Growing up, once I learned of my "true" identity, I remember letting my environment dictate my behavior. In larger groups of boys, I was completely out of my element. But get me in a group of girls and I was with my "peeps." I was everyone's friend, laughin' it up, tradin' easy baking secrets, and dishin' on Barbie's latest 'do. Now, fast forward 20 years, and it's amazing how environment still dictates my behavior.

"Is It True What They Say About Black Men?" is a travelogue and memoir told from the point of view of a gay, black and well-traveled American, in self-imposed exile from New York City. His physical and emotional journey takes him from one continent to four (South America, Australia, Asia and Africa), all of which he calls home over the course of eight years. Despite his demographic status as a gay black man (and the book's title, inspired by the one question he hears in every country and every language), Jeremy Helligar's life abroad and his search for adventure, love and a place to belong are defined by so much more than skin color, sexuality, or even gender. Most of all, his experiences – what happens to him and how he reacts to it – are shaped by a more universal trait: being human. In turn, his book is a universal documentation of love, lust and heartbreak, self-discovery and discovery of the world in which we live, adventure and awkward encounters as a stranger in strange lands. Think James Baldwin (whose "Notes of a Native Son" inspired Jeremy as much as music and "The Golden Girls") and David Sedaris mixed with "Eat Gay Love."

A bold exposé of the controversial secret that has potentially dire consequences in many African American communities. Delivering the first frank and thorough investigation of life “on the down low” (the DL), J. L. King exposes a closeted culture of sex between black men who lead “straight” lives. King explores his own past as a DL man, and the path that led him to let go of the lies and bring forth a message that can promote emotional healing and open discussions about relationships, sex, sexuality, and health in the black community. Providing a long-overdue wake-up call, J. L. King bravely puts the spotlight on a topic that has until now remained dangerously taboo. Drawn from hundreds of interviews, statistics, and the author’s firsthand knowledge of DL behavior, On the Down Low reveals the warning signs African American women need to know. King also discusses the potential health consequences of having unprotected sex, as African American women represent an alarming 64 percent of new HIV infections. Volatile yet vital, On the Down Low is sure to be one of the most talked-about books of the year. “A survey by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta found that nearly a quarter of black HIV-positive men who had sex with men consider themselves heterosexual.” —Essence

This compelling book recounts the history of black gay men from the 1950s to the 1990s, tracing how the major movements of the times—from civil rights to black power to gay liberation to AIDS activism—helped shape the cultural stigmas that surrounded race and homosexuality. In locating the rise of black gay identities in historical context, Kevin Mumford explores how activists, performers, and writers rebutted negative stereotypes and refused sexual objectification. Examining the lives of both famous and little-known black gay activists—from James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin to Joseph Beam and Brother Grant-Michael Fitzgerald—Mumford analyzes the ways in which movements for social change both inspired and marginalized black gay men. Drawing on an extensive archive of newspapers, pornography, and film, as well as government documents, organizational records, and personal papers, Mumford sheds new light on four volatile decades in the protracted battle of black gay men for affirmation and empowerment in the face of pervasive racism and homophobia.

A photographic celebration of the love and relationships of queer people of color by a former New York Times multimedia journalist “Thank you, Jamal Jordan, for showing the world what true love looks like.”—Billy Porter Queer Love in Color features photographs and stories of couples and families across the United States and around the world. This singular, moving collection offers an intimate look at what it means to live at the intersections of queer and POC identities today, and honors an inclusive vision of love, affection, and family across the spectrum of gender, race, and age.

The landmark book that established Robert Reid-Pharr as one of America's most exciting and challenging left intellectuals At turns autobiographical, political, literary, erotic, and humorous, Black Gay Man spoils our preconceived notions of not only what it means to be black, gay and male but also what it means to be a contemporary intellectual. Both a celebration of black gay male identity as well as a powerful critique of the structures that allow for the production of that identity, Black Gay Man introduced the eloquent voice of Robert Reid-Pharr in cultural criticism. At once erudite and readable, the range of topics and positions taken up in Black Gay Man reflect the complexity of American life itself. Treating subjects as diverse as the Million Man March, interracial sex, anti-Semitism, turn of the century American intellectualism as well as literary and cultural figures ranging from Essex Hemphill and Audre Lorde to W.E.B. DuBois, Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin, Black Gay Man is a bold and nuanced attempt to question prevailing ideas about community, desire, politics and culture. Moving beyond critique, Reid-Pharr also pronounces upon the promises of a new America.

An intoxicating, provocative novel of appetite, identity, and self-construction, Darryl Pinckney's Black Deutschland tells the story of an outsider, trapped between a painful past and a tenebrous future, in Europe's brightest and darkest city. Jed—young, gay, black, out of rehab and out of prospects in his hometown of Chicago—flees to the city of his fantasies, a museum of modernism and decadence: Berlin. The paradise that tyranny created, the subsidized city isolated behind the Berlin Wall, is where he's chosen to become the figure that he so admires, the black American expatriate. Newly sober and nostalgic for the Weimar days of Isherwood and Auden, Jed arrives to chase boys and to escape from what it means to be a black male in America. But history, both personal and political, can't be avoided with time or distance. Whether it's the judgment of the cousin he grew up with and her husband's bourgeois German family, the lure of white wine in a down-and-out bar, a gang of racists looking for a brawl, or the ravaged visage of Rock Hudson flashing behind the face of every white boy he desperately longs for, the past never stays past even in faraway Berlin. In the age of Reagan and AIDS in a city on the verge of tearing down its walls, he clambers toward some semblance of adulthood amid the outcasts and expats, intellectuals and artists, queers and misfits. And, on occasion, the city keeps its Isherwood promises and the boy he kisses, incredibly, kisses him back.