Revised and Expanded Edition Wait—what's wrong with rights? It is usually assumed that trans and gender nonconforming people should follow the civil rights and "equality" strategies of lesbian and gay rights organizations by agitating for legal reforms that would ostensibly guarantee nondiscrimination and equal protection under the law. This approach assumes that the best way to address the poverty and criminalization that plague trans populations is to gain legal recognition and inclusion in the state's institutions. But is this strategy effective? In Normal Life Dean Spade presents revelatory critiques of the legal equality framework for social change, and points to examples of transformative grassroots trans activism that is raising demands that go beyond traditional civil rights reforms. Spade explodes assumptions about what legal rights can do for marginalized populations, and describes transformative resistance processes and formations that address the root causes of harm and violence. In the new afterword to this revised and expanded edition, Spade notes the rapid mainstreaming of trans politics and finds that his predictions that gaining legal recognition will fail to benefit trans populations are coming to fruition. Spade examines recent efforts by the Obama administration and trans equality advocates to "pinkwash" state violence by articulating the US military and prison systems as sites for trans inclusion reforms. In the context of recent increased mainstream visibility of trans people and trans politics, Spade continues to advocate for the dismantling of systems of state violence that shorten the lives of trans people. Now more than ever, Normal Life is an urgent call for justice and trans liberation, and the radical transformations it will require.

In the summer of 1953 the author was a carefree, athletic boy of fourteen. But after he collapsed during a school dance one night, he was suddenly bedridden, drifting in & out of consciousness, as his body disintegrated into a shadow of its former self. He had been stricken with spinal polio. When he emerged from the grip of the disease, he was confronted with a life change so enormous that it challenged all he had believed in & forced him, despite his young age, to redefine himself. His once stereotypically normal life, filled with baseball & swimming pools & dreams of girls, had been irreversibly altered. He was almost the same person he had been; he was nearly normal. His moving personal narrative is a textured portrait of life in the fifties - a time when America & her fighting spirit collided with this disease. Both funny & profound, he is a gifted, unique writer, who unravels the mysteries of youth in a Cold War climate, who gives voice to the mind of a child with a potentially fatal disease, & whose recognition of himself as a disabled outsider heightens his brilliant talents as a storyteller.

After an unconventional childhood that ended in the tragic death of her mother and the murder of her Alaskan mobster father, Kim Rich was left on her own at the young age of fifteen to fend for herself. Ever since then, she began a nearly lifelong pursuit in chasing what most others had—a normal life. Rich tugs at your heartstrings as you follow her journey toward normalcy, from her teen years, freshly orphaned, through her high school years spent couch-surfing at local families’ homes, then through her college years, a failed first marriage, and a rising career as a journalist. Through frank and down-to-earth storytelling, Rich also tells of her grandfather’s kidnapping, a frightening health crisis, and a six-year attempt to have children. Picking up right where her first memoir, Johnny’s Girl, left off, A Normal Life recounts the author’s vivid story of being an ordinary girl faced with extraordinary circumstances—at seemingly every turn in life—with grace, humility, and wit.

Growing up, they didn't believe they had a future. Together, they are building forever. Alexis Black persevered through her mother's death and her father's imprisonment. And after escaping a long and abusive relationship, the college junior promised her foster parents not to date for at least a year. But when she meets an incoming freshman on the first day of their scholarship program, she feels the world melt away, as though it were only the two of them in the room. Justin Black lived in the poorest section of Detroit before his parents surrendered him to the foster care system at the age of nine. But when he grabs the chance for better opportunities by pursuing higher education, he can't help but be drawn to a beautiful third-year student. At first, their past traumas--and their age difference--conspired to complicate their attraction. But the joy each took in the other and eventually conquered those obstacles, and these two survivors journeyed together toward healing. In a stark and wholehearted true story that shares how two individuals on separate paths found each other, Alexis and Justin merge their course into one full of hope and purpose. And hand-in-hand, with a desire to help others, they learned to reject the abusive patterns of their past, thereby intentionally breaking the cycle of generational violence and unhealthy behaviors. Written in an engaging novelistic style, the authors put forward a thoughtful exchange of ideas and personal experiences illustrating how anybody, no matter their backgrounds, can have a life of self-empowerment and joy. Broken down into four sections that cover crucial topics such as "Worthiness" and "Mental Health," this compelling narrative will help any who are learning to love themselves and want to end the line of toxic relationships. Redefining Normal: How Two Foster Kids Beat The Odds and Discovered Healing, Happiness, and Love is a page-turning memoir that will open your eyes to possibilities and dreams. If you like honest tales of triumph, refreshing transparency, and resilient faith in God, then you'll adore Justin and Alexis' inspirational story. This story contains mentions of domestic violence, trauma, sexual assault, and other difficult issues faced on the road to healing. Buy Redefining Normal to claim victory over harmful pasts today!

“[Makaila] shoots straight about the pressures of growing up in such a highly social climate and offers much-needed advice for other teens.” —David Boreanaz, actor, director, producer of film and television Being a teenager today is one of the hardest jobs in the world. You have grades to maintain, obligations to extra-curricular activities, and soul-crushing pressure to excel at everything so colleges take notice. On top of it all, you’re forced to act as your own public relations manager because, thanks to social media, every bit of your life is on display. No one knows that better than teen model, actress, and author Makaila Nichols. Nichols’ book, Blatantly Honest, is filled with peer-to-peer advice on navigating life as a teen in a world that begs young people to grow up before they’re really ready. Unlike books for teens written from an adult perspective, Blatantly Honest offers real, relatable advice based on lessons learned in today’s world. After all, adults today have no experience being a teen in a social climate where peers have immediate, constant access to one another. Despite her rising fame, Nichols has struggled through body image issues, dating disasters, friendship failures and bullying. In this refreshing, open, and honest book, Nichols offers hard-earned advice on these tough topics and more. “It’s a daring undertaking to be honest about ourselves. Makaila genuinely shares her experiences, and it is such a true gift to her peers for them to realize that we all deal with our insecurities.” —Frederique van der Wal, supermodel and entrepreneur “Makes you feel like you’re talking with an older sister or a close friend—but this isn’t your mother’s advice.” —Anna Caltabiano, teen author and influencer

From "the most powerful psychiatrist in America" (New York Times) and "the man who wrote the book on mental illness" (Wired), a deeply fascinating and urgently important critique of the widespread medicalization of normality Anyone living a full, rich life experiences ups and downs, stresses, disappointments, sorrows, and setbacks. These challenges are a normal part of being human, and they should not be treated as psychiatric disease. However, today millions of people who are really no more than "worried well" are being diagnosed as having a mental disorder and are receiving unnecessary treatment. In Saving Normal, Allen Frances, one of the world's most influential psychiatrists, warns that mislabeling everyday problems as mental illness has shocking implications for individuals and society: stigmatizing a healthy person as mentally ill leads to unnecessary, harmful medications, the narrowing of horizons, misallocation of medical resources, and draining of the budgets of families and the nation. We also shift responsibility for our mental well-being away from our own naturally resilient and self-healing brains, which have kept us sane for hundreds of thousands of years, and into the hands of "Big Pharma," who are reaping multi-billion-dollar profits. Frances cautions that the new edition of the "bible of psychiatry," the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 (DSM-5), will turn our current diagnostic inflation into hyperinflation by converting millions of "normal" people into "mental patients." Alarmingly, in DSM-5, normal grief will become "Major Depressive Disorder"; the forgetting seen in old age is "Mild Neurocognitive Disorder"; temper tantrums are "Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder"; worrying about a medical illness is "Somatic Symptom Disorder"; gluttony is "Binge Eating Disorder"; and most of us will qualify for adult "Attention Deficit Disorder." What's more, all of these newly invented conditions will worsen the cruel paradox of the mental health industry: those who desperately need psychiatric help are left shamefully neglected, while the "worried well" are given the bulk of the treatment, often at their own detriment. Masterfully charting the history of psychiatric fads throughout history, Frances argues that whenever we arbitrarily label another aspect of the human condition a "disease," we further chip away at our human adaptability and diversity, dulling the full palette of what is normal and losing something fundamental of ourselves in the process. Saving Normal is a call to all of us to reclaim the full measure of our humanity.

Shortly after the book’s protagonists moved into their apartment complex in Sarajevo, they, like many others, were overcome by the 1992-1995 war and the disintegration of socialist Yugoslavia More than a decade later, in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina, they felt they were collectively stuck in a time warp where nothing seemed to be as it should be. Starting from everyday concerns, this book paints a compassionate yet critical portrait of people’s sense that they were in limbo, trapped in a seemingly endless “Meantime.” Ethnographically investigating yearnings for “normal lives” in the European semi-periphery, it proposes fresh analytical tools to explore how the time and place in which we are caught shape our hopes and fears.