Recommendations based on "The Position"

'The book everyone will be talking about' Louise O'Neill 'A package of dynamite' Stephen King An era-defining novel about the relationship between a fifteen-year-old girl and her teacher Vanessa Wye was fifteen-years-old when she first had sex with her English teacher. She is now thirty-two and the teacher, Jacob Strane, has just been accused of sexual abuse by another former student of his. Vanessa is horrified by this news, because she is quite certain that the relationship she had with Strane wasn't abuse. It was love. She's sure of that. But now, in 2017, in the midst of allegations against powerful men, she is being asked to redefine the great love story of her life - her great sexual awakening - as rape. Nuanced, uncomfortable, bold and powerful, and as riveting as it is disturbing, My Dark Vanessa goes straight to the heart of some of the most complex issues our age is grappling with.

A Must-Read: Vogue, Nylon, Chicago Review of Books, Literary Hub, Frieze, The Millions, Publishers Weekly, InsideHook, The Next Big Idea Club,“[Lauren] Elkin is a stylish, determined provocateur . . . Sharp and cool . . . [Art Monsters is] exemplary. It describes a whole way to live, worthy of secret admiration.” ―Maggie Lange, The Washington Post“Destined to become a new classic . . . Elkin shatters the truisms that have evolved around feminist thought.” ―Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick and After Kathy Acker: A Literary BiographyWhat kind of art does a monster make? And what if monster is a verb? Noun or a verb, the idea is a dare: to overwhelm limits, to invent our own definitions of beauty.In this dazzlingly original reassessment of women’s stories, bodies, and art, Lauren Elkin―the celebrated author of Flâneuse―explores the ways in which feminist artists have taken up the challenge of their work and how they not only react against the patriarchy but redefine their own aesthetic aims. How do we tell the truth about our experiences as bodies? What is the language, what are the materials, that we need to transcribe them? And what are the unique questions facing those engaged with female bodies, queer bodies, sick bodies, racialized bodies?Encompassing a rich genealogy of work across the literary and artistic landscape, Elkin makes daring links between disparate points of reference―among them Julia Margaret Cameron’s photography, Kara Walker’s silhouettes, Vanessa Bell’s portraits, Eva Hesse’s rope sculptures, Carolee Schneemann’s body art, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s trilingual masterpiece DICTEE―and steps into the tradition of cultural criticism established by Susan Sontag, Hélène Cixous, and Maggie Nelson.An erudite, potent examination of beauty and excess, sentiment and touch, the personal and the political, the ambiguous and the opaque, Art Monsters is a radical intervention that forces us to consider how the idea of the art monster might transform the way we imagine―and enact―our lives.

Teeming with life and crackling with energy - a love song to modern Britain, to black womanhood, to the ever-changing heart of LondonGirl, Woman, Other follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years.Joyfully polyphonic and vibrantly contemporary, this is a gloriously new kind of history, a novel of our times: celebratory, ever-dynamic and utterly irresistible.'A daring evocation of black British history... Sexy, punchy [and] fresh' Independent on Sunday on The Emperor's Babe

From a #1 Apple podcast host, Lambda Literary fellow, and dominatrix comes a sex-positive, judgment-free cultural deep-dive into the world of kink.When celebrated BDSM educator Tina Horn first launched Why Are People Into That?!, publications from Vice to Buzzfeed heralded it as one of the best sex podcasts around. Each episode centered around a different fetish or fantasy, thoughtfully examining why, exactly, different strokes work for different folks. From sex workers and scientists to artists and activists, Tina’s wide range of guests helped educate fascinated listeners across the world on the wide spectrum of humanity’s appetites. With her listeners growing more and more insatiable, she soon realized that the only way to address the titular question with all the depth and nuance it deserved was to turn that idea into a book.From spanking, strap-ons, and sluts, to taboos involving cake, chains, and cannibalism, WHY ARE PEOPLE INTO THAT? explores the universal drives that shape even the most specific erotic tastes, and the cultural context that molds and is molded by the way we conceptualize pleasure, gender, fantasy, and power. With buoyant prose, Tina invites us to reconsider everything we thought we knew about sexuality. How, for example, should we think about "consensual nonconsent" in a post-#MeToo era? How does cross-dressing fit in with our evolving cultural understanding of gender performance and identity? And what do foot fetishists, fisters, and FinDoms have in common?Blending insightful cultural criticism, investigative journalism, and spicy anecdotes from Tina’s 15+ years of hard-earned expertise in the sex industry and beyond, WHY ARE PEOPLE INTO THAT? is a philosophical-but-fun exploration of the prismatic spectrum of human desire and the expansive possibilities of pleasure. For fans of adrienne maree brown and Emily Nagoski, this raunchy and rousing book is perfect for anyone who is interested not only in the intricacies of what we desire, but in how desire itself really works.

Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, and the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction. One of the Washington Post's 50 Notable Works of Fiction in 2023. One of The New York Times' 10 Best California Books of 2023. Longlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.“Open Throat is what fiction should be.” ―The New York Times Book ReviewA lonely, lovable, queer mountain lion narrates this star-making fever dream of a novel.A queer and dangerously hungry mountain lion lives in the drought-devastated land under the Hollywood sign. Lonely and fascinated by humanity’s foibles, the lion spends their days protecting a nearby homeless encampment, observing hikers complain about their trauma, and, in quiet moments, grappling with the complexities of their gender identity, memories of a vicious father, and the indignities of sentience.When a man-made fire engulfs the encampment, the lion is forced from the hills down into the city the hikers call “ellay.” As the lion confronts a carousel of temptations and threats, they take us on a tour that spans the cruel inequalities of Los Angeles and the toll of climate grief. But even when salvation finally seems within reach, they are forced to face down the ultimate question: Do they want to eat a person, or become one?Henry Hoke’s Open Throat is a marvel of storytelling, a universal journey through a wondrous and menacing world recounted by a lovable mountain lion. Feral and vulnerable, profound and playful, Open Throat is a star-making novel that brings the mythic to life.

A New York Public Library Best Book of 2017 * A Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Book for Teens 2017 This first-ever LGBTQ history book of its kind for young adults will appeal to fans of fun, empowering pop-culture books like Rad American Women A-Z and Notorious RBG. Three starred reviews! World history has been made by countless lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals—and you’ve never heard of many of them. Queer author and activist Sarah Prager delves deep into the lives of 23 people who fought, created, and loved on their own terms. From high-profile figures like Abraham Lincoln and Eleanor Roosevelt to the trailblazing gender-ambiguous Queen of Sweden and a bisexual blues singer who didn’t make it into your history books, these astonishing true stories uncover a rich queer heritage that encompasses every culture, in every era. By turns hilarious and inspiring, the beautifully illustrated Queer, There, and Everywhere is for anyone who wants the real story of the queer rights movement. A Junior Library Guild Selection

‘An important and honest book that will encourage better conversations about sex. I wish I read this when I was younger!’ - Laura Whitmore 'A must-read for anyone whose sexual expression has been used as a weapon against them' – Ruby Rare 'A fascinating deep dive into the history of slutshaming' - Service 95, Dua Lipa's Book Club A 'taboo-smashing debut book' - Cosmopolitan From award-winning journalist Beth Ashley comes a groundbreaking investigation into the history of slutshaming, how it continues to affect us today and what we can do to fight it. Whore. Hoe. Jezebel. Harlot. Slut. Five words. One meaning. But what exactly is a slut? How has the concept changed over time? And why is slutshaming so dangerous? In this groundbreaking investigation, Beth Ashley reveals the truth about slutshaming, gives us the tools to fight it, and encourages us all to have better conversations about sex. The fight starts now.

A Recommended Book in the Washington Post, the New York Times Style Magazine, Observer, W Magazine, NBC News, E! Online, Queerty, Literary Hub, Stylist, & Publishers Weekly From the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Gay Bar comes a rule-breaking, sweat-soaked, genre-busting story of outlaw love. It’s 1996, and Jeremy Atherton Lin has met the boy of his dreams — a mumbling, starry-eyed Brit — just as, amid a media frenzy, US Congress prepares the Defense of Marriage Act, denying same-sex couples federal rights including immigration. The pair steals away to remote forests and vast deserts, London fashion shows and Berlin sex clubs, dinner parties, back alleys, East Village hotel rooms, and San Francisco dives. Finding no other way to stay together, they shack up illicitly among unlikely allies in a “city of refuge.” With Atherton Lin’s inimitable blend of tenderness and wicked humor, Deep House moves through the couple’s string of rented apartments while unlocking doors to a lineage of gay men who have come before — smuggling a foreign partner through national checkpoints or going public to stand up for the right to get down in the privacy of their own homes. They include hapless criminals, sexpot bartenders, friars, pirates, government workers who subverted the system, activists who went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the celebrated artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Following Gay Bar — called “a rich tapestry” by Vanity Fair and “an absolute tour de force” by Maggie Nelson — Deep House juxtaposes whispered disclosures of undocumented domesticity with courtroom drama and political stunts to explore myriad forms of intimacy while questioning the mechanisms that legitimize love. Deep House is at once a historical kaleidoscope and the innermost tale of two boyfriends who made a home in the shadows of a turbulent civil rights battle.  

“Consent” is a Molotov cocktail, flung at the face of the French establishment, a work of dazzling, highly controlled fury...By every conceivable metric, her book is a triumph.” -- The New York TimesAlready an international literary sensation, an intimate and powerful memoir of a young French teenage girl’s relationship with a famous, much older male writer—a universal #MeToo story of power, manipulation, trauma, recovery, and resiliency that exposes the hypocrisy of a culture that has allowed the sexual abuse of minors to occur unchecked.Sometimes, all it takes is a single voice to shatter the silence of complicity.Thirty years ago, Vanessa Springora was the teenage muse of one of the country’s most celebrated writers, a footnote in the narrative of a very influential man in the French literary world.At the end of 2019, as women around the world began to speak out, Vanessa, now in her forties and the director of one of France’s leading publishing houses, decided to reclaim her own story, offering her perspective of those events sharply known.Consent is the story of one precocious young girl’s stolen adolescence. Devastating in its honesty, Vanessa’s painstakingly memoir lays bare the cultural attitudes and circumstances that made it possible for a thirteen-year-old girl to become involved with a fifty-year-old man who happened to be a notable writer. As she recalls the events of her childhood and her seduction by one of her country’s most notable writers, Vanessa reflects on the ways in which this disturbing relationship changed and affected her as she grew older.Drawing parallels between children’s fairy tales and French history and her personal life, Vanessa offers an intimate and absorbing look at the meaning of love and consent and the toll of trauma and the power of healing in women’s lives. Ultimately, she offers a forceful indictment of a chauvinistic literary world that has for too long accepted and helped perpetuate gender inequality and the exploitation and sexual abuse of children.Translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer"...One of the belated truths that emerges from [Consent] is that Springora is a writer. [...]Her sentences gleam like metal; each chapter snaps shut with the clean brutality of a latch." -- The New Yorker"Consent [is] rapier-sharp, written with restraint, elegance and brevity." -- The Times (London)"[Consent] has something steely in its heart, and it departs from the typical American memoir of childhood abuse in exhilarating ways." -- Slate"Lucid and nuanced...[Consent] will speak to trauma survivors everywhere." -- Los Angeles Review of Books”A piercing memoir about the sexually abusive relationship she endured at age 14 with a 50-year-old writer...This chilling account will linger with readers long after the last page is turned.” -- Publishers Weekly"Springora's lucid account is a commanding discussion of sexual abuse and victimization, and a powerful act of reclamation." -- Booklist"A chilling story of child abuse and the sophisticated Parisians who looked the other way...[Springora] is an elegant and perceptive writer." -- Kirkus

In the early 1990s three young people attracted to the ambitious global peacekeeping work of the UN cross paths in Cambodia. Andrew strives for a better world through his life-saving work as a doctor. Heidi, a social worker, is in need of a challenge and a paycheck, and Ken is fresh from Harvard and brimful of idealism. As their stories interweave through the years, from Rwanda, Bosnia and Somalia to Haiti, the trio reveal a world of witnessed atrocities, primal fear, desperate loneliness and base desires. They fend off terror and futility with revelry, humour and sex; ask hard questions about the world order America has created, the true power of the UN, and whether there is any possibility for change. This is a startling celebration of the power of humour and friendship, of the limits of human compassion, and the need for a warm body and a cold beer during a Condition Echo lockdown. A book that shows the human cost of global politics and the tragic truth that wars are much more avoidable than our governments would ever admit. A brilliant, provocatively funny and fast moving book.