Happy Pride!
This term our focus will be exploring counter-narratives and lived experiences of queer people and their health. This will include books selected to highlight long form narratives and collections of voices, as well as zines and podcasts. Incorporated into this space are also critiques of how the medical field is currently erasing lgbtqia+ perspectives in health research. This takes a more critical tone on what narratives are shared about and by LGBTQIA+ people juxtaposed against the harms of exclusion.
"A visually stunning graphic non-fiction book on queer and trans resistance. Over the past ten years, we have witnessed the rise of queer and trans communities that have defied and challenged those who have historically opposed them. Through bold, symbolic imagery and surrealist, overlapping landscapes, queer illustrator and curator Syan Rose shines a light on the faces and voices of these diverse, amorphous, messy, real, and imagined queer and trans communities. In their own words, queer and trans organizers, artists, healers, comrades, and leaders speak honestly and authentically about their own experiences with power, love, pain, and magic to create a textured and nuanced portrait of queer and trans realities in America. The many themes include Black femme mental health, Pacific Islander authorship, fat queer performance art, disability and health care practice, sex worker activism, and much more. Accompanying the narratives are Rose's startling and sinuous images that brings these leaders' words to visual life. Our Work Is Everywhere is a graphic non-fiction book that underscores the brilliance and passion of queer and trans resistance. Includes a foreword by Lambda Literary Award-winning author and activist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, author of Care Work : Dreaming Disability Justice."-- Provided by publisher.
A comprehensive collection of intergenerational voices on Liberatory Harm Reduction, mutual aid, and building community to save lives.
In this thought-provoking book, part memoir, part journalistic investigation, the acclaimed writer and poet, a Muslim queer Bangladeshi, reveals how wellness culture has become a luxury good built on the wisdom of Black, brown and Indigenous people--while ignoring and excluding them.
"LGBT people pervasively experience health disparities, affecting every part of their bodies and lives. Yet many are still grappling to understand the mutually reinforcing health care challenges that lead LGBT people to experience worsened health outcomes. Bodies and Barriers informs health care professionals, students in health professions, policymakers, and fellow activists about these challenges, providing insights and a road map for action that could improve queer health. Through artfully articulated, data-informed essays by twenty-six well-known and emerging queer activists--including Alisa Bowman, Jack Harrison-Quintana, Liz Margolies, Robyn Ochs, Sean Strub, Justin Tanis, Ryan Thoreson, Imani Woody, and more--Bodies and Barriers illuminates the ubiquitous health challenges LGBT people experience throughout their lives. The book challenges conventional wisdom about health care delivery."-- Provided by publisher.
"Stef Shuster traces the development of trans medicine since the 1950s to modern medicine to show how providers create and use scientific and medical evidence to "treat" a gender identity. But, why do medical providers have authority over gender? And, what might the consequences of how providers make decisions in trans medicine teach us about medicine in general? Using historical documents, interviews with physicians and therapists, and observations of health conferences, Trans Medicine offers a rare opportunity to understand how providers make decisions given widespread uncertainty while facing challenges to their expertise. In the process of negotiating these challenges in the "treatment" of gender, providers have acquired authority not only in this medical area, but over gender itself"--Provided by publisher.
Follow-up to the Lambda Literary Award-winning anthology: The Remedy : new ways of imagining what LGBTQ+ health care could look like. The Care We Dream Of is not quite an essay collection, and not quite an anthology. It's a hybrid.
What if you could trust in getting the health care you need in ways that felt good and helped you thrive? What if the health system honoured and valued queer and trans people's lives, bodies, and expertise? What if LGBTQ+ communities led and organized our own health care as a form of mutual aid? What if every aspect of our health care was rooted in a commitment to our healing, pleasure, and liberation? LGBTQ+ health care doesn't look like this today, but it could. This is the care we dream of. This book weaves together the author's essays on topics like queering health and healing, transforming the health system, kinship, aging, and death, alongside stories, poetry and non-fiction pieces by a diverse group of LGBTQ+ writers including Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Kai Cheng Thom, Jillian Christmas, jaye simpson, Carly Boyce, Sand Chang, Blyth Barnow and Joshua Wales. The book also includes interviews with activists, health care workers and researchers whose work offers insights into what liberatory and transformative approaches to LGBTQ+ health can look like in practice. The Care We Dream Of offers possibilities-- grounded in historical examples, present-day experiments, and dreams of the future-- for more liberatory and transformative approaches to LGBTQ+ health and healing. It challenges readers to think differently about LGBTQ+ health and asks what it would look like if our health care were rooted in a commitment to the flourishing and liberation of all LGBTQ+ people. This book is a calling out, a calling in, and a call to action. It is a spell of healing and transformation, rooted in love.-- Provided by publisher.
"A revelatory book about gender, mental illness, parenting, mortality, bike mechanics, work, class, and the task of living in a body. Inquisitive and expansive, Like a Boy but Not a Boy explores author andrea bennett's experiences with gender expectations, being a non-binary parent, and the sometimes funny and sometimes difficult task of living in a body. The book's fourteen essays also delve incisively into the interconnected themes of mental illness, mortality, creative work, class, and bike mechanics (apparently you can learn a lot about yourself through trueing a wheel). In "Tomboy," andrea articulates what it means to live in a gender in-between space, and why one might be necessary; "37 Jobs 21 Houses" interrogates the notion that the key to a better life is working hard and moving house. And interspersed throughout the book is "Everyone Is Sober and No One Can Drive," sixteen stories about queer millennials who grew up and came of age in small Canadian communities. With the same poignant spirit as Ivan Coyote's Tomboy Survival Guide, Like a Boy addresses the struggle to find acceptance, and to accept oneself; and how one can find one's place while learning to make space for others. The book also wonders what it means to be an atheist and search for faith that everything will be okay; what it means to learn how to love life even as you obsess over its brevity; and how to give birth, to bring new life, at what feels like the end of the world. With thoughtfulness and acute observation, andrea bennett reveals intimate truths about the human experience, whether one is outside the gender binary or not."-- Provided by publisher
United States Health and Human Services LGBTQIA+ Reports addressing health disparities. https://www.hhs.gov/programs/topic-sites/lgbtqi/reports/index.html
All of Us Research Program by National Institute of Health incorporates more intentional diversity to a dataset that will be available to address individualized disease prevention and treatment. LGBTQIA+ identity is a categorical part of the survey and can be used to support better understanding of health in this community. Dataset Access: https://www.researchallofus.org/
CDC Health Disparities Information regarding LGBTQIA+ youth with context is one of the main health information sources for understanding the challenges facing LGBTQIA+ health. https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/disparities/health-disparities-among-lgbtq-youth.htm
Lack of representation and intentional gaps in treatment of the lgbtqia+ community and their needs in health care has had direct and painful impacts in the modern period and continue to impact how lgbtqia+ people seek care. The following materials center the current gaps and concerns that persist in health care support for LGBTQIA+ people and their needs.
Zines are a DIY form of information sharing and communicating that has been a part of LGBTQIA+ community communication since the origins of zines. The following are just two zines centering health and engaging with the DIY platform.
FlyingOtter. "Zine: The Transgender Herb Garden" 2009. https://archive.qzap.org/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/object_id/54
https://archive.qzap.org/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/object_id/42
Podcasts are newly spaces in the medical community utilized for sharing information. The following are podcasts of various tones which center LGBTQIA+ health and wellness.
Queer Diagnosis: The LGBTQIA+ Health Podcast. "Join us as we embark on a journey navigating LGBTQ+ healthcare through a series of interviews with healthcare providers, patients, and more." -- Description from Podcast About Page
Queer Health Pod. "QHP is a power-sharing project. Our end-goal: to expand autonomy by bringing health knowledge directly to sexual and gender minority communities. How we do it: we take your queer health questions and place them in conversation with the latest scientific evidence and expert advice. We don’t always have all the answers, but we’ve always got puns." --Description from Podcast About Page