Queer survivors piece together the clues to discover their own lives Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving goes beyond the recovery narrative to create a new queer literature of investigation, exploration, and transformation. Twenty-six stories illuminate the reality of growing up in fear, struggling to rebuild lives damaged by sexual, physical, and/or emotional abuse. The book explores how abuse turns queer survivors-male, female, and transgendered-into healers, heartbreakers, and homicidal maniacs, presenting brilliant stories that sear and soar. Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving addresses all forms of abuse head-on, representing a cross-section of queer survivors in terms of race, class, ethnicity, education, origin, sexuality, and gender. Contributors use their own life experiences to create a book that takes back control from well-meaning "outsiders," as they recount the daily struggle to overcome the damage done to their minds, bodies, and spirits in a world that denies their gender, sexual, and social identities. From the editor: "Dangerous Families consists entirely of writing by survivors of childhood abuse. That's right-no therapists analyzing our plight, no talk-show hosts exploiting us-just survivors, exploring our complicated, frightening, and fulfilling lives. These stories dispense with the usual technique of carefully massaging the reader's fragile worldview before plunging this unsuspecting innocent into a world of horror. They go right to the horror, the beauty, and the joy, often throwing the reader off-guard, revealing layers of meaning before the reader can step back." Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving is an anthology of 26 true stories of growing up queer in families that magnify the horrors of the outside world instead of offering protection. The book is an essential read for therapists, caseworkers, cultural studies specialists, and anyone struggling to survive childhood

Learn about the real lives of sex workers by exploring the sex industry from the inside!Explore the insightful--and oftentimes intense--accounts of sex workers who look squarely into the eyes of their clients, the sex industry, and society as a whole. Tricks and Treats delivers private stories about homo- and heterosexual encounters that sex workers usually confide only in each other. Not another "why I became a prostitute" book, it provocatively turns the tables on the buyers of sex, giving you a window into sex workers'lives. Tricks and Treats gives you straightforward accounts by sex workers to help you understand the pleasures, attractions, and truths of this profession. Tricks and Treats tantalizes with its powerful collection of tales from a diverse group of male, female, and transgendered sex workers. Their commercial, cultural, emotional, sexual, (il)legal, and even spiritual relationships with their clients are discussed in intimate detail. You will explore accounts from streetworkers, escorts, strippers, porn actors, masseurs, dominatrixes, phone sex operators, an adult-video store clerk, an outreach worker, a sex educator, and even a sperm donor.Tricks and Treats will ignite your imagination and answer questions few people dare to ask. You'll learn firsthand, of: how male, female, and transgendered hustlers turn tricks--in their own words--from sado-masochism and watersports to stripping, scat, foreplay, and fisting how sex workers face their own mortality when confronted with the AIDS virus a porn star's compassion and understanding for her fans a sex worker's coming-to-terms with his/her transgendered identity a male escort's attempts at dating a young man's experience of finding a family and home when living at a brothel a woman's story of spending thirty years as a prostitute the experiences of hooking on the streets and in clubs, cafes, and homes These engaging and shocking testimonials will entertain you and offer a unique understanding of the sex industry. Revealing and intriguing, these poignant talks will certainly not disappoint your imagination. Tricks and Treats is a testament to the lives of sex workers, a manifestation of their spirit, and gives them a chance to turn the tables on their clients, exposing their erotic tastes, turn-ons, and fantasies.

Nobody Passes is a collection of essays that confronts and challenges the very notion of belonging. By examining the perilous intersections of identity, categorization, and community, contributors challenge societal mores and countercultural norms. Nobody Passes explores and critiques the various systems of power seen (or not seen) in the act of "passing." In a pass/fail situation, standards for acceptance may vary, but somebody always gets trampled on. This anthology seeks to eliminate the pressure to pass and thereby unearth the delicious and devastating opportunities for transformation this might create. Mattilda, a.k.a. Matt Bernstein Sycamore has a history of editing anthologies based on brazen nonconformity and gender defiance. Nobody Passes is a cutting-edge exploration of the very topical issue of passing. From activism to academia, immigration to appropriation, disability culture to trans communities, this anthology challenges standards of authenticity and destroys notions of acceptability. Mattilda sets out to ask the question, "What lies are people forced to tell in order to gain acceptance as 'real'?" The answers are as varied as the life experiences of the writers who tackle this urgent and essential topic.

Queer survivors piece together the clues to discover their own lives Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving goes beyond the recovery narrative to create a new queer literature of investigation, exploration, and transformation. Twenty-six stories illuminate the reality of growing up in fear, struggling to rebuild lives damaged by sexual, physical, and/or emotional abuse. The book explores how abuse turns queer survivors-male, female, and transgendered-into healers, heartbreakers, and homicidal maniacs, presenting brilliant stories that sear and soar. Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving addresses all forms of abuse head-on, representing a cross-section of queer survivors in terms of race, class, ethnicity, education, origin, sexuality, and gender. Contributors use their own life experiences to create a book that takes back control from well-meaning "outsiders," as they recount the daily struggle to overcome the damage done to their minds, bodies, and spirits in a world that denies their gender, sexual, and social identities. From the editor: "Dangerous Families consists entirely of writing by survivors of childhood abuse. That's right-no therapists analyzing our plight, no talk-show hosts exploiting us-just survivors, exploring our complicated, frightening, and fulfilling lives. These stories dispense with the usual technique of carefully massaging the reader's fragile worldview before plunging this unsuspecting innocent into a world of horror. They go right to the horror, the beauty, and the joy, often throwing the reader off-guard, revealing layers of meaning before the reader can step back." Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving is an anthology of 26 true stories of growing up queer in families that magnify the horrors of the outside world instead of offering protection. The book is an essential read for therapists, caseworkers, cultural studies specialists, and anyone struggling to survive childhood