ACTUP.ORG: China – Being gay: In history and literature homosexuality was open and tolerated

In both Chinese history and literature, homosexuality was open and tolerated. Has social acceptance come full cycle as China increasingly engages the international community? Is there a place for same-sex relationships now? The China Daily Sunday team of Han Bingbin, Gan Tian, Shi Yingying and Xu Lin file the reports.

Click the link above to read the article. TW: pederasty

There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other’s names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name. — Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

LGBTQ* Tumblrs You Should Know

Queer Between The Lines 

“Words are beautiful. You are beautiful.”

(You can tell  Queer Between The Lines’s moderator* that you look forward to meeting her soon. She will be one of the newest members to the KNOWhomo family as the Vlog launches.)

(via knowhomo)

Source: queerbetweenthelines

[History] Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out

bisexual-community:

bialogue-group:

Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out is the book that catalyzed the movement for bisexual identity and activism, helped spark at least ten other books (many by its own contributors) and was named one of Lambda Book Review’s Top 100 LGBT Books of the 20th century. It frequently appears on numerous LGBT reading lists, from assistance in coming out to queer studies curriculum guides.

Says Sarah Stumpf on Bilerico’s “10 Books Every Bisexual Should Read”, “One of the most famous books about bisexuality, and still one of the most important. In 1991 this book shattered the idea that there was a ‘typical’ bisexual by challenging the stereotypes that still plague us today … it was one of the first books I read that made me feel like home, like I had found my people.”

An anthology edited by Dr. Loraine Hutchins and Lani Ka’ahumanu, is one of the seminal books in the history of the modern bisexual rights movement. It holds a place that is in many ways comparable to that held by Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in the feminist movement.

Wendy Curry, longtime bisexual rights activist and a former president of the American national bisexual civil rights group BiNet USA says:

“This groundbreaking book gave voice to a generation of previously unseen bisexuals. Rather than arguing statistics or debating the sexuality of long dead celebrities, Hutchins and Ka’ahumanu gave a space to normal bisexuals who told their lives. This created a new genre for books on bisexuality.”

The book comprises fiction and non-fiction pieces, poetry and art created by a diverse group of over seventy bisexual people speaking about their lives.

stuff all bisexual/non-monosexual people should know

Source: facebook.com

: radical women of color literature, free .pdf

themfriend:

Audre LORDE : Zami, A New Spelling of My Name… Sister Outsider… Undersong – Chosen Poems Old and New

Patricia Hill Collins: Black Feminist Thought Knowledge Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment.

Angela Davis & Neferti Tadiar: Beyond the Frame Women of Color and…

(via equalityblogdirectory-deactivat)

Source: themfriend

Government slashes funding for queer-friendly publishers

cassket:

The Harper government this week abruptly cut federal funding to the Literary Press Group, a not-for-profit association of 47 Canadian book publishers.

By acting as both advocacy group and sales-and-marketing agent for such small independent publishers as Coach House Books and Insomniac Press, LPG has boosted the careers of many an up-and-coming queer author, including journalist Shawn Micallef, mystery writer Anthony Bidulka, playwright Thom Vernon and poet Marcus McCann.

At an awards dinner in New York on June 4, Toronto writer Farzana Doctor was presented with a Lambda Literary Award for her second novel, Six Metres of Pavement.

“LPG was the distributor for my first book’s publisher, Inanna,” Doctor says, “one of those tiny feminist presses that will publish work the larger houses won’t. They work hard with few resources and staff. My sense is that they very much rely on LPG to get their books into stores across the country. This will create hardship for small publishers and the authors they publish.”

Marcus McCann thinks there’s an indifference to small press publishing in the Conservative government. (Joey Bruni (10x10 project))

LPG executive director Jack Illingworth calls the move “devastating for gay and lesbian authors.”

“This is going to make it harder to get those books into the hands of readers,” he says, noting a first novel from a queer Canadian author is rarely the top sales priority for Amazon or Indigo.

“You can see really clearly that there’s an indifference to small press publishing in the Conservative government,” says McCann. “Basically, they want us all to be reading Maclean’s and John Grisham. LPG is a way to level the playing field just a tiny bit for smaller presses. And if you don’t level the playing field a little for smaller guys, then work by, for and from alternative and minority voices doesn’t get made, produced or sold. That’s bad news for the gay reading public. It puts at risk sexually explicit work, work that challenges gender and political work.

In 2011, LPG received approximately $250,000 through the Department of Canadian Heritage’s Canada Book Fund and had applied again last October. Illingworth says it’s the timing of the funding cuts now, two months after the start of the fiscal year on April 1, that’s the biggest problem. Had they been told of the cuts earlier in the year, he says, LPG could have worked out a contingency plan.

“Our chief concern is the fall season,” says Illingworth, who is marshalling marketing efforts toward getting books in shops before the holiday season, even as the entire sales force has learned they’ll be laid off at the end of August and LPG’s administrative staff of eight cut down to two by November.

Farzana Doctor says the cuts will create hardship for publishers and authors. (Vivek Shraya)

While this move from the Harper government is similar to the 2010 funding caps in the Canada Periodical Fund that led to a culling of small magazines, Illingworth doesn’t see a particularly anti-arts agenda at work.

“I can speculate, but I really have no clue,” he says. “It’s weird and stupid public policy. Support for the Canada Book Fund was renewed 18 months ago, but obviously someone didn’t understand. We were vetoed at some higher level.” Beyond what seems like whim, Illingworth says, is the larger issue of “no transparency in the process … It’s all a big mess.”

Representatives from the Canada Book Fund did not return Xtra’s requests for a statement by press time.

The ripple effects are already being felt, reports book industry magazine Quill & Quire, as Insomniac Press publisher Mike O’Connor has announced the pruning of their spring 2013 list from 10 to 12 new titles to about four.

Toronto author Liz Bugg just had her second mystery novel, Oranges and Lemons, published by Insomniac in April and had been impressed by LPG’s work on her behalf.

“Many Canadian publishers just don’t have the person power to do the jobs necessary in order to get our books out there,” she says. “Without government assistance, these same publishers will not be able to hire someone to take the place of LPG. I hope that this is all a huge mistake, but if not, the Canadian book industry and the government opposition parties must take action in order to swiftly rectify the situation.”

Illingworth says he’s “cautiously optimistic,” noting that some of their members, such as Coach House, will come out of this okay, but overall, “running a sales agency requires scale. Government funding allowed us to do that.” Now, however, queer authors have lost a strong voice.

(via )

Source: xtra.ca

Bi Magazine: Bisexual Books: 24th Annual Lambda Literary Award Finalists Announced

bimagazine:

The Lambda Literary Foundation has announced the finalists for the 24th Annual Lambda Literary Awards, honoring achievement in LGBT writing for books published in 2011. The awards this year include two separate categories, Nonfiction & Fiction, with five books nominated in each, for a …

(via transqueery)

Source: bimagazine.org

Lambda Literary Awards 2012: New Books to Love

pansexualpride:

The Lambda Awards started in 1988 with a mission to celebrate and preserve LGBT literature. Nominated books deal with queer subject matter, are written by queer authors, or both. 2012 had a record number of nominations, with over 600 titles from about 250 publishers. This year’s winners will be announced on June 4 at the CUNY Graduate Centre in New York.

This year, the awards re-opened to all authors, regardless of sexual orientation. The change marks a return to the beginning of the awards, which did not always require the winners to be LGBT-identified (In 2009, the Lambda Literary Foundation controversially changed its policy to reflect the fact that the awards would go to LGBT-identified writers.).

The Lambda Awards have also struggled with representation — separate categories for transgender fiction and non-fiction only appeared last year, and separate categories for bisexuality appeared the year before that. In 1992, an anthology on bisexuality competed and lost in the Lesbian Anthology category. In 2004, a transphobic book made the lists of finalists in the Transgender category until protests and petitions got it removed. Last year, authors started to debate the place of personal queer identity in queer literature in their own acceptance speeches. This year, the three new (sponsored) awards meant to recognize queer authors can go to “one gay man and one lesbian” and “one male-identified and one female-identified author,” which excludes bisexual and trans* people.

In sum: the Lambda Awards are not perfect, though they have been slowly improving and will hopefully continue to do so. But they do recognize queer literature, and having as much recognition of queer art as possible is something to get behind. The following books are the 2012 finalists I’m most excited about, not in order, and the ones I am most obsessively adding to my “to read” pile.

What are you looking forward to reading? What do you have in a pile next to your bed right now? Let us know!

Lesbian General Fiction

The Necessity of Certain Behaviors, by Shannon Cain

This collection offers a wide look at sexual desire an identity and includes stories about a polyamory utopia, a zoo for homosexual animals, a steam room, and others. According toits review in the Rumpus:

“The hip, quirky scenarios of Cain’s debut collection, which won the 2011 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, partly explain why her work stands out among debut short fiction, but they don’t explain why these stories are so good. The satisfaction they offer has less to do with Cain’s (wonderfully bewildered) characters or (satisfyingly non-gimmicky) plot developments, I think, than it has to do with her dead-accurate sardonic tone. And given how delicious that tone is, I’m surprised Necessity didn’t attract more attention last year. In these stories, the characters and the narrator both speak in ‘the flat tones of their urban language,’ as one story names it, with an effect of subtle but satisfying irony.”

Lesbian Memoir/Biography

Small Fires, by Julie Marie Wade

Small Fires is a self-reflexive book about childhood and being a daughter. From the publisher:

“There are floating tea lights in the bath, coddled blossoms in the garden, and a mother straddling her teenage daughter’s back, astringent in hand, to better scrub her not-quite-presentable pores. And throughout, Wade traces this lost world with the same devotion as her mother among her award-winning roses. Small Fires is essay as elegy, but it is also essay as parsing, reconciliation, and celebration, all in the attempt to answer the question — what have you given up in order to become who you are?”

Transgender Fiction

The Butterfly and the Flame, by Dana De Young

I love dystopias! (I mean. To read about.) In a dystopic 2404, being gay is a capital offence, capital punishment is back, women are not allowed to work, and forced marriages are everywhere. Fifteen-year-old Emily La Rouche is being forced to marry her landlord’s son. If she refuses, her family will suffer, and if she agrees, the world will discover that she was born a boy, and so she flees across post-apocalyptic America in search of a new home. From the Bibrary review:

“Emily’s story is an emotional one, a tragic tale that contains just enough hope to make the heartache and the sorrow palatable. She’s a wonderfully well-rounded character, but one who is plagued by the dual angst of being a teenager and being transgender. Only a transgender author could so accurately portray the depths of Emily’s emotion, whether it’s her suicidal despair as she fashions her own noose, or her blissfully innocent joy as she is gifted with her first dress. Throw an arranged marriage into the mix, with the intended’s family wholly ignorant of Emily’s secret, and you have the makings for a complex take of human relationships.”

Transgender Nonfiction

Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels, by Justin Vivian Bond

Tango is a novella-length childhood memoir from Justin Vivian Bond, a transgender actor, performance artist, and singer-songwriter, that I read because Autostraddle told me to. In hisreview on Autostraddle with Annika, Sebastian says this:

“Before I go on about how great this book is, I want to be honest: the first time I read it, I didn’t like it that much. I think I went into it hoping that as a memoir from Justin Vivian Bond, someone who has navigated the world ‘between’ genders with grace and poise, and even glamour, that Tango would offer some real insight into gender and gender identity. One friend who read the first half or so said it seemed like ‘a lot of regurgitation without reflection.’ And that’s how I initially felt – I wanted V to tell us what it all meant, damnit! Plus I had a hard time wading through the stories of sexual rendezvous between teenage boys.

But then I read it again. And I realized my expectations of the book were all wrong. It’s not a memoir of Mx. Bond’s life or career or a study of how V bends gender – it’s a memoir of V’s childhood. It’s not supposed to be some insightful reflection or an educational piece.

It’s a story (well lots of stories) about a kid who is still trying to figure shit out… without the luxury of normality.”

Bisexual Fiction

The Correspondence Artist, by Barbara Browning

The Correspondence Artist is a largely epistolary novel (read: told in letters, or in this case emails) about Vivian and her love affair with an artist. According to the Bookslut review:

“The Correspondence Artist is a mysterious romance we only get to see in the rarified aether of online communication, and she capably relays the sensation of that perilously ambiguous world. Addressing the audience directly in the beginning, her narrator Vivian explains that what follows is a one-sided history of her ailing romance with a nameless ‘paramour,’ an internationally renowned artistic figure. Since this person places a very high premium on privacy, she’s decided to create not one but four separate fictional lovers behind whom she can disguise the real details of the affair. But these different characters also allow her to try and explain various parts of her lover’s real inconsistencies and endearing flaws.”

Bisexual Nonfiction

Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature, edited by Qwo-Li Driskill, Daniel Heath Justice, Deborah Miranda, and Lisa Tatonetti

Sovereign Erotics is a finalist in both Bisexual Nonfiction and LGBT Anthology, which is pretty awesome. It’s also the only book published since 1988 that focusses on the writing and art of Indigenous two-spirit and queer people. From Amazon:

“This landmark collection strives to reflect the complexity of identities within Native Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Two-Spirit (GLBTQ2) communities. Gathering together the work of established writers and talented new voices, this anthology spans genres (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and essay) and themes (memory, history, sexuality, indigeneity, friendship, family, love, and loss) and represents a watershed moment in Native American and Indigenous literatures, Queer studies, and the intersections between the two.

Collaboratively, the pieces in Sovereign Erotics demonstrate not only the radical diversity among the voices of today’s Indigenous GLBTQ2 writers but also the beauty, strength, and resilience of Indigenous GLBTQ2 people in the twenty-first century.”

LGBT Anthology

Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme, edited by Ivan E. Coyote & Zena 

Sharman

This book is the best. Contributors include Bevin Branlandingham, Raw Spoon, Zoe Whittall, S. Bear Bergman, Anna Camilleri, Leah Lakshmi, Amber Dawn, Karleen Pendleton Jiménz, and other awesome people. In her review on Autostraddle, Marni writes:

“The words butch and femme are pretty loaded for some people — which is good! The book is as much of a reclamation as it is an explosion of our understanding of and experiences with butch and femme identities. It includes essays that cherish and celebrate butch and femme as well as seek to critique, expand, and redefine these categories. Most importantly, it offers playful and unique insights into the complexities of our fierce (and fiercely-vulnerable) messy-perfect queer lives. This is The Way That We Live for real.”

LGBT Young Adult

Huntress, by Malinda Lo

Huntress is set in the same world as Ash (Lo’s first novel, a lesbian retelling of Cinderella), but centuries earlier, and incorporates elements of the I Ching. Like Ash, it avoids stereotyping gay characters and falling into the traditional plotlines of gay YA. On her website, Lo writes:

“I knew that I wanted certain things in the story: A girl having an adventure. A romance with sexual tension. A world on the verge of dying (I’m a big fan of dystopians). Powerful, creepy fairies. Weapons. And I wanted it to be a hero’s quest. As I noted in my writing journal back in October 2008 when I was figuring out what would happen, ‘The point of the quest is to bring order and harmony back to the mortal world.’ Putting all those things together, the book that came out was Huntress.”

LGBT SF/F/H

Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories, edited by JoSelle Vanderhooft

Lesbians and steampunk are together at last in this collection of fifteen short stories, edited JoSelle Vanderhooft. Contributors include Sara Harvey, Mike Allen, NK Jemisin, Shira Lipkin, Meredith Holmes. Matthew Kressel, Beth Wodzinski, Georgina Bruce, JosSelle Vanderhooft, and Aml El-Mohtar. According toGoodreads,

“The 15 tantalizing, thrilling, and ingenious tales in ‘Steam-Powered’ put a new spin on steampunk by putting women where they belong — in the captain’s chair, the laboratory, and one another’s arms. The women push steampunk to its limits and beyond.”

(via )

NERDBUTTS: Lisbeth Salander and the End of Men

article by Dave Shapiro of Nerdbutts

(TRIGGER WARNING: discussion of rape, rape culture and related topics)

I haven’t read Steig Larsson’s novel The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, nor have I seen the recently released American film adaptation. I do work at a bookstore, and I do know many people who have read the book and/or seen the Swedish films, and so I am familiar enough with the character of Lisbeth Salander and her background that I could understand fully the article “We Are All Lisbeth Salander”, written by Katie Roiphe and published by Slate a couple of days ago. 

It’s a clumsy article that appeared to me at first to be trying to reconcile the state of female characters in popular media with the state of women in the real world. Real analyses of this type on sites not explicitly labelled as feminist are pretty rare, and so I was excited at the prospect of an article that connected the dots between women and their fictional counterparts. Unfortunately the article failed to really explicitly say anything except that we like “damaged” female heroines these days. Its title claims that we are all Lisbeth Salander, but its word choice and tone said something much different.

Click the link above to read the full article and comment with your opinion.

SUBMISSION: Bold Strokes Books Looking for Fictional Short Stories from LGBTQ Youth

Editors: Radclyffe and Katherine E. Lynch, Ph.D.

Publisher: Bold Strokes Books (http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com)

Deadline for Submissions: December 15, 2011

 

OMGqueer is soliciting fictional short stories about “being queer” from youth (14-24) across the nation. Use the power of fiction to tell us about coming out (or not), about dating, about sex, about what “family” means to you, etc.

 

OMGqueer will strive for diversity with respect to the many identity categories that fall under the queer umbrella: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, etc. Submissions will be judged on the quality of their narratives and diversity of voices. Specific submission guidelines can be found at omgqueer.com

ACTION ALERT!! Check Out & BookMark QueerWorks.Net!!

QueerWorks is an anonymous online publisher dedicated to inspiring courage, hope and love in GLBTQ individuals. 

All literary work published by QueerWorks is FREE and can be distributed by anyone for FREE. Any distribution of QueerWorks’ literary work for profit must be first approved by QueerWorks. 

Arriving December 1st, 2011

14-Year-Old Lesbian Launches LGBT Youth Book Project | shewired.com

By: Boo Jarchow

Even in today’s internet-based world, age-appropriate books about LGBT people and issues can provide a lifeline for LGBT youth. Not all schools have the resources to put towards the inclusion of LGBT books in their libraries. Amelia Roskin-Frazeel, a 14-year-old from California is providing a solution with The Make It Safe Project, which gives free packages of LGBT books to schools without any, and makes sure students have access to them, according to Bay Windows.

“When I figured out that a lot of schools didn’t have any resources about what it means to be LGBT or how to come out,” explained Amelia, “I decided that I wanted to help send those books to schools.”

Since the project launched last month, Amelia has provided packages for schools in Arizona, Pennsylvania, California, New Jersey and North Dakota. 

To raise money for the books Amelia has placed a donation link on the Make It Safe Project website. All the money donated goes to the cost of the books. Each package includes 10 books, and costs around $100. The books ship directly from Amazon, which provides free shipping on orders that size. Packages can be requested through the Contact Us section of the project website.

Click the link above to read the complete article.

Trans* Update - Number Six: Trans* Literature

The subject of trans* literature was another request I received from a Project Queer follower. It is quite the interesting topic to me; therefore, I would like to not only cover books, but also some magazines and zines. While trans* issues are not widely covered in the mainstream media, there are a number of wonderful reads on the subject.

SIDENOTE:  Personally, I find myself slacking in the reading department. From what I understand, these are some excellent reads. They are all on my To Read List.

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Here we go…

Trans* Literature:

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Trans* Magazines:

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Trans* Zines/E-Zines can be found here:

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To read more about trans* literature (and updates), check out:

(And please add to it. Sources are lacking!!)

If you have any recommendations or reviews on any trans* literature - books, magazines, or zines, please do not hesitate to send me them.

Sincerely,

Riley (PQ creator/editor)

P.S. A trans* update on other media outlets [i.e. blogs, television, films, etc.] will occur later in time.

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Check Out My Other Trans* Updates here:

http://solemnhypnotik.tumblr.com/transupdates

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Also, if you are not sure about some of the  terminology that I use, please check out this guide on FTM terminology:

www.ftmguide.org/terminology.html

or simply contact me.