Ideas, opinions, and personal essays from respected writers, thinkers, and activists. A project of Beacon Press, an independent publisher of progressive ideas since 1854.
Susie Bright, in addition to being a best-selling author, activist, and podcast host, is editor at large for Audible. Susie's blog, The Bright List, keeps readers and listeners apprised of new audiobooks.
Today's post is a cross-post from the Bright List.
“Who can we be, together? ...The goal should be neither conversion nor the destruction of religion— but rather to make a better world.”
—Sarah Sentilles, author of Breaking Up with God: A Love Story
If Chris Stedman had stayed in the church, he'd be everyone's favorite closeted youth pastor.
But this Fellow from the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University had the bravery to come out as gay and an atheist. He found, as he tried to reach out in the atheist world, that, as organized groups, they were often defined by what they were against, rather than what they were for.
Stedman calls for non-religious people to identify their values and work towards a positive identity. He asks the religious to move beyond their assumptions about who atheists are, and to recognize our common humanity.
Susie Bright, in addition to being a best-selling author, activist, and podcast host, is editor at large for Audible. Susie's blog, The Bright List, keeps readers and listeners apprised of new audiobooks.
This month brings the Audible release of three titles from one of my favorite independent scholars, Hanne Blank. Blank’s curiosity and thorough, critical thinking have brought fresh insights into the fields of human sexuality and history. Her warm, witty, and clever writing has brought me much enjoyment.
The title says it all--here’s the real story on how the very idea of “straightness” is a new, and quite flimsy, category if you look at how people have thought of sexuality all along.
—Funny, brainy, provocative nonfiction. A page-turner.
Like Joan Roughgarden’s Evolution’s Rainbow,Straight addresses gender, sex and biology, but goes on to explore historical and political attitudes, and perceptions of straightness and homosexuality.
From the “discovery” of the Hymen in ancient times to abstinence-only education in schools and purity balls today, Blank writes about the history of our preoccupation with "virginity." In her analysis, we can see the social construction of virginity, the sexism implicit in it, and the malleable definition of virginity over time.
Everything you think you know about virginity is up for debate. Blank writes with a great deal of humor and perception: "Of all the countries of the developed world, the United States is the only one that has to date created a federal agenda having specifically to do with the virginity of its citizens."
Narrated with friendly authority by Fran Tunno who also read Straight.
This is one of my favorite sex-ed books about any subject. I hadn’t thought about it one way or another, “size and sex”-- but there’s a lot to it. This isn’t a PC plea for acceptance, it’s really about FAT SEX, the reality and the creativity! Skinny people love this book too!
“Big Big Love is a ginormous blessing to people everywhere. Not only is it a superb sex manual, it’s positively radical, fun to read, and life affirming—big time.
"We know that “people of size” enjoy sex as much as anyone, but to talk about it so frankly, to show it, and give explicit details about the ins and outs of it, is as transgressive as it gets in our culture of “thin is sexy.” This book is well worth its weight in gold.”
—Annie Sprinkle, PhD
Narrated by Johanna Taylor who I absolutely believed as Hanne.
Susie Bright, in addition to being a best-selling author, activist, and podcast host, is editor at large for Audible. Susie's blog, The Bright List, keeps readers and listeners apprised of new audiobooks.
Terry grew up in the 1950s. Her mother had been given an experimental antibiotic while pregnant, which had adverse effects on her fetal nervous system. When Terry was nine, she began to lose her hearing. But being deaf wasn't going to stop Terry from having her big personality! Even though she was named the "child freak" of her town and faced the worst kind of prejudice, she managed to get back at everyone by faking her own drowning at summer camp. Now that takes balls.
I listened to Terry's coming out, mental breakdowns, all the colorful characters in her life, and kept thinking, "What's next?" She never disappointed.
Susie Bright, in addition to being a best-selling author, activist, and podcast host, is editor at large for Audible. Susie's blog, The Bright List, keeps readers and listeners apprised of new audiobooks.
Imagine a time when gay/lesbian couples weren't a hot-button issue— a time when same-sex celebrity couples flourished— what a novel idea!
In Outlaw Marriages, cultural historian Rodger Streitmatter reveals that gay marriage is not a 21st century idea— and that in fact, there have always been numerous well-known gay couples who lived an "outlaw" life together, despite conventional mores.
Some of the notables profiled are playwright Tennessee Williams, literary icon Gertrude Stein, and movie legend Greta Garbo.
Who had the long-lasting relationships— and who had a tumultuous love life? Whose lover ended up being their muse for their most famous work?
Outlaw Marriages gives a delicious look behind the curtain. You’ll be surprised at some of the answers!
Couples featured: Walt Whitman & Peter Doyle, Martha Carey Thomas & Mamie Gwinn, John Marshall & Ned Warren, Jane Addams & Mary Rozet Smith, Bessie Marbury & Elsie de Wolfe, J. C. Leyendecker & Charles Beach, Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas, Janet Flanner & Solita Solano, Greta Garbo & Mercedes de Acosta, Aaron Copland & Victor Kraft, Tennessee Williams & Frank Merlo, James Baldwin & Lucien Happersberger, Jasper Johns & Robert Rauschenberg, James Ivory & Ismail Merchant, Audre Lorde & Frances Clayton
Susie Bright, in addition to being a best-selling author, activist, and podcast host, is editor at large for Audible. Susie's blog, The Bright List, keeps readers and listeners apprised of new audiobooks.
This is not your average 16 & Pregnant life story.
Without A Map is Meredith Hall's outstanding debut as an author, and it's a story that starts when she gets pregnant by mistake in 1965.
Kicked out by her mother, and shunned by her small town community in New Hampshire— it's a rocky start. Hall’s life doesn't end up on People magazine— there's no plastic surgery/makeover ending.
Meredith moves to the Middle East, first on a whim, but it’s a decision that changes her life. She sells every one of her possessions, and yet arrives on the other side of her adventure with something much more precious, as well as a relationship she never dreamed she’d have.
Narrated by one of my favorite actresses on audio, Kathe Mazur. I discovered her while I was first recording the Best American Erotica series, and I'd ask for her, again and again.
Susie Bright, in addition to being a best-selling author, activist, and podcast host, is editor at large for Audible. Susie's blog, The Bright List, keeps readers and listeners apprised of new audiobooks.
This is the story of Bill Ayers, a survivor of the American New Left who, years later, was pilloried by the Tea Party, who claimed Chicago Bill was Obama's BFF—a "secret socialist plot!"
All that was nonsense, but here's the real deal: Bill Ayer's life and comradeship is far more interesting than banal White House name-dropping.
Ayers came from a suburban upper-middle-class family, a prep school grad. Nothing in his family predicted: "Will Seize State Power Upon Maturity."
The story of how the Vietnam war and the civil rights movement changed Bill's consciousness forever is one that many of us will identify with. Bill became one of the founders of the Weather Underground and spent seven years in its disciplined cadre—the details are excrutiating.
When it all fell apart, after WU bombings went belly-up tragic, Ayers spent ten years as a fugitive, living underground, nameless. Finally, in the third chapter of his life, he became a indefatiguable public education activist.
How did he survive, what does he revere—and what does he regret?
Ayers is an engaging storyteller who doesn't beg for our sympathy but earns your respect. I first read Bill's book when I was preparing to write my own memoir, which also covers violent and passionate years in the trenches of a minuscule-yet-influential American socialist left.
I wanted to read someone who wasn't going to "skip on the embarrassing parts"—nor someone who lost their mind and became a bliss-ninny. Ayers did not disappoint me. Just reading about how his comrades negotiated their love lives, or the communal housework—in the middle of plotting the overthrow of the United States— had me laughing and crying simultaneously. Been there and survived that!
I'm very very proud to bring this historical book to Audible.
Susie Bright, in addition to being a best-selling author, activist, and podcast host, is editor at large for Audible. Susie's blog, The Bright List, keeps readers and listeners apprised of new audiobooks.
Today's post is a cross-post Aretha Bright's Bright List review of Prairie Silence by Melanie M. Hoffert
What's the story of an expatriate from rural America like? Here we have a gay woman, who was never seen by anyone in her small North Dakota town as anything but a cipher. She finally left her claustrophobic but compelling rural life behind for downtown Minneapolis.
Now, years later, she wants to go back home to visit. Everyone from her childhood asks her if she’s found a “fella” yet. Cue the sweaty palms and abrupt subject changes.
Magnificent writing. You’ll understand the true meaning of “prairie silence” in the first chapter. This memoir speaks to anyone who left “back there” for the big city, but realizes they never quite got away.
"A heartfelt coming-out story as well as an eloquent elegy to a rural way of life that is rapidly vanishing from the American landscape." Booklist
"The author's mostly quiet narrative includes a wealth of haunting images and ideas that will linger long after the last sentence. A heartfelt love song to a place and its people as well as an honest and rewarding rendering of the author's interior landscape." Kirkus Reviews
“In Prairie Silence, Melanie Hoffert shows how the landscapes of our childhood continue to speak to us, and through us, long after we've left them behind. In this beautifully written and deeply imagined memoir, Hoffert invites us back to her North Dakota farming community for a season of harvest, a personal journey of profound courage and grace.” —Judy Blunt, author of Breaking Clean
"Melanie Hoffert has written a gutsy, complicated book about the little town we both came from (but which she experienced in a much, much different way).” —Chuck Klosterman, author of Downtown Owl and The Visible Man
"The quiet, lyric prose of Melanie Hoffert's Prairie Silence crept into my days, making it impossible for me to stop turning pages. This book is about looking for oneself in places we are so often afraid to venture. A beautiful debut from a brave new writer." —Claire Bidwell Smith, author of The Rules of Inheritance
Susie Bright, in addition to being a best-selling author, activist, and podcast host, is editor at large for Audible. Susie's blog, The Bright List, keeps readers and listeners apprised of new audiobooks.
Mark Hyman tallys the price of youth sports in the USA in dollars and lives. From equipment to private lessons, from tournament trips to MRIs, parents are bleeding themselves dry for their children’s activities.
The example of the parents who skipped health insurance payments to pay for their son’s golf lessons was shocking!
Some parents try to live their dreams through their children. They believe they're investing in their children’s future, led astray by the many corporate youth programs who tell them their kids are the next Venus & Serena Williams— they just need more lessons, more workshops, more camps.
Fine investigative journalism might make you think twice before you send your kid across the country to Lacrosse summer camp.
At what cost are we asking our kids to live out our dreams? Hard work and love of sport are one thing—but sixteen year olds, used up and limping around like old men— is quite another.
Mark Hyman examines the youth sports culture that drives kids to be "superstar" athletes at earlier and earlier ages-- starting with himself.
Hyman has been in the trenches as a "sports dad," getting heavily involved in the leagues and practices, until it became “as much a fulltime job as my fulltime job.”
I always thought the push for excellence in young players was so they could get scholarships to colleges, or into professional leagues. If their injuries make them used up before they even get there, what are we doing?
Hyman offers solutions and perspective— he knows how many people have this on their minds. I'd recommend this book to anyone with kids, especially those ferrying their kids to three kinds of practice every day of the week.
Susie Bright, in addition to being a best-selling author, activist, and podcast host, is editor at large for Audible. Susie's blog, The Bright List, keeps readers and listeners apprised of new audiobooks, with Aretha Bright reviewing new titles.
Today's post is a cross-post of Aretha's review of The $60,000 Dog: My Life With Animals by Lauren Slater, which was simultaneously released in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook last week.
Don’t be fooled by the adorable puppy cover—author Slater does indeed love animals, but her memoir is anything but soft and fuzzy.
Her memoir is the story of a bleak childhood, dominated first by her mother’s mental illness and then by a foster family that gave her a house, "but not a home." Her love for animals starts here, where she finds refuge in the countryside and observing the lives of deer, foxes, and insects.
The $60,000 dog of the title is Lila, the family pet, who came down with an extremely painful case of glaucoma. The dilemma that Slater faced is one that will resonate with every person who has ever valued an animal as more than just a pet.
As Lila’s medical bills mounted, Slater was faced with choosing between sending her daughter to summer camp or buying the medicines that would ease Lila’s pain. The happiness of her daughter stacked up against the happiness of her pet.
Slater first wrote of this situation in O Magazine, where it was a huge hit and inspired the rest of the book. Animal lovers will certainly relate to the “do anything it takes” approach to save their fuzzy family members.
Slater is great at building tension and intrigue. Her memories of animals that affected her life are beautiful. Be prepared to cry during the scenes at the vet hospital! Especially for the baby swan whose beak was broken off.
This book will touch every person who has ever thought of animals as their dearest companions.
Susie Bright, in addition to being a best-selling author, activist, and podcast host, is editor at large for Audible. This past spring, she approached Beacon with the goal of bringing out some of our titles in audiobook format on Audible, and we couldn't be more excited to announce that the first few books are now available. Susie's blog, The Bright List, keeps readers and listeners apprised of new audiobooks, with Aretha Bright reviewing new titles. Today's post is a cross-post of two recent reviews.
This week is Transgender Awareness Week, and we're highlighting two new Audible titles that are enlightening listening for trans- and cis-gendered folks alike: A Queer and Pleasant Danger by Kate Bornstein and Just Add Hormones by Matt Kailey.
Kate on Audio! -- Jewish Lesbian Tattooed Tranny, with a Titanium Knee & Scientologist Past
Kate Bornstein writes books condemned by Pope Benedict. She's a self-identified jewish lesbian tattooed masochist tranny, with a titanium knee. She's the definition of an outlaw! So how did she get this way?
A Queer and Pleasant Danger is Kate's memoir, broken into three parts: growing up a Jewish boy in New Jersey, joining Scientology as an adult (and leaving 12 years later), and finally, transitioning into a woman, coming out as a lesbian, and joining the BDSM culture. Who says getting old is a drag?
Kate's story is a deliciously matter-of-fact narrative, narrated by Alice Rosengard. Alice, coincidentally, went to college with Kate when she was known as "Al." They were friends! She called Kate up and they collaborated on the narration process— an unusual and delightful reunion.
Matt Kailey Lays It Out -- The Transssexual Experience
Author Matt Kailey answers all the questions cisgendered people might be too polite to ask--- about what it's like to change from living as a woman, to living as a man.
Just Add Hormones has behind-the-scenes details on the female to male transitioning process, with both humor and serious contemplation.
This bookassumes you don't know about the process already, and explains the basics while moving into every detail. —From the therapist sessions to the chest surgery, the testosterone shots to the "clit-dick!"
Susie Bright, in addition to being a best-selling author, activist, and podcast host, is editor at large for Audible. This past spring, she approached Beacon with the goal of bringing out some of our titles in audiobook format on Audible, and we couldn't be more excited to announce that the first few books are now available.
Kevin Jennings needed an “It Gets Better” video when he was growing up, but there was no such thing in the 1960s. It was a serious matter to appear “manly” and “Christian” in his home town. Baseball and touch football were expected, and no crying allowed, ever.
Even when his father died at his 8th birthday party, Jennings knew he couldn’t show tears.
The teasing and awkwardness of Jennings’ childhood will make you cringe, but it’s a triumphant feeling when he leaves his trailer park home in North Carolina and heads off to Harvard. But even more surprising is when Kevin decides to go back home and teach, after coming out of the closet. He ends up rocking the whole town and has nail-biting standoffs with the townies. Jennings’s story as a Lone Star gay activist in the south didn’t end in his hometown, though. Today, he’s best known as the founder of the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which works in schools nationwide to make sure that things do get better for LGBT youth.
Susie Bright, in addition to being a best-selling author, activist, and podcast host, is editor at large for Audible. This past spring, she approached Beacon with the goal of bringing out some of our titles in audiobook format on Audible, and we couldn't be more excited to announce that the first few books are now available.
Remembering the Music, Forgetting the Words is a cry, then laugh, then cry again memoir. Stock up on tissues!
My heart goes out to the author, Kate Whouley, who tells the story of taking care of her mother with dementia against mind-boggling odds.
It's not always “fun,” as in the Rescue Me TV episode when the chief's wife develops Alzheimer's and throws a disco party for her gay son, despite her husband’s homophobia. The reality is unlike anything seen on TV. At one point, Whouley's mother has stopped bathing, and the author has to go through elaborate manipulations just to give her a sponge bath. Anyone’s who’s been there knows what it’s like to be brought to your knees.
Kate is at peace with what eventually happened—but her journey to get there is a tremendous insight into anyone dealing with end-of-life family care.
Beacon Broadside, a project of Beacon Press, is an online venue for essays, news items, and dispatches from respected writers, thinkers, and activists about our times.
