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 is the punk, feminist gender theorist's take on the classic American road novel. Nevada reads the way people actually talk--both in general, and about gender politics and queerness. The unique style of the prose makes for a read that folks who often don't see themselves in literature can immediately relate to. I love this book; it's the most connected to what I'm reading I've felt in a long time.
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!
Beginning when they first cross paths in college, Sharon Kisses and Mel Vaught are inseparable. Together they spur each other on to be insatiable animators, churning out raw, groundbreaking work. Whitaker has created characters who are rough around the edges in a way that feels real. This book is filled to bursting with their friendship, conflicts, sexuality, creativity, and trauma. It is fiction true to the lives of modern young women, artists, and city slickers sprung from rural America. It is a testament to the enrapturing force of women's intimate, internal lives and the power of their relationships with one another.
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.
Written by Seattle's own city council member and social activist Nick Licata, this book is what so many of us need now more than ever. Think of it as an instruction manual for social change, perfect if your call to arms needs some direction.
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.
Janet Mock, trans activist, TV host, and contributing editor for Marie Claire, has delivered yet another highly personal and riveting memoir. While it's a follow-up to her first book, Redefining Realness, which was on Mock's teen years and transition, Surpassing Certainty stands on its own two feet. Mock weaves a strong narrative of her memories from the first half of her 20s—a time during which she chose not to disclose her transness. Her voice is captivating as she recounts the many ways she spent those years of her life—being a stripper, her intense relationship and early marriage to her now-ex husband, and moving from her native Honolulu to New York City, all while making her way through college, grad school, and then breaking into the publishing industry. Mock has created a beautifully honest and truly relatable work that also explores her intersecting identities and how they have influenced her experience of the world. I know everyone says this but, really, I couldn't put it down.
