A Little Queer Natural History

Author: Josh L. Davis
Save to Your Books:
Bookshop
Amazon

Beautifully illustrated and scientifically informed, a celebration of the astonishing diversity of sexual behavior and biology found in nature.

From a pair of male swans raising young to splitgill mushrooms with over 23,000 mating types, sex in the natural world is wonderfully diverse. Josh L. Davis considers how, for many different organisms—animals, plants, and fungi included—sexual reproduction and sex determination rely on a surprisingly complex interaction among genes, hormones, environment, and chance.

As Davis introduces us to fascinating biological concepts like parthenogenesis (virgin birth), monoecious plants (individuals with separate male and female flowers), and sex-reversed genitals, we see turtle hatchlings whose sex is determined by egg temperature; butterflies that embody male and female biological tissue in the same organism; and a tomato that can reproduce three different ways at the same time.

Davis also reveals animal and plant behaviors in nature that researchers have historically covered up or explained away, like queer sex among Adélie penguins or bottlenose dolphins, and presents animal behaviors that challenge us to rethink our assumptions and prejudices.

Featuring fabulous sex-fluid fishes and ant, wasp, and bee queens who can choose both how they want to have sex and the sex of their offspring, A Little Queer Natural History offers a larger lesson: that the diversity we see in our own species needs no justification and represents just a fraction of what exists in the natural world.

Recommendations by Theme

SYSTEMIC RACISM

• Fiction:
  • Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
  • Blood at the Root by LaDarrion Williams
• Non-Fiction:
  • Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • Letter from Birmingham Jail by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

IMMIGRATION

• Fiction:
  • Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz
• Non-Fiction:
  • They Called Us Enemy by George Takei

COLONIZATION

• Fiction:
  • Cry, Voidbringer by Elaine Ho
  • This Place: 150 Years Retold
• Non-Fiction:
  • Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States: A Graphic Interpretation by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

LGBTQIA+ EXPERIENCE

• Fiction:
  • No Gods, No Monsters by Cadwell Turnbull
  • Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White
• Non-Fiction:
  • A Little Queer Natural History by Josh L. Davis
  • Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam

PRISON ABOLITION

• Fiction:
  • Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• Non-Fiction:
  • Abolitionist Intimacies by El Jones

DISABILITY

• Fiction:
  • Cinder by Marissa Meyer
• Non-Fiction:
  • Grievers by adrienne marie brown

For additional recommendations sorted by social justice topics: AK Press
What other subjects would you like recommendations for? Feel free to leave me some recs!