LGBTQ - Nonfiction

"CeCé Telfer is a warrior. The first openly transgender woman to win an NCAA championship, she has contended with transphobia on and off the track since childhood. Now, she stands at the crossroads of a national and international conversation about equity in sports, forced to advocate for her personhood and rights at every turn. After spending years training for the 2024 Olympics, Telfer has been sidelined and silenced more times than she can count....

"Nicole Maines knows a little something about a "happily-ever-after." Not just because she's a self-professed expert in the Disney princess canon (Ariel's flowing orange hair? ICONIC). But also, she's lived it. After coming out at the age of three, her family had not only come to terms with her transgender identity and accepted her, but they won a landmark court case in the Maine Supreme Court. She graduated high school and got into college. She got...

"A textured, sharply written memoir about coming of age in the fourth decade of one's life and embracing one's truest self in a world that demands gender fit in neat boxes. From the outside, Oliver Radclyffe spent four decades living an immensely privileged, beautifully composed life. As the daughter of two well-to-do British parents and the wife of a successful man from an equally privileged family, Oliver played the parts expected of him. He checked...

"A passionate, powerful memoir by a trailblazing Black transgender activist, tracing her life of transformation and her work towards collective liberation. In 2017, Raquel Willis took to the National Women's March podium just after the presidential election of Donald Trump, primed to tell her story as a young Black transgender woman from the South. Despite having her speaking time cut short, the appearance only deepened her commitment to speaking...

3 stars

"An inspirational and bold memoir from the most successful woman ever to compete on Jeopardy!--and an exploration of what it means to ask questions of the world and of yourself. ANSWER: Who Is Amy Schneider? 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...

"Global humanitarian Eddie Ndopu's rousing memoir about being both profoundly disabled and profoundly successful without trading one for the other. Eddie Ndopu grew up loving pop music and reruns of The Bold and the Beautiful, and as an adult he would become a globe-trotting disability activist. By his early twenties, he had rocketed through every boundary put in front of him-a queer, Black wheelchair user-challenging bias at the highest echelons...

"Pidgeon Pagonis always felt like their life was a constant attempt to fit in with other girls--a feeling that was only exacerbated when puberty failed to hit. They never understood why...until they uncovered the secret that had haunted their childhood. Bouncing between their Chicago home and the city's children's hospital, Pidgeon weathered a series of traumatic surgeries, fabrications, and misdirections. It wasn't until college that Pidgeon pieced...

"The story of a family in transition, this is a raw, honest, sometimes humorous account of author Brookes's journey as her young child grapples with gender identity and becomes her authentic self. Brookes has longed to become a mother for as long as she can remember, and she harbors a fierce determination to parent her children differently--better--than her own mentally ill mom parented her. To create a 'normal' family. And when she gives birth to...

3 stars

"With her first book, Regan announced herself as a writer whose extravagant, unconventional talents matched her abilities as a lauded chef. In her follow-up, she digs even deeper to express the meaning and beauty we seek in the landscapes, and stories, that reveal the forces which inform, shape, and nurture our lives"--