his formative experiences of love, his painful rejection by family and friends, and the difficulty of growing up as a gay man in southern America in the 1990s. Startlingly erotic and immensely powerful, Garth Greenwell's What Belongs to You tells an unforgettable story about the ways our pasts and cultures, our scars and shames can shape who we are and determine how we love.Longlisted for the National Book Award in Fiction.A Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.A Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction.
Wendy Wasserstein (Michigan Modern Dramatists)
by Jill DolanPlaywright Wendy Wasserstein (1950–2006), author of The Heidi Chronicles, wrote topical, humorous plays addressing relationships among women and their families, taking the temperature of social moments from the 1960s onward to debate women’s rightful place in their professional and personal lives. The playwright’s popular plays continue to be produced on Broadway and in regional theaters around the country and the world. Wasserstein’s emergence as a popular dramatist in the 1970s paralleled the emergence of the second-wave feminist movement in the United States, a cultural context reflected in the themes of her plays. Yet while some of her comedies and witty dramas were wildly successful, packing theaters and winning awards, feminists of the era often felt that the plays did not go far enough. Wendy Wasserstein provides a critical introduction and a feminist reappraisal of the significant plays of one of the most famous contemporary American women playwrights. Following a biographical introduction, chapters address each of her important plays, situating Wasserstein’s work in the history of the US feminist movement and in a historical moment in which women artists continue to struggle for recognition.
Wendy Carlos: A Biography (Cultural Biographies)
by Amanda SewellWith her debut album Switched-On Bach, composer and electronic musician Wendy Carlos (b. 1939) brought the sound of the Moog synthesizer to a generation of listeners, helping to effect arguably one of the most substantial changes in popular music's sound since musicians began using amplifiers. Her story is not only one of a person who blazed new trails in electronic music for decades but is also the story of a person who intersected in many ways with American popular culture, medicine, and social trends during the second half of the 20th century and well into the 21st. There is much to tell about her life and about the ways in which her life reflects many dimensions of American culture. Carlos's identity as a transgender woman has shaped many aspects of her life, her career, how she relates to the public, and how the public has received her and her music. Cultural factors surrounding the treatment of transgender people affected many of the decisions that Carlos has made over the decades. Additionally, cultural reception and perception of transgender people has colored how journalists, scholars, and fans have written about Carlos and her music for decades.
Wendy Carlos: A Biography (Cultural Biographies)
by Amanda SewellWith her debut album Switched-On Bach, composer and electronic musician Wendy Carlos (b. 1939) brought the sound of the Moog synthesizer to a generation of listeners, helping to effect arguably one of the most substantial changes in popular music's sound since musicians began using amplifiers. Her story is not only one of a person who blazed new trails in electronic music for decades but is also the story of a person who intersected in many ways with American popular culture, medicine, and social trends during the second half of the 20th century and well into the 21st. There is much to tell about her life and about the ways in which her life reflects many dimensions of American culture. Carlos's identity as a transgender woman has shaped many aspects of her life, her career, how she relates to the public, and how the public has received her and her music. Cultural factors surrounding the treatment of transgender people affected many of the decisions that Carlos has made over the decades. Additionally, cultural reception and perception of transgender people has colored how journalists, scholars, and fans have written about Carlos and her music for decades.
The Well of Loneliness (Penguin Modern Classics Series)
by Radclyffe HallThe complete and enhanced editionThis edition contains extra information and archival material that tells the fascinating story behind The Well's controversial publication, trial and ban in 1928.As a little girl Stephen Gordon always felt different. A talent for sport, a hatred of dresses and a preference for solitude were not considered suitable for a young lady of the Victorian upper-class. But when Stephen grows up and falls passionately in love with another woman, her standing in the county and her place at the home she loves become untenable. Stephen must set off to discover whether there is anywhere in the world that will have her.
The Well of Loneliness (Penguin Modern Classics Ser.)
by Radclyffe HallThe Well of Loneliness is the fifth and best-known novel by English author and poet Radclyffe Hall. Becoming a runaway bestseller in its notoriety, it was originally banned by the British after a legal trial and all copies were ordered to be destroyed due to its lesbian plot and characters. After years and appeals, the novel’s ban was overturned, and today it remains one of the most formative and influential lesbian works of the twentieth century. The novel tells the story of a tomboyish and aristocratic Stephen, who hunts, wears pants, and cuts her hair short—and comes to realize she’s attracted to women. She grows to be a war hero, a bestselling writer, and a loyal lover. But while Stephen’s ambitious drive her, society confines her, and she’s forced into desperate actions. Penguin Random House Canada is proud to bring you classic works of literature in e-book form, with the highest quality production values. Find more today and rediscover books you never knew you loved.
The Well of Loneliness (Penguin Modern Classics Series)
by Radclyffe HallNew to Penguin Modern Classics, the seminal work of gay literature that sparked an infamous legal trial for obscenity and went on to become a bestseller.The Well of Loneliness tells the story of tomboyish Stephen, who hunts, wears trousers and cuts her hair short - and who gradually comes to realise that she is attracted to women. Charting her romantic and professional adventures during the First World War and beyond, the novel provoked a furore on first publication in 1928 for its lesbian heroine and led to a notorious legal trial for obscenity. Hall herself, however, saw the book as a pioneer work and today it is recognised as a landmark work of gay fiction.This Penguin edition includes a new introduction by Maureen Duffy.'The archetypal lesbian novel' - Times Literary Supplement'One of the first and most influential contributions of gay and lesbian literature' - New StatesmanRadclyffe Hall was born in 1880. After an unhappy childhood, she inherited her father's estate and from then on was free to travel and live as she chose. She fell in love and lived with an older woman before settling down with Una Troubridge, a married sculptor. Hall wrote many books but is best known for The Well of Loneliness, first published in 1928. She died in 1943 and is buried in Highgate Cemetery in London.Maureen Duffy was born in 1933 and educated at Kings College London. She became a full-time writer in the 1960s, and has since written numerous screenplays, poetry and novels. A lifelong campaigner for gay rights and animal rights, Duffy is also president of the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society.
We'll Never Tell
by Wendy Heard"Those who love One of Us Is Lying, will devour this page-turner." (Buzzfeed) Delve into a murderous, twisty whodunit doused in juicy Hollywood lore. No one at Hollywood High knows who&’s behind We'll Never Tell—a viral YouTube channel where the anonymous creators trespass behind the scenes of LA's most intriguing locales. The team includes CASEY, quiet researcher and trivia champ; JACOB, voice narrator and video editor, who is secretly dating EDDIE, aspiring filmmaker; and ZOE, coder and breaking-and-entering extraordinaire. Now senior year is winding down and with their lives heading in different directions, the YouTubers vow to go out with a bang. Their last episode will be filmed at the infamous Valentini &“murder house,&” which has been left abandoned, bloodstained, and untouched since a shocking murder/suicide in 1972. When the teens break in, they capture epic footage. But someone trips an alarm, and it&’s a mad dash to get out before the police arrive—at which point they realize only three of them escaped instead of four. Jacob is still inside, slain and bleeding out. Is his attack connected to the historic murder, or is one of their crew responsible? A week of suspicions and cover-ups unfolds as Casey and her remaining friends try to stay alive long enough to solve murder mysteries past and present. If they do, their friendship may not survive. If they don't, the house will claim more victims.
Well Behaved Women
by Caroline Lamond‘An engaging portrait of an indomitable woman at the heart of Golden Age Hollywood’ Gill Paul, bestselling author of The Manhattan Girls ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘I was hooked from the first page… it had what I was looking for in the Golden Age of Hollywood’ NetGalley reviewer
Welcome to Fairyland: Queer Miami before 1940
by Julio CapóPoised on the edge of the United States and at the center of a wider Caribbean world, today's Miami is marketed as an international tourist hub that embraces gender and sexual difference. As Julio Capo Jr. shows in this fascinating history, Miami's transnational connections reveal that the city has been a queer borderland for over a century. In chronicling Miami's queer past from its 1896 founding through 1940, Capo shows the multifaceted ways gender and sexual renegades made the city their own.Drawing from a multilingual archive, Capo unearths the forgotten history of "fairyland," a marketing term crafted by boosters that held multiple meanings for different groups of people. In viewing Miami as a contested colonial space, he turns our attention to migrants and immigrants, tourism, and trade to and from the Caribbean--particularly the Bahamas, Cuba, and Haiti--to expand the geographic and methodological parameters of urban and queer history. Recovering the world of Miami's old saloons, brothels, immigration checkpoints, borders, nightclubs, bars, and cruising sites, Capo makes clear how critical gender and sexual transgression is to understanding the city and the broader region in all its fullness.
The Wedding Heard 'Round the World: America's First Gay Marriage
by Gail Langer Karwoski Jack Baker Michael McConnellFifty years after their marriage, Jack and Michael's story is one of the milestone events in the fight for equal rights, and this memoir the unmissable account a remarkable couple.On September 3, 1971, at the dawn of the modern gay movement, Michael McConnell and Jack Baker exchanged vows in the first legal same-sex wedding in the United States. But the battle to get there - legal and emotional - was only the start of their incredible lives together.Jack enrolled in law school, keeping his promise to Michael that he would figure out a way to marry. He did, but the repercussions would echo not only through their lives, but through those of everyo gay person in the US who ever wanted what this one pioneering couple did: a happy family life. This is the story of how they met, how they married, and what came after. And one wedding heard 'round the world.'A beautiful, well-written love story that is heartrending and ultimately heartwarming'Robert Alexander, New York Times bestselling author of The Kitchen Boy'A fascinating story of love and struggle that reads like a novel'Washington Book Review
Wedding Day Drama: Book 4 (Bridesmaids Club)
by Posy DiamondYou are invited to join in the wedding fun with Sophie, Shanti, Cora and Emily! It's Emily's chance to shine - she's starring in the school play, AND her uncle's wedding!Emily has so much to look forward to! She and her Bridesmaids Club friends have all been cast in the school play - and her Uncle Josh is getting married to their drama teacher! But there's drama of the wrong kind when the wedding venue is flooded. Will the wedding need to be cancelled?The Bridesmaids Club girls know that the show - and the wedding! - must go on! They'll just have to improvise . . .
We Were Young (W&N Essentials)
by Niamh Campbell'I love this woman's writing. Golden sentences' Diana Evans'She has already been compared with writers such as Eimear McBride, Ali Smith and Claire Louise Bennett, and indeed Niamh Campbell does add a distinctive new voice to Irish literature... Witty, fiery, wistful and even shocking, with engrossing heady prose, Campbell's style is unique' Irish Independent'An immensely enjoyable novel, and a great validation of Campbell's uncanny emotional insight' Megan Nolan, Sunday Independent'Young then. Before Alva and everything.'Cormac is a photographer. Approaching forty and still single, he suddenly finds himself 'the leftover man'.Through talent and charm, he has escaped small town life and a haunted family. But now his peers are all getting divorced, dying, or buying trampolines in the suburbs. Cormac is dating former students, staying out all night and receiving boilerplate rejection emails for his work, propped up by a constellation of the women and ex-lovers in his life.In the last weeks of the year, Cormac meets Caroline, an ambitious young dancer, and embarks on a miniature odyssey of intimacy. Simultaneously, he must take responsibility for his married brother, whose mid-life crisis forces them both to reckon with a death in the family that hangs over those left behind.Set in Dublin, a city built on burial pits, We Were Young is a dazzlingly clever, deeply enjoyable novel from a Sunday Times Short Story Award-Winning author.'In 30 years from now will some literary critic be asking what is meant by "Campbellesque"? That would not surprise me in the slightest' Irish Times
We Should Not Be Friends: The Story of An Unlikely Friendship
by Will SchwalbeFrom the best-selling author of The End of Your Life Book Club comes a warm, funny, irresistible book that follows an improbable and life-changing friendship over the course of forty years.‘Moving. Salted with intelligence and empathy’ New York Times Book Review‘A page-turner’ New Yorker‘Really shines’ San Francisco Chronicle‘Gorgeous’ Sebastian Junger -------------Imagine a secret society which pairs you with your polar opposite.You meet regularly.What would you talk about?Could you become friends?Will is bookish, quiet, gay, manning AIDS helplines.Maxey is loud, a wrestler, a Jock, intent on a military life.But paired together – over dinner, beers, pool games – they forge an extraordinary and resilient bond.We Should Not Be Friends is an account of their odd-couple relationship, its ups and downs, twists and turns, the misunderstandings and the trust built over forty turbulent years.-------------‘A rare view of male friendship . . . succeeds because Maxey comes across as a great character, a warm and devoted friend’ NPR‘Schwalbe has an uncanny ability to use his personal experience as a springboard for universal truths’ Los Angeles Times‘A charming read with plenty of surprises. Celebrates not only an unlikely friendship, but the strange turns a life can take’ Wall Street Journal‘Schwalbe’s memoir shines. Written like a true friend’ Daily Mail
We Play Ourselves: A Novel
by Jen Silverman'Witty...Earnest...Laugh-out-loud...Pitch-perfect' New York TimesIn the pursuit of fame, how do you know when you've gone too far?When Cass - a thirty-something, promising, queer playwright - receives a prestigious award, it seems as though her career is finally taking off. That is until she finds herself at the centre of a searing public shaming, which relegates her from rising star in New York to a nobody on her best friend's sofa in L.A. As she comes to terms with the extent of her failure, she is forced to question who she is without the thing that has always defined her: her art. So she fills the days by stalking her playwright nemesis, of whom she is excruciatingly envious, and getting pulled into the orbit of the charismatic but manipulative filmmaker next door. As Cass becomes increasingly involved with her neighbour and the group of pugilistic teenage girls she's documenting, Cass begins to dream of a comeback. But when the film spins dangerously out of control, Cass is once again forced to reckon with her ambition, and her rage.We Play Ourselves is a darkly funny novel about the cost of making art, and the art of making enemies. 'Funny, sharp, modern - this is an excellent debut novel. Its bold, edgy, strange heroine has adventures and misadventures, screws up again and again, but somehow won my love. I couldn't put this book down.' Weike Wang, PEN/Hemingway-award winning author of Chemistry
We Had To Remove This Post
by Hanna Bervoets'A superbly poised, psychologically astute and subtle novel of mental unravelling.' Ian McEwan, author of AtonementTo be a content moderator is to see humanity at its worst — but Kayleigh needs money. That’s why she takes a job working for a social media platform whose name she isn’t allowed to mention. Her job: reviewing offensive videos and pictures, rants and conspiracy theories, and deciding which need to be removed. It’s gruelling work. Kayleigh and her colleagues spend all day watching horrors and hate on their screens, evaluating them with the platform’s ever-changing moderating guidelines. Yet Kayleigh is good at her job, and in her colleagues she finds a group of friends, even a new girlfriend — and for the first time in her life, Kayleigh’s future seems bright. But soon the job seems to change them all, shifting their worlds in alarming ways. How long before the moderators own morals bend and flex under the weight of what they see?We Had To Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets is a chilling, powerful and gripping story about who or what determines our world view. Examining the toxic world of content moderation, the novel forces us to ask: what is right? What is real? What is normal? And who gets to decide?Translated from the original Dutch by Emma Rault. 'Fast paced and thrilling, violent and nightmarish and grief-stricken, but also tender and wildly moving.' Kristen Arnett, author of Mostly Dead Things'This novel gives us an acid glimpse into a new form of labor existing today . . . Fascinating and disturbing.' Ling Ma, author of Severance
We Go Around In The Night And Are Consumed By Fire
by Jules GrantVoiced by Donna and her streetwise god-daughter Aurora, this thrillingly original crime novel unfolds at breakneck speed - at once furious, tender and heartbreaking. Lesbian gangster and street poet Donna runs the all-female Bronte Close Gang. Carla, single parent and part-time MC, is her closest friend and trusted second-in-command. Together they carve out an empire in the toughest streets of Manchester. Unlike the city’s other gangs, run by men caught up in violent turf warfare, the women keep their heads down, doing business their way: partying on Canal Street, selling drugs in perfume atomisers in club toilets, and working as cleaners to account for their illegal income. But when Carla is gunned down everything changes.
We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya #2)
by Hafsah FaizalThe epic sequel to the New York Times-bestselling We Hunt the Flame, by the masterful Hafsah Faizal.Darkness surged in his veins. Power bled from her bones.The battle is over, but the war is just beginning. Low on resources and allies alike, Zafira and Nasir are determined to finish their mission; to restore magic to their kingdom.But the land teems with the return of an ancient evil, and as Nasir fights to command the magic in his blood, Zafira battles a very different darkness. And yet, in spite of everything, they find themselves falling into a love they can't stand to lose.Time is running out and if order is to be restored, sacrifices will have to be made . . . Set in a richly detailed world inspired by ancient Arabia, Hafsah Faizal's We Free the Stars is the spellbinding conclusion to the Sands of Arawiya duology.
We Do What We Do in the Dark: 'A haunting study of solitude and connection' Meg Wolitzer
by Michelle Hart'A beautiful book so filled with sharp longing and perfectly phrased vulnerability that I read it in a reverent hush' Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, BabyMallory sees the woman for the first time at her college gym and is immediately transfixed. As a naturally reserved person who is now reeling from the loss of her mother, Mallory finds herself compelled by the woman's assurance, and longs to know her better. Despite the discovery that she is a professor at the college, Mallory finds herself falling into a complicated love affair with the woman, the stakes of which she never quite understands.In the years that follow, Mallory must come to terms with how the relationship shaped her, for better or worse, and learn to become a part of the world that she sacrificed for the sake of a woman she never truly knew.In this enthralling debut novel, the complexities of influence, obsession, and admiration reveal how desire and its consequences can alter the trajectory of a life.'A gorgeous storyteller, Hart is gifted with a poet's precision, blending image and idea. Sensual and wise, this novel channels the melancholic exhilaration of dangerous love' - Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage'Guaranteed to wow' Oprah Daily
We Could Be So Good
by Cat Sebastian‘A spectacularly talented writer!’Julia Quinn, author of Bridgerton From their first awkward meeting I was completely invested in Nick and Andy's relationship. Nick's grumpiness vs Andy's chaotic sunshine was wonderful.Emma Denny, author of One Night in Hartswood Nick should have hated Andy…