We're glad to again serve customers, even though our former store front has closed and we operate this web store under reduced services.
Just scroll to the bottom to review limits placed on orders. .
"A serious--and seriously successful--queer history recovery project."
--Publishers Weekly
Katherina Hetzeldorfer, tried "for a crime that didn't have a name" (same sex sexual relations) and sentenced to death by drowning in 1477; Charles aka Mary Hamilton, publicly whipped for impersonating a man in eighteenth-century England; Clara, aka "Big Ben," over whom two jealous women fought in 1926 New York: these are just three of the lives that the artist Ria Brodell has reclaimed for queer history in Butch Heroes. Brodell offers a series of twenty-eight portraits of forgotten but heroic figures, each accompanied by a brief biographical note. They are individuals who were assigned female at birth but whose gender presentation was more masculine than feminine, who did not want to enter into heterosexual marriage, and who often faced dire punishment for being themselves.
Brodell's detailed and witty paintings are modeled on Catholic holy cards, slyly subverting a religious template. The portraits and the texts offer intriguing hints of lost lives: cats lounge in the background of domestic settings; one of the figures is said to have been employed variously as "a prophet, a soldier, or a textile worker"; another casually holds a lit cigarette. Brodell did extensive research for each portrait, piecing together a life from historical accounts, maps, journals, paintings, drawings, and photographs, finding the heroic in the forgotten.
Nevertheless, UPB provides ship-to-home service.
Unless and until we move our on-line fulfillment team to different premises, everything you purchase from us ships from warehouses outside of Berkeley.
Much of what we used to carry on store shelves is available, except for very expensive books, used books, and titles fallen between printings.
Certain limitations apply:
You can also purchase eBooks and audio books through us. Distributed by Hummingbird, they include publications from the major trade publishers. Just access the menu link or the sidebar image above.
We greatly appreciate your support of the store with your book orders. Need a book without our current shopping restrictions? We recommend Bookshop. View our recommendations on Bookshop, then search for whatever book you'd like.
Should you have questions, email us via our contact form. Since none of are keeping regular hours, it may take a day to get back with you.
The Cafe Ohlone has closed for the duration of the epidemic. They will probably reopen at a different location when they do.
From 1974, University Press Books has stoked the blaze of well over ten thousand minds on fire, carrying new scholarship published by the great university presses in the English-speaking world.
For more than 40 years, UPB operated out of our address at 2430 Bancroft Way in Berkeley (at present still our mailing address). We're now operating on line and when possible at various pop up locations. Sign up to our mailing list for word on dates and locations of these.,/p>
Order from us. Let well-wrought words churn and burn within.