Book Features

The Book That Made Me Get Sober: Leslie Jamison’s “The Recovering”

Reading The Recovering was like reading a diary full of thoughts I would never have been brave enough to write down. I felt something I’d only ever felt once before, when I kissed a girl for the first time and a million tiny moments from my life suddenly snapped into place. I felt a corner of my brain relax, like it’d been trying to work out a code and had just been given the key. Oh, this is what I am. That explains it.

LGBT Book Reviews

Arisa White’s “Who’s Your Daddy” Explores the Quest for Family and Healing in a Queer, African-Diasporic Context

Who’s Your Daddy travels from the United States to Guyana to explore fatherhood and the role of masculinity, care, and caregiving in our lives. While the search for and eventual dinner with the father is a primary narrative of Who’s Your Daddy, the love story between the narrator and Mondayway, the narrator’s beloved, will delight Autostraddle readers as well.

Book Features Sex

How and Why I Wrote Bang!: A Masturbation Sex-Ed Book for Everyone

I made Bang! Masturbation for People of All Genders and Abilities because it profoundly made sense to me, because there was a gaping hole in that plastic wall where there should have been some acknowledgement of pleasure, consent, or the emotions of sex. Bang! was designed to fill this gap with emotionally-aware, positive sex-ed. While we had been taught about the vas deferens and fallopian tubes, we had never been taught how to even talk about sex with a partner. I made Bang! because I thought it needed to exist.