Integrating selections by gay and lesbian teenagers with older writers' reflections on growing up lesbian or gay, this anthology features works by James Baldwin and Quentin Crisp.

This groundbreaking new book weaves personal portraits of lesbian and gay Southerners with interdisciplinary commentary about the impact of culture, race, and gender on the development of sexual identity. Growing Up Gay in the South is an important book that focuses on the distinct features of Southern life. It will enrich your understanding of the unique pressures faced by gay men and lesbians in this region--the pervasiveness of fundamental religious beliefs; the acceptance of racial, gender, and class community boundaries; the importance of family name and family honor; the unbending view of appropriate childhood behaviors; and the intensity of adolescent culture. You will learn what it is like to grow up gay in the South as these Southern lesbians and gay men candidly share their attitudes and feelings about themselves, their families, their schooling, and their search for a sexual identity. These insightful biographies illustrate the diversity of persons who identify themselves as gay or lesbian and depict the range of prejudice and problems they have encountered as sexual rebels. Not just a simple compilation of “coming out” stories, this landmark volume is a human testament to the process of social questioning in the search for psychological wholeness, examining the personal and social significance of acquiring a lesbian or gay identity within the Southern culture. Growing Up Gay in the South combines intriguing personal biographies with the extensive use of scholarship from lesbian and gay studies, Southern history and literature, and educational thought and practice. These features, together with an extensive bibliography and appendices of data, make this essential reading for educators and other professionals working with gay and lesbian youth.

Danny, Growing Up Gay & Creative is a collection of fifty full-color drawings based on my memories of growing up "different". All along the way of development, I was told I was doing it wrong. Like all gay or creative kids, I knew I was different from the others and they knew it too. I wanted to create this book to help illustrate those moments, but also to help the reader remember their own stories. I wasn't the only little boy who put on something fun and tried to entertain their parent's guests, I'm sure of it. If you grew up with a different point of view, this book is for you. Flip the pages and watch Danny grow from birth to eighteen in fifty drawings. Each page a step in personal discovery. When I grew up there was no help for me. There was no one telling me that I was fine just as I am. I needed to make sure that the adult me sent out the word that you are not only fine but beautiful. Be you. It's your life and the people who love you deserve to know you not the person you play. If you have someone in your life who doesn't fit the mold, I hope this book helps you to see it's OK to be different. Enjoy Danny's growing up. I did! --Dan Crowley, Author & ArtistPraise for Danny, Growing Up Gay & Creative "Danny, Growing Up Gay & Creative, shows us what it means to grow up heart-open and human. But few saw us that way when we were kids. So Danny, with his winsome humor-filled drawings, reminds us of those wonder years, as we struggled to find our place under the rainbow. I feel like I am coming home again, but this time, in a happy and healed way. Bravo, Danny! Shine on!! --Christopher Radko, award-winning designer "Dan Crowley explores with humor and empathy all the various childhood pitfalls in growing up gay in a less than fabulous world. Many were right out of my childhood, such as spotting a doll you always wanted in the bedroom of a friend's sister. So much of it hit home." --Mel Odom, Artist "Dan Crowley's book, Danny, Growing Up Gay & Creative is a wonderful thing. It speaks to children who may need to know they're not different and that their lives are not a mistake. Youngsters who are curious about their own sexuality before even knowing what that word means. And it speaks in a way their straight parents may be unable to because they don't have the words nor the experiences. It does so in a sweet, gentle, and funny way. And adults will learn, too; about same-sex relationships from a "knowing" point of view. This book is a gift in every sense of the word." --Steve Kmetko, award-winning journalist "Dan Crowley has a natural gift for homily, for taking lived experience and expressing stories of love and gratitude, inspiration and grace. He also has a silly, sweet (and slightly wicked) sense of humor. Danny, Growing Up Gay & Creative combines personal and universal stories about growing up gay -- the good, the bad, and the embarrassing -- and reminds us it's all worth it, if only we will persevere." --Tom Bachtel, Illustrator, and Caricaturist, Longtime Illustrator fo the New Yorker's Talk of the Town

Through photographs and their own words, a young man and a young woman relate their experiences growing up homosexual in America's heartland. Intimate, moving, and generous, this collection of photographs from MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE photographer Rita Reed establishes a level of understanding difficult to achieve with words alone. 60 photos.

Sure to become a modern LGBTQ+ pride classic, this “amazing” celebration of the pains and joys of growing up gay features personal stories from around the world (The Huffington Post) Based on the hugely popular blog of the same name, Born This Way shares 100 different memories of growing up LGBTQ+. Childhood photographs are accompanied by sweet, funny—and at times, heartbreaking—personal stories. Collected from around the world and dating from the 1940s to today, these memories speak to the hardships of an unaccepting world and the triumph of pride, self-love, and self-acceptance. This intimate little book is a wonderful gift for all members of the LGBTQ+ community as well as their friends and families. Like Dan Savage’s It Gets Better Project, Born This Way gives young people everywhere the courage to say, “Yes, I’m gay. And I was born this way. I’ve known it since I was very young, and this is my story.”

Integrating selections by gay and lesbian teenagers with older writers' reflections on growing up lesbian or gay, this anthology features works by James Baldwin, Rita Mae Brown, Quentin Crisp, Audre Lorde, Martina Navratilova, and David Leavitt

"Brorby has written not only a truly great memoir, but also a frighteningly relevant one that speaks to the many battles we still have left to fight." —Jung Yun, New York Times Book Review From a young, gay environmentalist, a searing coming-of-age memoir set against the arid landscape of rural North Dakota, where homosexuality “seems akin to a ticking bomb.” “I am a child of the American West, a landscape so rich and wide that my culture trembles with terror before its power.” So begins Taylor Brorby’s Boys and Oil, a haunting, bracingly honest memoir about growing up gay amidst the harshness of rural North Dakota, “a place where there is no safety in a ravaged landscape of mining and fracking.” In visceral prose, Brorby recounts his upbringing in the coalfields; his adolescent infatuation with books; and how he felt intrinsically different from other boys. Now an environmentalist, Brorby uses the destruction of large swathes of the West as a metaphor for the terror he experienced as a youth. From an assault outside a bar in an oil boom town to a furtive romance, and from his awakening as an activist to his arrest at the Dakota Access Pipeline, Boys and Oil provides a startling portrait of an America that persists despite well-intentioned legal protections.