A profoundly personal account of the impact of complex trauma on a man's life.Larry Ruhl's father sought comfort from his only son, smothering him not only with his affection, but his sexuality--blurring critical boundaries that would prove deeply debilitating. Larry's mother, with her spiraling,...

A powerful LGBTQ memoir of survival, trauma, and the unbreakable will to reclaim identity.At twenty-three, Peter Gajdics entered what he thought was therapy. What followed was six harrowing years of forced "conversion" under the control of a rogue psychiatrist, a man who used primal...

Former slave, impassioned abolitionist, brilliant writer, newspaper editor and eloquent orator whose speeches fired the abolitionist cause, Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) led an astounding life. Physical abuse, deprivation and tragedy plagued his early years, yet through sheer force of character he was able to overcome...

A new collection of the seminal writings and speeches of a legendary writer, orator, and civil rights leader This compact volume offers a full course on the remarkable, diverse career of Frederick Douglass, letting us hear once more a necessary historical figure whose guiding...

From award-winning poet Saeed Jones, How We Fight for Our Lives--winner of the Kirkus Prize and the Stonewall Book Award--is a "moving, bracingly honest memoir" (The New York Times Book Review) written at the crossroads of sex, race, and power. One of the best...

History comes alive in this textured account of the rivalry between Harry Houdini and the so-called Witch of Lime Street, whose iconic lives intersected at a time when science was on the verge of embracing the paranormal. The 1920s are famous as the golden...

A groundbreaking collection of first-person writing on the joys and challenges of the modern disability experience: Disability Visibility brings together the voices of activists, authors, lawyers, politicians, artists, and everyday people whose daily lives are, in the words of playwright Neil Marcus, "an art...

In Depression: A Public Feeling, Ann Cvetkovich combines memoir and critical essay in search of ways of writing about depression as a cultural and political phenomenon that offer alternatives to medical models. She describes her own experience of the professional pressures, creative anxiety, and...

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston recalls her childhood at a Japanese incarceration camp in this engrossing memoir that has become a staple of curriculum in schools and on campuses across the country. This special 50th-anniversary edition features a new cover, a foreword by New York Times...

Lacy Johnson bangs on the glass doors of a sleepy local police station in the middle of the night. Her feet are bare; her body is bruised and bloody; U-bolts dangle from her wrists. She has escaped, but not unscathed. The Other Side is...

A Best Nonfiction Book of 2012: "The Boston Globe," "Entertainment Weekly"A Best Book of the Year: NPR, "St. Louis Dispatch, Vogue" At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage...

This last book from beloved Hollywood icon Carrie Fisher is the crown jewel of ideal Star Wars gifts. The Princess Diarist is an intimate, hilarious, and revealing recollection of what happened behind the scenes on one of the most famous film sets of all...

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER This beloved memoir "is an extraordinary, honest, nuanced and compassionate look at adoption, race in America and families in general" (Jasmine Guillory, Code Switch, NPR) What does it means to lose your roots--within your culture, within your family--and what happens when...

The bestselling author of Postcards from the Edge comes clean (well, sort of) in her first-ever memoir, adapted from her one-woman Broadway hit show. Fisher reveals what it was really like to grow up a product of "Hollywood in-breeding," come of age on the...

"A debut poetry collection showcasing both a fierce and tender new voice."--Booklist"Elegant and playful . . . The poet invents new forms and updates classic ones."--Elle"[Fatimah] Asghar interrogates divisions along lines of nationality, age, and gender, illuminating the forces by which identity is fixed...

Constructed of words, artwork, photos and personal artifacts, Marginalia is an intimate and unconventional account of what it means to be a hybrid. It seamlessly interweaves experience with elements of sociology and psychology, exploring how one cultivates an identity containing multitudes- queer, trans, mixed-race,...

For more information, visit McSweeneys.net Named a best book by The AV Club, PAPER Magazine, LitHub, Ms. Magazine, Chicago Review of Books, Refinery29, the Observer, and the Seattle Times Emerson Whitney writes, "Really, I can't explain myself without making a mess." What follows is...

In the wake of the 2016 election, Lyz Lenz watched as her country and her marriage were torn apart by the competing forces of faith and politics. A mother of two, a Christian, and a lifelong resident of middle America, Lenz was bewildered by...

2020 Eric Hoffer Grand Prize ShortList Finalist, Montaigne Medal Finalist, Horizon Award FinalistFinalist LGBTQ Non-Fiction 2020 International Book AwardsMaxy Award Non-Fiction Finalist"Every Grain of Sand is a heartbreaking memoir that I could not put down, a story of pain, of the search for one's...

Moving West-from Singapore to America, from New York to California--a woman examines the myth of "finding home" even as she comes to terms with its impossibilities. When Trisha Low moves West, her journey is motivated by the need to arrive "somewhere better"--someplace utopian, like...