Staff Picks
LGBTQ History Month Streaming
- Zita R.
- Wednesday, October 04, 2023
Collection
Dive into LGBTQ History from the comfort of your own home with movies, ebooks, and eaudiobooks on Kanopy, Hoopla, and Libby.
Framing Lesbian Fashion
Published in 2016
A landmark 1992 film, Framing Lesbian Fashion looks at the evolution of lesbian attire and identity -butch/femme, flannel, androgyny, cross-dressing and drag, queer fluorescent, S/M and leather, lipstick and more. Featuring interviews with Sally Gearhart, JoAnn Loulan, Arlene Stein, Kitty Tsui and others, Framing Lesbian Fashion incorporates archival photos and personal stories to document the sociology and history of lesbian fashion as it existed in the early 90s, and still impacts the culture today..
How to Survive a Plague
Published in 2022
Journalist-turned-filmmaker David France unveils the courageous story of the activists and scientists who fought to stop HIV from becoming a death sentence.
O Happy Day - The Early Days of Black Gay Liberation
Published in 2016
The seminal short film O Happy Day imagines the early days of gay liberation for black gay men. Lofton juxtaposes images of black men from late 60s and early 70s films with images of Black Panther Party demonstrations, as a way of intentionally revising history. The soundtrack is punctuated by a 1970 quotation from Black Panther leader Huey Newton:. "There's nothing to say that a homosexual cannot also be a revolutionary. Quite on the contrary, maybe a homosexual could be the most revolutionary...". O Happy Day blurs the difference between the Black Power movement and the Gay Power movement, and instead focuses on the similarities between the two..
OutLoud
Voices of the LGBTQ Community from Across America
Published in 2015
StoryCorps OutLoud sets out across the country to record and preserve the stories of LGBT individuals, along with their families and friends. OutLoud is a project undertaken in the memory of Isay's father, psychiatrist Dr. Richard Isay. Professionally credited for helping to persuade the mental health community that homosexuality is not a mental disorder, Dr. Isay was himself a closeted gay man for many years. He came out to his son at the age of 52 and, in 2011, he married his partner of 31 years, Gordon Harrell, before passing away suddenly from cancer on June 28, 2012. On June 28, 2014, the 45th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, StoryCorps inaugurated OutLoud, a three-year project to capture the experiences of L. G. B. T. Q. people. In particular, the project will seek stories from young people, minorities and those who lived before the uprising, which was a response by gays to a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village and helped precipitate the gay rights movement.
Passing - Profiling the Lives of Young Transmen of Color
Published in 2016
Profiling the lives of three young transmen of color, this short doc explores what life is like living as a black man, when no one knows you are transgender, and how each man perceives his own journey with gender after many years of being presumed as a cisgender man. Regent Park Film Festival - Documentary Institute of Canada Award Translations Seattle Film Festival - Best Documentary Short.
The Queering of Corporate America
How Big Business Went from LGBTQ Adversary to Ally
Published in 2019
An accurate picture of the LGBTQ rights movement's achievements is incomplete without this surprising history of how corporate America joined the cause. Legal scholar Carlos Ball tells the overlooked story of how LGBTQ activism aimed at corporations since the Stonewall riots helped turn them from enterprises either indifferent to or openly hostile toward sexual minorities and transgender individuals into reliable and powerful allies of the movement for queer equality. As a result of street protests and boycotts during the 1970s, AIDS activism directed at pharmaceutical companies in the 1980s, and the push for corporate nondiscrimination policies and domestic partnership benefits in the 1990s, LGBTQ activism changed big business's understanding and treatment of the queer community. By the 2000s, corporations were frequently and vigorously promoting LGBTQ equality, both within their walls and in the public sphere. Large companies such as American Airlines, Apple, Google, Marriott, and Walmart have been crucial allies in promoting marriage equality and opposing anti-LGBTQ regulations such as transgender bathroom laws. At a time when the LGBTQ movement is facing considerable political backlash, The Queering of Corporate America complicates the narrative of corporate conservatism and provides insights into the future legal, political, and cultural implications of this unexpected relationship.
How to Survive a Plague
Published in 2016
The definitive history of the successful battle to halt the AIDS epidemic?from the creator of, and inspired by, the seminal documentary How to Survive a Plague . A riveting, powerful telling of the story of the grassroots movement of activists, many of them in a life-or-death struggle, who seized upon scientific research to help develop the drugs that turned HIV from a mostly fatal infection to a manageable disease. Ignored by public officials, religious leaders, and the nation at large, and confronted with shame and hatred, this small group of men and women chose to fight for their right to live by educating themselves and demanding to become full partners in the race for effective treatments. Around the globe, 16 million people are alive today thanks to their efforts. Not since the publication of Randy Shilts's classic And the Band Played On has a book measured the AIDS plague in such brutally human, intimate, and soaring terms. In dramatic fashion, we witness the founding of ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group), and the rise of an underground drug market in opposition to the prohibitively expensive (and sometimes toxic) AZT. We watch as these activists learn to become their own researchers, lobbyists, drug smugglers, and clinicians, establishing their own newspapers, research journals, and laboratories, and as they go on to force reform in the nation's disease-fighting agencies. With his unparalleled access to this community David France illuminates the lives of extraordinary characters, including the closeted Wall Street trader-turned-activist, the high school dropout who found purpose battling pharmaceutical giants in New York, the South African physician who helped establish the first officially recognized buyers' club at the height of the epidemic, and the public relations executive fighting to save his own life for the sake of his young daughter. Expansive yet richly detailed, this is an insider's account of a pivotal moment in the history of American civil rights. Powerful, heart-wrenching, and finally exhilarating, How to Survive a Plague is destined to become an essential part of the literature of AIDS. From the Hardcover edition.
How to Survive a Plague
Published in 2016
The definitive history of the successful battle to halt the AIDS epidemic?from the creator of, and inspired by, the seminal documentary How to Survive a Plague . A riveting, powerful telling of the story of the grassroots movement of activists, many of them in a life-or-death struggle, who seized upon scientific research to help develop the drugs that turned HIV from a mostly fatal infection to a manageable disease. Ignored by public officials, religious leaders, and the nation at large, and confronted with shame and hatred, this small group of men and women chose to fight for their right to live by educating themselves and demanding to become full partners in the race for effective treatments. Around the globe, 16 million people are alive today thanks to their efforts. Not since the publication of Randy Shilts's classic And the Band Played On has a book measured the AIDS plague in such brutally human, intimate, and soaring terms. In dramatic fashion, we witness the founding of ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group), and the rise of an underground drug market in opposition to the prohibitively expensive (and sometimes toxic) AZT. We watch as these activists learn to become their own researchers, lobbyists, drug smugglers, and clinicians, establishing their own newspapers, research journals, and laboratories, and as they go on to force reform in the nation's disease-fighting agencies. With his unparalleled access to this community David France illuminates the lives of extraordinary characters, including the closeted Wall Street trader-turned-activist, the high school dropout who found purpose battling pharmaceutical giants in New York, the South African physician who helped establish the first officially recognized buyers' club at the height of the epidemic, and the public relations executive fighting to save his own life for the sake of his young daughter. Expansive yet richly detailed, this is an insider's account of a pivotal moment in the history of American civil rights. Powerful, heart-wrenching, and finally exhilarating, How to Survive a Plague is destined to become an essential part of the literature of AIDS. From the Hardcover edition.
Before We Were Trans
Published in 2022
A?groundbreaking?global history of gender nonconformity?? Today?s narratives about trans people tend to feature individuals with stable gender identities that fit neatly into the categories of male or female. Those stories, while important, fail to account for the complex realities of many trans people?s lives. ? ? Before We Were Trans ?illuminates the stories of people across the globe, from antiquity to the present,?whose experiences?of gender have?defied?binary categories. Blending?historical analysis?with sharp cultural criticism, trans historian and activist Kit Heyam offers a new, radically inclusive?trans history, chronicling expressions of trans experience that are often overlooked, like gender-nonconforming fashion and wartime stage performance. Before We Were Trans ?transports us?from Renaissance Venice to?seventeenth-century?Angola, from Edo Japan to?early America, and looks?to the past to uncover new horizons for?possible trans futures.
Before We Were Trans
Published in 2022
A?groundbreaking?global history of gender nonconformity? Today's narratives about trans people tend to feature individuals with stable gender identities that fit neatly into the categories of male or female. Those stories, while important, fail to account for the complex realities of many trans people's lives. Before We Were Trans ?illuminates the stories of people across the globe, from antiquity to the present,?whose experiences?of gender have?defied?binary categories. Blending?historical analysis?with sharp cultural criticism, trans historian and activist Kit Heyam offers a new, radically inclusive?trans history, chronicling expressions of trans experience that are often overlooked, like gender-nonconforming fashion and wartime stage performance. Before We Were Trans ?transports us?from Renaissance Venice to?seventeenth-century?Angola, from Edo Japan to?early America, and looks?to the past to uncover new horizons for?possible trans futures.
Queer Clergy
A History of Gay and Lesbian Ministry in American Protestantism
Published in 2014
QUEER CLERGY: A History of Gay and Lesbian Ministry in American Protestantism chronicles the journey toward full LGBTQ inclusion within the Protestant denominations that have recently opened their pulpits to queer clergy. Holmen provides an important historical reference for continuing dialogue and also celebrates the ongoing journey to acceptance.
Lesbian Love Story
Published in 2023
For readers of Saidiya Hartman and Jeanette Winterson, Lesbian Love Story is an intimate journey into the archives—uncovering the romances and role models written out of history and what their stories can teach us all about how to love When Amelia Possanza moved to Brooklyn to build a life of her own, she found herself surrounded by queer stories: she read them on landmark placards, overheard them on the pool deck when she joined the world’s largest LGBTQ swim team, and even watched them on TV in her cockroach-infested apartment. These stories inspired her to seek out lesbians throughout history who could become her role models, in romance and in life. Centered around seven love stories for the ages, this is Possanza’s journey into the archives to recover the personal histories of lesbians in the twentieth century: who they were, how they loved, why their stories were destroyed, and where their memories echo and live on. Possanza’s hunt takes readers from a drag king show in Bushwick to the home of activists in Harlem and then across the ocean to Hadrian’s Library, where she searches for traces of Sappho in the ruins. Along the way, she discovers her own love—for swimming, for community, for New York City—and adds her record to the archive. At the heart of this riveting, inventive history, Possanza asks: How could lesbian love help us reimagine care and community? What would our world look like if we replaced its foundation of misogyny with something new, with something distinctly lesbian ?
Reclaiming Two-Spirits
Published in 2022
A sweeping history of Indigenous traditions of gender, sexuality, and resistance that reveals how, despite centuries of colonialism, Two-Spirit people are reclaiming their place in Native nations. Reclaiming Two - Spirits decolonizes the history of gender and sexuality in Native North America. It honors the generations of Indigenous people who had the foresight to take essential aspects of their cultural life and spiritual beliefs underground in order to save them. Before 1492, hundreds of Indigenous communities across North America included people who identified as neither male nor female, but both. They went by aak???skassi , miati , okitcitakwe , or one of hundreds of other tribally specific identities. After European colonizers invaded Indian Country, centuries of violence and systematic persecution followed, imperiling the existence of people who today call themselves Two-Spirits, an umbrella term denoting feminine and masculine qualities in one person. Drawing on written sources, archaeological evidence, art, and oral storytelling, Reclaiming Two-Spirits spans the centuries from Spanish invasion to the present, tracing massacres and inquisitions and revealing how the authors of colonialism?s written archives used language to both denigrate and erase Two-Spirit people from history. But as Gregory Smithers shows, the colonizers failed?and Indigenous resistance is core to this story. Reclaiming Two-Spirits amplifies their voices, reconnecting their history to Native nations in the 21st century.
Reclaiming Two-Spirits
Published in 2022
A sweeping history of Indigenous traditions of gender, sexuality, and resistance that reveals how, despite centuries of colonialism, Two-Spirit people are reclaiming their place in Native nations. Reclaiming Two - Spirits decolonizes the history of gender and sexuality in Native North America. It honors the generations of Indigenous people who had the foresight to take essential aspects of their cultural life and spiritual beliefs underground in order to save them. Before 1492, hundreds of Indigenous communities across North America included people who identified as neither male nor female, but both. They went by aak???skassi , miati , okitcitakwe , or one of hundreds of other tribally specific identities. After European colonizers invaded Indian Country, centuries of violence and systematic persecution followed, imperiling the existence of people who today call themselves Two-Spirits, an umbrella term denoting feminine and masculine qualities in one person. Drawing on written sources, archaeological evidence, art, and oral storytelling, Reclaiming Two-Spirits spans the centuries from Spanish invasion to the present, tracing massacres and inquisitions and revealing how the authors of colonialism?s written archives used language to both denigrate and erase Two-Spirit people from history. But as Gregory Smithers shows, the colonizers failed?and Indigenous resistance is core to this story. Reclaiming Two-Spirits amplifies their voices, reconnecting their history to Native nations in the 21st century.