Books like Q & A by David L. Eng

A groundbreaking work that explains how trauma rewires the brain and body, and presents evidence‑based therapies—from neurofeedback to yoga—that unlock the mind’s natural capacity for healing.

A groundbreaking memoir that blends personal narrative with rigorous theory, charting Maggie Nelson’s queer romance, pregnancy, and the politics of love and family.

Angela Y. Davis links the history of state violence and oppression to present struggles, urging solidarity and action for human liberty worldwide.

Judith Butler’s seminal text challenges essentialist views of sex and gender, proposing that identity is constructed through repeated social performances.

A pioneering oral‑history study of Buffalo’s working‑class lesbian community from the 1930s to the 1960s, revealing how black and white women shaped social change through butch‑fem culture, work, and resistance.

Working from classic texts of European and American writers―including Melville, James, Nietzsche, Proust, and Wilde―Sedgwick analyzes a turn-of-the-century historical moment in which sexual orientation became as important a demarcation of personhood as gender had been for centuries. In her preface to this updated edition Sedgwick places the book both personally and historically, looking specifically at the horror of the first wave of the AIDS epidemic and its influence on the text.

Ten years ago, Samantha Allen was a suit-and-tie-wearing Mormon missionary. Now she's a GLAAD Award-winning journalist happily married to another woman. A lot in her life has changed, but what hasn't changed is her deep love of Red State America, and of queer people who stay in so-called "flyover country" rather than moving to the liberal coasts. In Real Queer America, Allen takes us on a cross-country road-trip stretching all the way from Provo, Utah to the Rio Grande Valley to the Bible Belt to the Deep South. Her motto for the trip: "Something gay every day." Making pit stops at drag shows, political rallies, and hubs of queer life across the heartland, she introduces us to scores of extraordinary LGBT people working for change, from the first openly transgender mayor in Texas history to the manager of the only queer night club in Bloomington, Indiana, and many more. Capturing profound cultural shifts underway in unexpected places and revealing a national network of chosen family fighting for a better world, Real Queer America is a treasure trove of uplifting stories and a much-needed source of hope and inspiration in these divided times.

There is more to identity than identifying with one’s culture or standing solidly against it. José Esteban Muñoz looks at how those outside the racial and sexual mainstream negotiate majority culture—not by aligning themselves with or against exclusionary works but rather by transforming these works for their own cultural purposes. Muñoz calls this process “disidentification,” and through a study of its workings, he develops a new perspective on minority performance, survival, and activism.