"Examines both the roots and the resonance of Neema Avashia's identity as a queer desi Appalachian woman. With lyric and narrative explorations of foodways, religion, sports, standards of beauty, social media, and gun culture"--

"When Lise Weil came out in 1976, lesbian desire was the pulsing center of an entire way of life, a culture, a movement. The air throbbed with possibility. But after fifteen years of torrid but ultimately failed relationships, Weil had to admit that desire was also a conduit for childhood wounds--and it tended to trump love, over and over again. When a friend invited her to attend a Zen retreat in the mid-'80s, she was desperate enough to say yes....

A memoir of leaving the evangelical church and the search for radical new ways to build community. Jeanna Kadlec knew what it meant to be faithful--in her marriage to a pastor's son, in the comfortable life ahead of her, in her God--but there was no denying the truth that lived under that conviction: she was queer and, if she wanted to survive, she would need to leave behind the church and every foundational building block she knew. Heretic is a memoir...