"A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness "features essays and poems by Cherrie L. Moraga, one of the most influential figures in Chicana/o, feminist, queer, and indigenous activism and scholarship. Combining moving personal stories with trenchant political and cultural critique, the writer, activist, teacher, dramatist, mother, daughter, "comadre," and lesbian lover looks back on the first ten years of the twenty-first century. She considers decade-defining public events such as 9/11 and the campaign and election of Barack Obama, and she explores socioeconomic, cultural, and political phenomena closer to home, sharing her fears about raising her son amid increasing urban violence and the many forms of dehumanization faced by young men of color. Moraga describes her deepening grief as she loses her mother to Alzheimer's; pays poignant tribute to friends who passed away, including the sculptor Marsha Gomez and the poets Alfred Arteaga, Pat Parker, and Audre Lorde; and offers a heartfelt essay about her personal and political relationship with Gloria Anzaldua.

Thirty years after the publication of Anzaldua and Moraga's collection "This Bridge Called My Back," a landmark of women-of-color feminism, Moraga's literary and political praxis remains motivated by and intertwined with indigenous spirituality and her identity as Chicana lesbian. Yet aspects of her thinking have changed over time. "A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness" reveals key transformations in Moraga's thought; the breadth, rigor, and philosophical depth of her work; her views on contemporary debates about citizenship, immigration, and gay marriage; and her deepening involvement in transnational feminist and indigenous activism. It is a major statement from one of our most important public intellectuals.

A compelling, harrowing, but ultimately uplifting story of resilience and self-discovery. A Two-Spirit Journey is Ma-Nee Chacaby's extraordinary account of her life as an Ojibwa-Cree lesbian. From her early, often harrowing memories of life and abuse in a remote Ojibwa community riven by poverty and alcoholism, Chacaby's story is one of enduring and ultimately overcoming the social, economic, and health legacies of colonialism. As a child, Chacaby learned spiritual and cultural traditions from her Cree grandmother and trapping, hunting, and bush survival skills from her Ojibwa stepfather. She also suffered physical and sexual abuse by different adults, and in her teen years became alcoholic herself. At twenty, Chacaby moved to Thunder Bay with her children to escape an abusive marriage. Abuse, compounded by racism, continued, but Chacaby found supports to help herself and others. Over the following decades, she achieved sobriety; trained and worked as an alcoholism counsellor; raised her children and fostered many others; learned to live with visual impairment; and came out as a lesbian. In 2013, Chacaby led the first gay pride parade in Thunder Bay. Ma-Nee Chacaby has emerged from hardship grounded in faith, compassion, humour, and resilience. Her memoir provides unprecedented insights into the challenges still faced by many Indigenous people.

Sex Talks to Girls chronicles the outward antics of a woman on an inward journey to self through the routes of religion, sex, sobriety, and kids. Recasting herself in this memoir as ""Molly Meek,"" Maureen Seaton interprets the emergence of Molly's identity in luxurious and very funny prose. Molly alternately finds herself in the surprising company of winos, swingers, and drag kings; in love with Jesus H. Christ and a butch named Mars; in charge of two children; writing stories that shrink painfully to poems without her permission; and incapable of figuring out how she landed in any of these predicaments. She is, by turns, a little saint, a Stepford wife, a bi-mom, and a femme with super powers. Her transformation from near-nun to full-fledged sexual being, accidentally becoming conscious in the process and delighting in the spree is the story of a life set on play and a woman heroically committed to seeing it through.

Faith, a college freshman, is living at home with her parents when they discover her sexuality. Not being able to deal with their homophobia, she leaves home and travels across the country to be with her girlfriend. She quickly learns things are not going to be as easy as she had hoped.

The Salome Ensemble probes the entangled lives, works, and passions of a political activist, a novelist, a screenwriter, and a movie actress who collaborated in 1920s New York City. Together they created the shape-shifting, genre-crossing Salome of the Tenements, first a popular novel and then a Hollywood movie. The title character was a combination Cinderella and Salome like the women who conceived her. Rose Pastor Stokes was the role model. Anzia Yezierska wrote the novel. Sonya Levien wrote the screenplay. Jetta Goudal played her on the silver screen. Ginsberg considers the women individually and collectively, exploring how they shaped and reflected their cultural landscape. These European Jewish immigrants pursued their own versions of the American dream, escaped the squalor of sweatshops, knew romance and heartache, and achieved prominence in politics, fashion, journalism, literature, and film.