AJ
AJ became a bookseller at the tender age of 17 and hasn't found their way out of the life since. Born & raised in the Pacific Northwest, they are a proud supporter of many activist causes, wearing socks with sandals, and vitamin D deficiencies. Find them in the Queer section raising a ruckus and slinging books.
Reviews & Recommendations
The latest poetry collection from the author who brought us [Insert] Boy and Black Movie is saturated with what makes Smith's writing so powerful—the political, personal, erotic, and urgent themes that dig down deep in us and plant a seed. They deftly turn grief and mourning at the rending of black bodies into celebration of innocence, love, and life taken.
This one is for the former (& current) punk kids, the badasses who bend & transcend gender, the reluctant sellouts, the folks who don't feel their narrative is straight-forward. Laura Jane Grace, front-woman/founder of the band Against Me! &--as indicated by the title--somewhat infamous "sellout" & trans activist has lived. Reading these selections from her years of journals is an immersive, raw experience. I have too many feelings about this book & its author to fit in one little blurb! Read it!
Sex and the Constitution is an enthralling history of the legal and political impact of sexual social values. It explores obscenity, religion, and the introduction of Christianity, the development and legality of abortion and contraception, and changing legislation and views on sexuality from ancient Rome to the formation of modern America. Stone dissects the false history of America as a Christian nation with Puritan sexual values and the various waves of evangelism that have lodged this myth in our collective cultural consciousness, as well as its effect on our sense of morality generally, historically, and in civil rights contexts.
The authors have produced an insightful and thorough review of polyamory and non-monogamy. This book will meet the needs of those with passing curiosities on the subject just as well as those with ample lived experience of polyamory, taking the reader all the way from intro to intricacy. Those who enjoyed The Ethical Slut will love this updated guide to today's world of polyamory.
Everyone wants to be female--or at least they should. A.K. Press' printing of this classic feminist satire-that-takes-itself-seriously provides essential context on Solanas' life, complete with a nuanced introduction and biographical epilogue by Michelle Tea. It reads like a conversation, had tongues in cheeks, across years and shifting gender politics when paired with Females by emerging author, essayist, and transgender theorist Andrea Long Chu.
"Everyone is female, and everyone hates it." Hugely influenced by S.C.U.M. Manifesto, the preeminent work of feminist pseudo-satire by Valerie Solanas, Females is equal parts deadly serious and completely sarcastic. When paired with the AK Press printing of S.C.U.M., it reads like a conversation, had tongues in cheeks, across years and shifting gender politics. Emerging author, essayist, and transgender theorist Andrea Long Chu has created something that is poised to become a feminist and gender theory classic in its own right.
Heralded as "the godfather of modern fermentation," and author of books held up as bibles in the fermentation-revivalist community such as The Art of Fermentation and Wild Fermentation, Sandor Ellix Katz has delivered something slightly different in his latest book. Katz has managed to put into words all of the far-fetched, lovey-dovey, reverent feelings I've had while capturing wild yeasts, gently mixing a sourdough starter with my hands, and quietly waiting for those first, bubbling signs of life in a fruit wine. He has beautifully dovetailed all that magic with the social, political, and philosophical realms we can carry it into. Part musings, part microscopy photographs, this book is by no means only suited for those interested in funk of a good sauerkraut—it will be at home in the hands of anyone with an appreciation for a slower life, who is critical of all things binary, or is invested in our interconnectedness with all things.
