Category: News
New Arrival! Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man
In this groundbreaking new book, Thomas Page McBee, a trans man, trains to fight in a charity boxing match at Madison Square Garden while struggling to untangle the vexed relationship between masculinity and violence. Through his experience boxing—learning to get hit, and to hit back; wrestling with the camaraderie of the gym; confronting the betrayals and strength of his own body—McBee examines the weight of male violence, the pervasiveness of gender stereotypes, and the limitations of conventional masculinity.
“With Thomas as your gloved guide, you’ll peer into locker rooms, through ropes, and at douchebags challenging strangers to sidewalk beatdowns. … McBee explores why men so frequently confuse violence with power and why being a man ought to rely on a willingness to spar, first and foremost, with one’s own shadow.”
—Myriam Gurba, author of Mean
“Until I read this book, I didn’t realize how tired I was of reading about masculinity as cold, hard, and fixed.”
—Ann Friedman, New York magazine columnist and cohost of Call Your Girlfriend
Order your copy online now or stop by the store today!
Serena J. Bishop talks about the LGBTQ book that changed her life
Serena J. Bishop talks about the LGBTQ book that changed her life.
Get her favorite book here:
And the Band Played on: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (Anniversary)
Get her book, “Beards” here:
See You at the Trans Wellness Conference This Weekend!
Philly AIDS Thrift @ Giovanni’s Room will be at the Philadelphia Trans Wellness Conference on Friday and Saturday tabling with new books! That’s Friday, August 3rd and Saturday, 4th at the Convention Center on 129 North Broad Street. We’re so excited to see y’all there!
Grey Gardens Ticket Give Away Spectacular!!!
Just two weeks away from the big event, and we got to thinking: who is the BIGGEST GREY GARDENS FAN IN THE WORLD? What a better way to find out than a free give away contest! That’s right! FREE (you Dirty lil’ Cheapskates)!
This is your chance to win two VIP tickets — that includes a ticket to the screening on July 19th, as well as a signed copy of Marble Faun of Grey Gardens: A Memoir of the Beales, the Maysles Brothers, and Jacqueline Kennedy, a Philly AIDS Thrift @ Giovanni’s Room tote bag, and complimentary wine at a meet and greet with the authors!
These are the rules:
- Post a creative video where you’re dressed as your favorite character from the film. BECOME THE CHARACTER and tell us why you deserve to be named THE BIGGEST GREY GARDENS FAN.
- Post your video on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, but make sure to tag both of our stores!
FB:
Twitter:
Instagram:
- Videos should be no longer than 60 seconds.
- Your video must be uploaded by Friday, July 13th at 11:59pm.
- The winner will be announced on Monday, July 16th.
This is your big CHANCE!
Ten Books for Pride 2018
One way to recognize LGBTQ+ communities is to make sure their voices are heard, so for Pride Month 2018 we have put together a list of books we think are worth reading (or re-reading) this summer. Here are ten books for your Pride 2018, in no particular order:
Justin Torres’ first novel was a big hit when it was released seven years ago, and if you have not had the chance to read it yet, you should do so before the film version is released this summer. We think the movie, like the novel, is going to be a big deal!
Joseph Beam’s In the Life remains one of the best collections to explore what it means to be both black and gay in the US. This book is especially important to us, because Joseph used to work here at the store.
A best seller since it was released, this is truly fantastic collection for, by, and about trans people.
This is a heart warming story of love at first sight that takes a lifetime to mature.
The World Only Spins Forward explores the importance, and resurgence of, the ground breaking play Angels in America.
Lillian Faderman’s new and comprehensive look at this LGBT icon is a great pick for fans of history and biographies.
Sisters in the Life: A History of Out African American Lesbian Media-Making
A long overdue look at the contribution of African American Lesbian media-making.
A great anthology of our most important poets!
This year’s Pulitzer Prize Winner is hands down hilarious, and now out in paperback!
The first novel by an Equatorial Guinean woman to be translated into English, a fantastic edition to any LGBT library.
Black Girl Magic: A Poetry Anthology
In Black Girl Magic, the second volume in the BreakBeats Poets series, the Black girl magic is an undeniable force, igniting the pages and speaking necessary truths. Edited by Mahogany L. Browne, Idrissa Simmonds, and Jamila Woods, the anthology collects poetry from the canon of Black women. The poets write from a range of intersections within the diaspora. But in each poem, there is that special spark of magic. As Simmonds writes in her introduction: “When a Black woman dares to speak her truth, she redefines understandings of womanhood. Her voice echoes out, disrupting and delegitimizing tired stereotypes and tropes. In short, there is magic.”
Exploring themes from self-love and black beauty to white supremacy and the Trump administration, the poems in this anthology offer what Browne describes as “mantras, praters, and promises of our survival.” The voices collected here provide healing and support for other Black women. The collection is also an opportunity for those who aren’t black and/or woman-identified to listen.
You can purchase copies of Black Girl Magic at Philly AIDS Thrift at Giovanni’s Room for $19.95 (plus tax). Drop by the store or order online today!
Special Visitor — Nicole Dennis-Benn!
Wow! The wonderfully talented Nicole Dennis-Benn stopped by the store this week and signed a few copies of her novel Here Comes the Sun! These signed copies won’t last long — grab yours today!
Queer Book News: Two Pulitzer Prize Winners, Wow!
There is much excitement around this year’s Pulitzer Prize winners, two of which are gay authors!
Andrew Sean Greer won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction with his novel Less. A scintillating satire of the American abroad, a rumination on time and the human heart, a bittersweet romance of chances lost, by an author The New York Times has hailed as “inspired, lyrical,” “elegiac,” “ingenious,” as well as “too sappy by half,” Less shows a writer at the peak of his talents raising the curtain on our shared human comedy.
The Pulitzer officials have called it “a generous book, musical in its prose and expansive in its structure and range, about growing older and the essential nature of love.”
Another winner and gay author, Frank Bidart, received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry with Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016. The Pulitzer website describes the book as “a volume of unyielding ambition and remarkable scope that mixes long dramatic poems with short elliptical lyrics, building on classical mythology and reinventing forms of desires that defy societal norms.”
As expected with this news, both prints are in high demand. This means both Less and Half-Light are currently on back-order, but you can order your copy of either (or both!) by clicking the links below and we’ll get it for you ASAP!
Less by Andrew Sean Greer — $26
Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016 by Frank Bidart — $20
Philly AIDS Thrift featured on KYW News!
KYW News just ran a story about our grant program, click here to read (and hear!) what they have to say!
What’s that, you want to know more about a grant program? Head over to our sister store’s website to read more about it!