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Reading lists

Books to read to learn more about the AIDS crisis

Lou Sullivan

Susan Stryker

Zach Ozma

Ellis Martin

Lou is an open-book mystery, a man who built bridges of access, a gentle soul with whom I share similar demons

This finely edited collection pulls out threads like gender self-determination, illicit queer sexual desire, and relationship woes that span his entire life. The volume reads like an open letter written for future queer trans people longing to understand their identities and experiences across time and space

This is a great book by a great person...If I am perhaps too glowing in my praise of Lou, that's probably because I can't physically imagine myself without him

It feels like a gift to be able to read such a complete and evocative record of a life spent in pursuit of joy

This Trans Day of Remembrance, if you're in need of a little joy, a little reconnection with life, a little reminder of how we can fight for our own happiness, this is a volume to pick up

Lou Sullivan was a visionary, a leader, and clearly one of the most significant trans figures of the late 20th century

The intimate details of Lou's life shared in his journals lay bare just how human he was. Lou transgressed the limited thinking of his era, the restrictions of his body, and even a terminal diagnosis to leave a legacy of self-determination that resounds beyond the trans masculine community he sought to empower. This collection continues Lou's legacy of knowledge-sharing and brings a oft-overlooked pioneer into sharp focus.

Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan

A unique first-hand account of a historical gay trans man's whole life, which reads like a celebratory coming-of-age novel. 
 
 Lou kept candid diaries from the age of 10. Through these extracts, we hear Lou's life in his own words: from 'playing boys' in his childhood in Wisconsin, to cruising San Francisco's gay bars for handsome 'youngmen'; from first hearing about gender non-conforming communities, to becoming a vital part of them as an activist, author, and archivist. 
 
 Lou navigated his identity with few role models and was perhaps the first publicly gay transgender man. Successfully campaigning to remove heterosexuality from the medical requirements for gender affirming surgery, Lou was pivotal in our modern understanding of gender and sexuality as distinct identities. After he was diagnosed with HIV in 1986, he remarked that he had been told by clinics that 'it was impossible for me to live as a gay man, but it looks like I'm gonna die like one.' 
 
 This selection shows Lou's joyous love of life, men, and sex. 
 
 * LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD WINNER * 
 * PUBLISHING TRIANGLE FINALIST * 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SUSAN STRYKER 
 
 'Chatty and tender, casually poetic and voraciously sexual-Sullivan workshopped his identity and his relationships, committing to the page an interior monologue of self-discovery that paralleled the gay-liberation movement, the burgeoning transgender-rights movement, and the aids crisis... Given how many contemporary trans narratives are rooted in trauma, their choice to foreground trans pleasure and sensuality is celebratory, even radical' The New Yorker

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Lou Sullivan

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Books to read to learn more about the AIDS crisis

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