Books like Small Book of Hip Checks by Erica Rand

Why is the American male's sense of self so closely intertwined with his success, or failure, as an athlete? What are the physical and emotional costs, to individual men and society at large, of engaging in organized athletics? Are sports good for men and boys? Michael Messner addresses these questions and more in his fascinating new study of masculinity and sports. Using interviews with thirty male former athletes, Messner argues that sports, so central to the lives of millions of boys and men, play a key role in shaping our society's definition of what it means to be a man. Messner shows us that lifelong relationships with colleagues, friends, lovers, wives, and children are affected by the barriers to intimacy constructed through sports. America's jock culture equates true manhood with athletic success, driving men to view the world in terms of status, power, and privilege. The Lombardian ethic that "winning isn't everything; it's the only thing" pushes America's athletes to continue to play even when hurt, to take drugs, and to treat women and others as mere objects. Sexism, homophobia, and racism pervade the world of sports, and Messner's conversations with male athletes of different races, classes, and sexual orientations reveal their struggles to reconcile the world of sports with the reality of their private lives. America's boys and men, as well as its girls and women, can find camaraderie and pleasure on the playing field, but the rules of the game must change first. The rules will only shift, Messner convinces us, when we begin to change our definitions of what it is to be men and women.

A Texan sisters' thriller with a twist of romance and danger.

Terrance Hayes’s collection, Hip Logic, weaves playful anagrams and cultural nods to figures like Paul Robeson and Big Bird into sharp, evocative verse that explores contemporary African‑American male identity.

The Transgender Studies Reader compiles fifty key texts, introduced by Susan Stryker, charting the field’s development within queer theory, feminist studies, and the history of sexuality.

Explores how 'hip' evolved from underground culture to a global cultural touchstone, charting its influence on music, fashion, gender, race, and mainstream commerce over the twentieth century.

An ethnographic study of how the term "transgender" emerged and spread as a political identity in the U.S., based on fieldwork among male‑to‑female activists, and an analysis of the tensions between activist language and self‑identification.