It isn’t always lonely at the top.

Noah Blue’s finally got her foot in the door. After clawing her way to the top of the charts with her webcomic, she’s garnered enough attention to earn a full-time position at a comic company re-launching their cult classic comic: Queen Leisah.

Queen Leisah is predicted to be an instant bestseller with movie deals already in the making. Things are falling into place. There’s nowhere to go but up…as soon as she gets one person out of her way.

Sage Montgomery has always been the best artist in every building she’s stepped foot in. Raw talent’s gotten her webcomic to the top of the charts every month for the past eight years. She’s been the best for as long as she can remember. Sure, her career has plateaued but that can be fixed with a big, mainstream comic.

She was promised full creative control over Leisah. Instead, she got a shared credit with the one artist who’s been breathing down her neck since college. The one artist who has a fighting chance of being better than her. Sage and Noah have to work as a team — or, at least appear to work as a team. They thought the hardest part of the relaunch would be drawing together. But that’s easy in comparison to resisting their feelings for each other.

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A novel of startling intimacy, violence, and mercy among friends in a Midwestern university town, from an electric new voice.

Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends—some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness. But over the course of a late-summer weekend, a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with an ostensibly straight, white classmate, conspire to fracture his defenses while exposing long-hidden currents of hostility and desire within their community.  
 
Real Life is a novel of profound and lacerating power, a story that asks if it’s ever really possible to overcome our private wounds, and at what cost.

Home Girls, the pioneering anthology of Black feminist thought, features writing by Black feminist and lesbian activists on topics both provocative and profound. Since its initial publication in 1983, it has become an essential text on Black women's lives and contains work by many of feminism's foremost thinkers. This edition features an updated list of contributor biographies and an all-new preface that provides Barbara Smith the opportunity to look back on forty years of the struggle, as well as the influence the work in this book has had on generations of feminists. The preface from the previous Rutgers edition remains, as well as all of the original pieces, set in a fresh new package. 

Contributors: Tania Abdulahad, Donna Allegra, Barbara A. Banks, Becky Birtha, Cenen, Cheryl Clarke, Michelle Cliff, Michelle T. Clinton, Willi (Willie) M. Coleman, Toi Derricotte, Alexis De Veaux, Jewelle L. Gomez, Akasha (Gloria) Hull, Patricia Spears Jones, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Raymina Y. Mays, Deidre McCalla, Chirlane McCray, Pat Parker, Linda C. Powell, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Spring Redd, Gwendolyn Rogers, Kate Rushin, Ann Allen Shockley, Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith, Shirley O. Steele, Luisah Teish, Jameelah Waheed, Alice Walker, and Renita J. Weems.

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It's 1976 and Jamaica is on fire. The country is on the eve of important elections and the warring political parties have made the divisions between the poor and the wealthy even wider. And Irie and Jilly come from very different backgrounds: Irie is from the heart of Kingston, where fighting in the streets is common. Jilly is from the hills, where mansions nestled within lush gardens remain safe behind gates. But the two bond through a shared love of Reggae music, spending time together at Irie's father's record store, listening to so-called rebel music that opens Jilly's mind to a sound and a way of thinking she's never heard before.

As tensions build in the streets, so do tensions between the two girls. A budding romance between them complicates things further as the push and pull between their two lives becomes impossible to bear. For Irie, fighting—with her words and her voice—is her only option. Blood is shed on the streets in front of her every day. She has no choice. But Jilly can always choose to escape.

Can their bond survive this impossible divide?

Asha Bromfield has written a compelling, emotional and heart-rending story of a friendship during wartime and what it means to fight for your words, your life, and the love of your life.

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Praise for Maroons: "brown’s sensational second contribution to AK Press’s Black Dawn series.... Equally thrilling and thought-provoking, this will put readers in mind of speculative greats like Octavia Butler and Samuel R. Delaney." 
—Publishers Weekly (starred review) 

A tale of survival, of moving beyond seemingly insurmountable devastation toward, if not hope itself, then the road to hope. 

In the second installment of the Grievers trilogy, adrienne maree brown brings to bear her background as an activist rooted in Detroit. The pandemic of Syndrome H-8 continues to ravage the city of Detroit and everyone in Dune's life. In Maroons, she must learn what community and connection mean in the lonely wake of a fatal virus. Emerging from grief to follow a subtle path of small pleasures through an abandoned urban landscape, she begins finding other unlikely survivors with little in common but the will to live. Together they begin to piece together the puzzle of their survival, and that of the city itself.

Over the course of these poems, the Black, queer protagonist begins to erase violent structures and fill the white spaces with her hard-won wisdom and love. I am the Most Dangerous Thing doesn't just use poetry to comment on life and history. The book is a comment on writing itself. What have words done? When does writing become a form of disengagement, or worse, violence?

The book is an exercise in paring the state down to its true logic of violence and imagining what can happen next. There are many contradictions—Although the protagonist teaches the same science that was used to justify enslavement and a racial caste system, she knows she will die at the hands of science and denies the state the last word by penning her own death certificate. As an educator and knowledge worker, she is an overseer of the same racist, misogynistic, and homophobic systems that terrorize her. Yet, she musters the courage to kill Kurtz, a primordial vision of white terror. She is Black and queer and fat and angry and chill and witty and joyful and depressed and lovely and flawed and an (im)perfect dagger to the heart of white supremacist capitalism.

Four years ago, Bryan Hicks left behind a lucrative corporate job to open a bakery with his trans girlfriend, Nadia Brooks.

In conservative Houston, Texas, they had to sue a transphobic landlord just to lease a space. Even so, the shop was

humming along until the Covid-19 pandemic slowed their business to a trickle. Cash-strapped and desperate, Bryan turns

to an unsavory character for a loan; when he's unable to pay it back, he's forced to rent out the bakery to an illegal trans

strip show to make some extra cash. The dancers and customers trash the place, and one night it gets so rowdy Bryan

fires a gun just to clear the store. How did his dream become such a nightmare? The novel moves back in time to tell the

history of the bakery, from the first "love cake" Bryan made for Nadia to Nadia's Hail Mary effort to win cash in a TV baking

competition. All the while, Bryan strives to be a supportive father to his queer son and his increasingly right-wing daughter.

Can Bryan save his bakery and his relationship with Nadia, or is he about to lose his love and livelihood in one fell swoop?

Bell's workmanlike prose captures both the tranquil atmosphere of the bakery and the wild energy of the trans party scene,

as here, when Bryan and Nadia visit a strip club: "Now that they were inside, Nadia looked overwhelmed, standing very

stiff. She looked scared to touch anything. Bryan grabbed her and led her through the mesh of bodies to the middle bar.

He handed Nadia a beer, and they both turned around to check out the raw scene."

“Your eyes aren't playing tricks on you. Yes, I gave this book a six-star rating out of a possible five. Where to even begin with how much I loved this book.” Goodreads Reviewer, Transgender Bookworm

Die-hard traditional Texas is the backdrop where success and nonconformity cannot coexist for Bryan Hicks, an African-American divorced father of two kids, Lindsey, the athletic golden child, and Lance, the unorthodox queer thespian.

Bryan's mother loves bragging to her high-society girlfriends about Bryan's accomplishments and promotion to VP at a large multinational oil/gas company. Bryan vigorously steers clear of conversations with his mother about who he is dating because Bryan has been secretly dating Nadia, a transgender woman.

Cakewalk is contemporary fiction based on Douglas Bell's past experiences. Bell speaks from an African-American heteronormative (privileged) cisgender voice to candidly expose the trauma of transphobia and homophobia. Bell wants to humanize the struggle of trans women to live on their terms. Bell asks us to believe in ourselves, trust in ourselves, and don’t let society define who you are. There is enough courage within you to be the person you want to be.

Editorial Reviews
Goodreads Reviewer, Erikka
I must say this book absolutely had me by the first chapter. Each character represented someone i have have met or known and truly had me hooked. The fact that as I dove deeper into each page it was as if I was watching a movie of so many lives play out right before me. This up and coming author has truly snatched my attention and made me reflect on the perspectives of others as well as the symbolism throughout this read. If you want to laugh, cry, feel anger, empathy, and reflection on how and who you are as well as get a little hot and heavy this is definitely the right book for you. Step into a world you may have never known existed and watch the similarities of what all humans long for no matter the pronoun.

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A BreakBeat Poets anthology of writings by Muslims who are women, queer, genderqueer, nonbinary, or trans.

The collected poems dispel the notion that there is one correct way to be a Muslim by holding space for multiple, intersecting identities while celebrating and protecting those identities.

Halal If You Hear Me features poems by Safia Elhillo, Fatimah Asghar, Warsan Shire, Tarfia Faizullah, Angel Nafis, Beyza Ozer, and many others.

Fatimah Asghar is the creator of the Emmy-Nominated web series Brown Girls, now in development for HBO. She is the author of If They Come For Us and a recipient of a 2017 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship. She is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and a Kundiman fellow. In 2017, she was listed on Forbes’s 30 Under 30 list.

Safia Elhillo is the author of The January Children. Sudanese by way of Washington, DC and a Cave Canem fellow, she holds an MFA from the New School. In 2018, she was awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.

An updated introduction to the religions developed in the Caribbean region

Creole Religions of the Caribbean offers a comprehensive introduction to the overlapping religions that have developed as a result of the creolization process. Caribbean peoples drew on the variants of Christianity brought by European colonizers, as well as on African religious and healing traditions and the remnants of Amerindian practices, to fashion new systems of belief. From Vodou, Santería, Regla de Palo, the Abakuá Secret Society, and Obeah to Quimbois and Espiritismo, the volume traces the historical–cultural origins of the major Creole religions, as well as the newer traditions such as Rastafari.

This third edition updates the scholarship by featuring new critical approaches that have been brought to bear on the study of religion, such as queer studies, environmental studies, and diasporic studies. The third edition also expands the regional considerations of the diaspora to the US Latinx communities that are influenced by Creole spiritual practices, taking into account the increased significance of material culture?art, music, literature, and healing practices influenced by Creole religions.

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In Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life, cultural critic and historian Tavia Nyong’o surveys the conditions of contemporary black artistic production in the era of post-blackness. Moving fluidly between the insurgent art of the 1960’s and the intersectional activism of the present day, Afro-Fabulations challenges genealogies of blackness that ignore its creative capacity to exceed conditions of traumatic loss, social death, and archival erasure.

If black survival in an anti-black world often feels like a race against time, Afro-Fabulations looks to the modes of memory and imagination through which a queer and black polytemporality is invented and sustained. Moving past the antirelational debates in queer theory, Nyong’o posits queerness as “angular sociality,” drawing upon queer of color critique in order to name the gate and rhythm of black social life as it moves in and out of step with itself. He takes up a broad range of sites of analysis, from speculative fiction to performance art, from artificial intelligence to Blaxploitation cinema. Reading the archive of violence and trauma against the grain, Afro-Fabulations summons the poetic powers of queer world-making that have always been immanent to the fight and play of black life.

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A profound intellectual engagement with Afrofuturism and the philosophical questions of space and time

Queer Times, Black Futures considers the promises and pitfalls of imagination, technology, futurity, and liberation as they have persisted in and through racial capitalism. Kara Keeling explores how the speculative fictions of cinema, music, and literature that center black existence provide scenarios wherein we might imagine alternative worlds, queer and otherwise. In doing so, Keeling offers a sustained meditation on contemporary investments in futurity, speculation, and technology, paying particular attention to their significance to queer and black freedom.

Keeling reads selected works, such as Sun Ra’s 1972 film Space is the Place and the 2005 film The Aggressives, to juxtapose the Afrofuturist tradition of speculative imagination with the similar “speculations” of corporate and financial institutions. In connecting a queer, cinematic reordering of time with the new possibilities technology offers, Keeling thinks with and through a vibrant conception of the imagination as a gateway to queer times and black futures, and the previously unimagined spaces that they can conjure.

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As his twenty-sixth birthday approaches, Desta Joy Walker finds himself in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the one place he's been actively avoiding most of his life. For Desta, the East African capital encompasses some of the happiest and saddest parts of his life-his first home and the place where his father died. When an unavoidable work obligation lands him there for twelve weeks, he may finally have a chance for the closure he so desperately needs. What Desta never expected was to catch a glimpse of his future as he reconnects with the beautiful country and his family's past.

Elias Fikru has never met an opportunity he hasn't seized. Except, of course, for the life-changing one, he's stubbornly ignored for the past nine months. He'd be a fool not to accept the chance to pursue his doctoral studies in the U.S., but saying yes means leaving his homeland, and Elias isn't ready to make that commitment.

Meeting Desta, the Dominican-American emergency relief worker with the easy smile and sad eyes, makes Elias want things he's never envisioned for himself. Rediscovering his country through Desta's eyes emboldens Elias to reach for a future where he can be open about every part of himself. But when something threatens the future that's within their grasp, Elias and Desta must put it all on the line for love.

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A manifesto from one of America's most influential activists which disrupts political, economic, and social norms by reimagining the Black Radical Tradition.

Drawing on Black intellectual and grassroots organizing traditions, including the Haitian Revolution, the US civil rights movement, and LGBTQ rights and feminist movements, Unapologetic challenges all of us engaged in the social justice struggle to make the movement for Black liberation more radical, more queer, and more feminist. This book provides a vision for how social justice movements can become sharper and more effective through principled struggle, healing justice, and leadership development. It also offers a flexible model of what deeply effective organizing can be, anchored in the Chicago model of activism, which features long-term commitment, cultural sensitivity, creative strategizing, and multiple cross-group alliances. And Unapologetic provides a clear framework for activists committed to building transformative power, encouraging young people to see themselves as visionaries and leaders.

A fresh, charming rom-com perfect for fans of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda and Boy Meets Boy about Nathan Bird, who has sworn off happy endings but is sorely tested when his former best friend, Ollie, moves back to town.

Nathan Bird doesn’t believe in happy endings. Although he’s the ultimate film buff and an aspiring screenwriter, Nate’s seen the demise of too many relationships to believe that happy endings exist in real life.

Playing it safe to avoid a broken heart has been his MO ever since his father died and left his mom to unravel—but this strategy is not without fault. His best-friend-turned-girlfriend-turned-best-friend-again, Florence, is set on making sure Nate finds someone else. And in a twist that is rom-com-worthy, someone does come along: Oliver James Hernández, his childhood best friend.

After a painful mix-up when they were little, Nate finally has the chance to tell Ollie the truth about his feelings. But can Nate find the courage to pursue his own happily ever after?

Named a Best Book by: The Globe and Mail, Indigo, Out Magazine, Audible, CBC, Apple, Quill & Quire, Kirkus Reviews, Brooklyn Public Library, Writers’ Trust of Canada, Autostraddle, Bitch, and BookRiot.

Finalist for the 2019 Lambda Literary Award, Transgender Nonfiction
Nominated for the 2019 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award
Winner of the 2018  Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design – Prose Non-Fiction

"Cultural rocket fuel." --Vanity Fair

"Emotional and painful but also layered with humour, I'm Afraid of Men will widen your lens on gender and challenge you to do better. This challenge is a necessary one--one we must all take up. It is a gift to dive into Vivek's heart and mind." --Rupi Kaur, bestselling author of The Sun and Her Flowers and Milk and Honey

A trans artist explores how masculinity was imposed on her as a boy and continues to haunt her as a girl--and how we might reimagine gender for the twenty-first century.

Vivek Shraya has reason to be afraid. Throughout her life she's endured acts of cruelty and aggression for being too feminine as a boy and not feminine enough as a girl. In order to survive childhood, she had to learn to convincingly perform masculinity. As an adult, she makes daily compromises to steel herself against everything from verbal attacks to heartbreak.

Now, with raw honesty, Shraya delivers an important record of the cumulative damage caused by misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia, releasing trauma from a body that has always refused to assimilate. I'm Afraid of Men is a journey from camouflage to a riot of colour and a blueprint for how we might cherish all that makes us different and conquer all that makes us afraid.

Love, Simon meets Bend It Like Beckham in this feel-good contemporary romance about a trans athlete who must decide between fighting for his right to play and staying stealth.

“A sharply observant and vividly drawn debut. I loved every minute I spent in this story, and I’ve never rooted harder for a jock in my life.” – New York Times bestselling author Becky Albertalli

Fifteen-year-old Spencer Harris is a proud nerd, an awesome big brother, and a David Beckham in training. He's also transgender. After transitioning at his old school leads to a year of isolation and bullying, Spencer gets a fresh start at Oakley, the most liberal private school in Ohio.

At Oakley, Spencer seems to have it all: more accepting classmates, a decent shot at a starting position on the boys' soccer team, great new friends, and maybe even something more than friendship with one of his teammates. The problem is, no one at Oakley knows Spencer is trans—he's passing.

But when a discriminatory law forces Spencer's coach to bench him, Spencer has to make a choice: cheer his team on from the sidelines or publicly fight for his right to play, even though it would mean coming out to everyone—including the guy he's falling for.

Winner of the 2021 In The Margins Award

"When reading this book, all I feel is kindness."-- Sam Smith, Grammy and Oscar award-winning singer and songwriter

"Thank God we have Alok. And I'm learning a thing or two myself."--Billy Porter, Emmy award-winning actor, singer, and Broadway theater performer

"Beyond the Gender Binary will give readers everywhere the feeling that anything is possible within themselves"--Princess Nokia, musician and co-founder of the Smart Girl Club

"A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change."-- Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"An affirming, thoughtful read for all ages." -- School Library Journal, starred review

In Beyond the Gender Binary, poet, artist, and LGBTQIA+ rights advocate Alok Vaid-Menon deconstructs, demystifies, and reimagines the gender binary.

Pocket Change Collective is a series of small books with big ideas from today's leading activists and artists. In this installment, Beyond the Gender Binary, Alok Vaid-Menon challenges the world to see gender not in black and white, but in full color. Taking from their own experiences as a gender-nonconforming artist, they show us that gender is a malleable and creative form of expression. The only limit is your imagination.

It's too late for a Sweet Sixteen, but what if Mahalia had a coming-out party? A love letter to romantic comedies, sweet sixteen blowouts, Black joy, and queer pride.

“A perfect ode to romantic comedies, wrapped in a dazzling rainbow dress.” —Rachael Lippincott, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Five Feet Apart and She Gets the Girl

Mahalia Harris wants.

She wants a big Sweet Sixteen like her best friend, Naomi.
She wants the super-cute new girl Siobhan to like her back.
She wants a break from worrying—about money, snide remarks from white classmates, pitying looks from church ladies . . . all of it.

Then inspiration strikes: It’s too late for a Sweet Sixteen, but what if she had a coming-out party? A singing, dancing, rainbow-cake-eating celebration of queerness on her own terms.

The idea lights a fire beneath her, and soon Mahalia is scrimping and saving, taking on extra hours at her afterschool job, trying on dresses, and awkwardly flirting with Siobhan, all in preparation for the coming out of her dreams. But it’s not long before she’s buried in a mountain of bills, unfinished schoolwork, and enough drama to make her English lit teacher blush. With all the responsibility on her shoulders, will Mahalia’s party be over before it’s even begun?

A novel about finding yourself, falling in love, and celebrating what makes you you.

“Mahalia’s story lives, breathes and glows. I’m in love with it every day of the week!” —Becky Albertalli, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Simon vs. the Homosapiens Agenda

The Cruising Diaries is a queer coming of age memoir that's not for the faint of heart. Follow author and musician Brontez Purnell on a series of hilarious sexual misadventures through '00s Oakland. Outrageous tales of taco truck trysts and bathhouse Santas are accompanied by full-color illustrations in this glorious expanded edition.

PRE-ORDER: On Sale Date: May 21, 2024

One hook-up is about to become one seriously hilarious situationship in this vibrant and lively romantic comedy about taking chances . . . and breaking the rules.
 
Prima ballet dancer Lillian Jackson is all about control—on stage and in bed. Which is precisely why she keeps her hook-ups to one night, and one night only. No strings. No phone numbers. No scones in the morning. There’s no room for mistakes, especially now that her dance company’s survival depends entirely on winning a million-dollar cash prize in one of America’s biggest reality competitions. That is, until one night with a certain curvy, blue-haired siren changes everything . . .

As burlesque dancer “Blue Lenox,” Izzy Wells is the queen of on-stage seduction. Almost no one knows that she’s close to losing everything—her theater, her home, and her troupe—unless she wins this competition. Now she’s going toe-to-toe with a gorgeous ballerina in front of the world. The chemistry between them is hot, but even more distracting are the feelings they’re starting to develop. There’s no way Lillian can fit Izzy into her life, and Izzy knows better than to fall for someone who can’t put her first. But if they can make it through the show with their hearts and dreams intact, they just might win the biggest prize of all.

PRE-ORDER: On Sale Date: August 6, 2024

An arresting study of memory, perception, and the human condition, from the Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Phillips.

Carl Phillips’s Scattered Snows, to the North is a collection about distortion and revelation, about knowing and the unreliability of a knowing that’s based on human memory. If the poet’s last few books have concerned themselves with power, this one focuses on vulnerability: the usefulness of embracing it and of releasing ourselves from the need to understand our past. If we remember a thing, did it happen? If we believe it didn’t, does that make our belief true?

In Scattered Snows, to the North, Phillips looks though the window of the past in order to understand the essential sameness of the human condition―“Tears / were tears,” mistakes were made and regretted or not regretted, and it mattered until it didn’t, the way people live until they don’t. And there was also joy. And beauty. “Yet the world’s still / so beautiful . . . Sometimes // it is . . .” And it was enough. And it still can be.

Burned by his faith. Abandoned by his family. Coming out was nothing compared to finding a reason to forgive...

Embittered, Lawrence Greene can't catch a break. He loathes his dead-end job, and his love life is pitiful. When his religious mother returns seeking reconciliation, he's torn between resentment and his need to heal.

As his mother fights for a place in her son's life, her presence conjures painful memories for Lawrence. But when a sexy and good-hearted man named Hakee Mitchell comes knocking, will Lawrence let go of his grief and embrace a fresh start?

The Freed Church Boy is a stirring LGBT contemporary novel. If you like complex characters, heart-rending conflict, and new beginnings, then you'll adore Lloyd Johnson's powerful tale.

Buy The Freed Church Boy today!

Gritty and unflinching, yet also tender, fantastical, and funny, a trans woman’s tale about finding a community on the margins. In Sarmiento Park, the green heart of Córdoba, a group of trans sex workers make their nightly rounds. When a cry comes from the dark, their leader, the 178-year-old Auntie Encarna, wades into the brambles to investigate and discovers a baby half dead from the cold. She quickly rallies the pack to save him, and they adopt the child into their fascinating surrogate family as they have so many other outcasts, including Camila. Sheltered in Auntie Encarna’s fabled pink house, they find a partial escape from the everyday threats of disease and violence, at the hands of clients, cops, and boyfriends. Telling their stories—of a mute young woman who transforms into a bird, of a Headless Man who fled his country’s wars—as well as her own journey from a toxic home in a small, poor town, Camila traces the life of this vibrant community throughout the 90s. Imbuing reality with the magic of a dark fairy tale, Bad Girls offers an intimate, nuanced portrait of trans coming-of-age that captures a universal sense of the strangeness of our bodies. It grips and entertains us while also challenging ideas about love, sexuality, gender, and identity.

PRE-ORDER: On Sale Date: May 21, 2024

After losing her job due to the coronavirus pandemic, a vet tech decides to confront the roots of her childhood traumas by hiking the Appalachian Trail. Pack Light follows a woman's journey changing the narrative of Hiking While Black—because the Great Outdoors belongs to everyone. This memoir will trace Shilletha's thru-hike from Georgia to Maine as she decided to confront the roots of her trauma. Growing up, Curtis suffered from a fractured family life, bullying at school, indifferent teachers, and abuse from people she trusted. Then she discovered the Appalachian Trail, which she successfully hiked in 2021. It took her eight months and four seasons to hike through 14 states, even more impressive given her lifelong struggle with depression, anxiety, PTSD, and ADHD.

An unapologetic guide for readers who are Black, masc, and bi—unlearning biphobia, coming out, combatting erasure, and embodying your whole self Through cutting social analysis, personal stories, and need-to-know advice, Dear Bi Men reclaims bi+ visibility in a culture of erasure—and unapologetically centers Blackness in a practical and deeply researched guide to navigating life, work, and relationships as a Black bi+ man. Popular representation of bi and pansexual men is growing, but we’re not there yet: It’s mostly white. It collapses bisexual identity into tired, hypersexualized tropes. And it fails to interrogate the deeply entrenched stereotypes that insist: You’re confused. You just don’t know you’re gay. You’re greedy. You must be great in bed. Author, peer counselor, and creator of #bisexualmenspeak J.R. Yussuf pushes back against these stigmas and misconceptions, exploring how white supremacy reinforces biphobia and dictates what society thinks it means to “be a man.” He contextualizes discourse around queerness and bisexuality within a larger framework that honors readers’ intersecting identities. And he offers deeply practical advice, sharing how to: * Unlearn internalized biphobia and homophobia * Navigate an increasingly hostile digital landscape * Think about coming out: who to tell, why to tell them, and how to do it * Fight back against erasure and stigma * Navigate sex, dating, partnerships, marriage, friendship, and work * Understand your bi+ sexuality through a political lens * Process Black bi+ representation Rich with personal narratives, insightful analysis, and practical advice, this book is a powerful resource for Black bi+ men to reclaim their identity, counter biphobia, and get empowered—and an offering to all readers looking to fight back against the erasure and dehumanization wrought by patriarchy.

Since the early 2000s, the phenomenon of the “down low”—black men who have sex with men as well as women and do not identify as gay, queer, or bisexual—has exploded in news media and popular culture, from the Oprah Winfrey Show to R & B singer R. Kelly’s hip hopera Trapped in the Closet. Most down-low stories are morality tales in which black men are either predators who risk infecting their unsuspecting female partners with HIV or victims of a pathological black culture that repudiates openly gay identities. In both cases, down-low narratives depict black men as sexually dangerous, duplicitous, promiscuous, and contaminated.

In Nobody Is Supposed to Know, C. Riley Snorton traces the emergence and circulation of the down low in contemporary media and popular culture to show how these portrayals reinforce troubling perceptions of black sexuality. Reworking Eve Sedgwick’s notion of the “glass closet,” Snorton advances a new theory of such representations in which black sexuality is marked by hypervisibility and confinement, spectacle and speculation. Through close readings of news, music, movies, television, and gossip blogs, Nobody Is Supposed to Know explores the contemporary genealogy, meaning, and functions of the down low.

Snorton examines how the down low links blackness and queerness in the popular imagination and how the down low is just one example of how media and popular culture surveil and police black sexuality. Looking at figures such as Ma Rainey, Bishop Eddie L. Long, J. L. King, and Will Smith, he ultimately contends that down-low narratives reveal the limits of current understandings of black sexuality.