Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

Christopher Yuan, the son of Chinese immigrants, discovered at an early age that he was different. He was attracted to other boys. As he grew into adulthood, his mother, Angela, hoped to control the situation. Instead she found that her son and her life were spiraling out of control - and her own personal demons were determined to defeat her. Years of heartbreak, confusion, and prayer followed before the Yuans found a place of complete surrender, which is God's desire for all families.

In 1986, 26-year-old Ruth is visiting a friend at the hospital when she notices that the door to one of the hospital rooms is painted red. She witnesses nurses drawing straws to see who will tend to the patient inside, all of them reluctant to enter the room. Out of impulse, Ruth herself enters the quarantined space and immediately begins to care for the young man who cries for his mother in the last moments of his life. Before she can even process what she’s done, word spreads in the community that Ruth is the only person willing to help these young men afflicted by AIDS.

Patrick Hinds has failed. A lot. In fact, he’s kind of an expert at it—which is why he’s uniquely qualified to say that failure is a good thing.

Figuring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries - beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalyzed the environmental movement.

When Wayne and Kelly Maines adopted identical twin boys, they thought their lives were complete. But it wasn't long before they noticed a marked difference between Jonas and his brother, Wyatt. Jonas preferred sports and trucks and many of the things little boys were "supposed" to like; but Wyatt liked princess dolls and dress-up and playing Little Mermaid. By the time the twins were toddlers, confusion over Wyatt's insistence that he was female began to tear the family apart.

The body that Robyn Henderson-Espinoza inhabits is a nonbinary body, a trans body, a body in two races—and a body continually in discovery. Theirs is also a body on sojourn invested in experience, body understanding, and engagement in and for human thriving. Henderson-Espinoza relates coming into a new body story, beginning with the deep emotional work of connecting the abstract intelligence of their mind with their body's intelligence, to explore the relationship between living and becoming, doing and listening.

Over the past twenty years, Melissa Etheridge has been blessed with success, love, joy, contentment, freedom, and release. She became a mother again, recorded eleven albums, toured the world, performed at the Grammy Awards, won an Oscar, discovered her one true love, and underwent a profound spiritual awakening. She also experienced illness, incomparable loss, heartache, guilt, shame, and devastating grief. Yet through it all, Melissa found the strength and courage to carry on. Talking to My Angels is a profoundly honest look into her inner life as a woman, an artist, a mother, and a survivor.

The Book of Pride captures the true story of the gay rights movement from the 1960s to the present, through richly detailed, stunning interviews with the leaders, activists, and ordinary people who witnessed the movement and made it happen. These individuals fought battles both personal and political, often without the support of family or friends, frequently under the threat of violence and persecution.

In 1957, Frank Kameny, a rising astronomer working for the US Military in Hawaii, received a summons to report immediately to Washington, DC. The Pentagon had reason to believe he was a homosexual, and after a series of humiliating interviews, Kameny - like gay men and women for generations - was promptly dismissed from the military. Unlike many others, though, Kameny fought back.

Hey, I'm Jamie, a 29-year-old trans guy from the UK. I've been transitioning for 12 years now after realising I was trans (by accident!) at sixteen years old. I knew I was a boy since the age of four, but realised whilst growing up that I was different. It was only in my teens that I found the words to express who I was and what I needed to do. Since then, I've been on testosterone for more than a decade - I know, I can't believe it either - I've also had top and bottom surgery and legally changed my sex, so I know a few things about the transitioning process and being trans!

This is a perfect book for a very imperfect generation. Millennials were the kids who wore slap bracelets and jeans so low rise they could see one another's colons, and they are now adults wondering, Is everyone else as messed up as I am? In her book, Jess shares relatable tales of a woman who feels like a dumpster fire even with a seemingly ideal set up with a fire-captain wife, three kids, and a mortgage.

High School is the revelatory and unique coming-of-age story of Sara and Tegan Quin, identical twins from Calgary, Alberta, who grew up at the height of grunge and rave culture in the '90s, well before they became the celebrated musicians and global LGBTQ icons we know today. While grappling with their identity and sexuality, often alone, they also faced academic meltdown, their parents’ divorce, and the looming pressure of what might come after high school. This is the origin story of Tegan and Sara.

A fascinating tour of creatures from the surface to the deepest ocean floor: How Far the Light Reaches invites us to envision wilder, grander, and more abundant possibilities for the way we live. Conservation journalist Sabrina Imbler discovers that some of the most radical models of family, community, and care can be found in the sea, from gelatinous chains that are both individual organisms and colonies of clones to deep-sea crabs that have no need for the sun, nourished instead by the chemicals and heat throbbing from the core of the Earth.

This is the memoir of James C. Hormel - a man who grew up feeling different not only because his family owned the Hormel “empire” and lived in a 26 bedroom house in a small Midwest town, but because he was gay at a time when homosexuality was not discussed or accepted. Outwardly he tried to live up to the life his father wanted for him - he was a successful professional, had married a lovely woman, and had children - but as volatile changes in the late 1960s impeded on the American psyche, Hormel realized that he could not hide his true self forever.

After losing her job due to the coronavirus pandemic, a vet tech decides to confront the roots of her childhood traumas by hiking the Appalachian Trail. Pack Light follows a woman's journey changing the narrative of hiking while Black—because the great outdoors belongs to everyone.

In this remarkable memoir, former Olympian and Kardashian family member Caitlyn Jenner reveals shocking and heartbreaking stories from her journey to become a transgender woman and fight for the LGBTQ+ community.

When his mother, Barbara, turns seventy, Jedidiah Jenkins is reminded of a sobering truth: Our parents won’t live forever. For years, he and Barbara have talked about taking a trip together, just the two of them. They disagree about politics, about God, about the project of society—disagreements that hurt. But they love thrift stores, they love eating at diners, they love true crime, and they love each other. Jedidiah wants to step into Barbara’s world and get to know her in a way that occasional visits haven’t allowed.

In eighth grade, Amy was voted “Most likely to appear on Jeopardy!” by her classmates. Decades later, this trailblazer finally got her chance. Not only did she walk away with $1.3 million while captivating the world with her impressive forty-game winning streak, but she made history and won an even greater prize—the joy of being herself on national television and blazing a trail for openly queer and transgender people around the world. Now, she shares her singular journey that led to becoming an unlikely icon and hero to millions. Her superpower: Boundless curiosity and fearless questioning.

Growing up on Long Island, lonely and quiet and queer, she was enchanted by Hollywood starlets like Kim Novak. She found her turn in New York’s early Off-Off-Broadway theater scene, in Warhol’s films Flesh and Women in Revolt, and at the famed nightclub Max's Kansas City. She inspired songs by Lou Reed and the Rolling Stones. She became friends with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, borrowed a dress from Lauren Hutton, posed for Richard Avedon, and performed alongside Tennessee Williams in his own play.

Liara Roux is accustomed to being mislabeled and misunderstood. As a child, Liara’s inquisitive, instinctive, and rebellious nature was frequently problematized, in a world designed around the requirements of their neurotypical, cis, heterosexual male colleagues. Coming of age in an oppressively restrictive home, they shuffled tarot and explored self portraiture to rationalize the injustice of chronic pain, toxic lovers, and the cruel silence of divinity.