Book Discussion: Exploring the Red States

By Al Preston

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            Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States by Samantha Allen and In Search of Gay America by Neil Miller are eerily similar books, 30 years apart.

            This is a bit of a rare instance for a lot of historical topics, two books, decades apart, that focus on the same subject and come to similar conclusions while written by two very different people with different relationships with the subject matter. All of which was done independently of each other. It’s a very interesting phenomenon!

            I’ve read both books and reviewed them for this blog (Real Queer America and In Search). Now, I want to compare them. What makes them different but very similar? What led both of these people to write about similar topics? After 30 years, have things changed?

            In brief, both Allen and Miller write about the American South and Mid-West, searching for what queer life is like in those places. They showcase that the conversative states hold far more queerness than is to be expected and that those who choose to live in those states are facing difficult struggles but also thriving successfully in these conservative places.

            While both books focused on conservative states, there were only a few overlapping locations. Allen went to Indiana, Georgia, Tennessee, Utah, Texas, and Mississippi and she only went to specific mid to large sized cities. That was to her goal. She visited people she knew and places she had heard about and most of those people lived in larger cities,

            Allen calls these cities ‘queer oasis’ where queerness is more accepted there than in the more rural parts of the states. She wanted to showcase these queer oases, places where Allen came out and discovered her personal version of queerness. Presenting these locations this way, Allen hoped to show that conservative America wasn’t uniform and that queer folks have found a way to survive and make a space for themselves no matter where they live.

            In Search of Gay America was published in 1989. Neil Miller sought to discover what it meant to be gay in America outside of the East and West coasts. The iconic image of a gay person calls to mind someone from San Francisco or New York City. Miller wanted to see what lied beyond those images, the more realistic image of an average gay American. To do that, he went through multiple states where queerness is not at all synonymous.

            Miller aimed to go to the smallest towns he could while also attempting to find gay folks who would want to talk to him, but he also went to big cities like Boston and San Antonio. In total, he went to fourteen states and multiple cities within those states. Additionally, he utilizes oral interviews heavily and gives little external context for the subjects and events that those he interviewed discuss.

            Real Queer America, on the other hand, was published in 2019. Allen was also seeking out what queerness looks like outside of the East and West coasts. She wanted to show that there are many queer folks in the nation’s red states exist and are fighting and succeeding to make a place for themselves in extreme environments.

            Allen only goes to eight states and typically only one city within each state. She does multiple interviews but does not directly quote those interviews as frequently as Miller does with his own. She does, however, provide far more context for the events she and her interviewees discuss.

            Notably, there is an interesting difference between the people Allen and Miller talk to. While Miller did have more people he spoke to, many of them did not want their names or any identifying information published. Some, like Gene Ulrich in Bruceton, Missouri, were already openly gay and didn’t mind having their names printed.

            Ulrich, however, was the openly gay mayor of Bruceton who had to suffer a lot of attacks for his queerness, however by the time Miller speaks to him, he and the people of Bruceton had found an easier peace. Others in Miller’s book do not want to face those same threats and hatred that Ulrich had already fought through. Most of these folks were in tiny towns and faced some serious danger if they were outed.

            Thirty years later, Allen spoke to known and out activists that she either knew or could reached out to easily. While Allen stuck to the bigger cities of the south, none of the people she spoke to feared retaliation or hatred for being who they were. They were out and proud and welcomed. It is a stark difference from those Miller spoke to who were so afraid.

            Allen didn’t just speak to activists. She spoke to average Americans who had little or no notoriety and yet they too did not fear having their name in a published book. The difference between Allen and Miller lay heavily in the time period they wrote.

They also share only one location in common, Johnson City, Tennessee. Miller discusses a horrible and violent homophobic act that occurred in the city, where gay men were attacked and almost killed. Allen talks fondly of the city and sees it as a second home away from home where queerness only gets a slightly strange look from passersby. Thirty years apart and seemingly, this one city seemed like two very different places.

Miller spoke to some important people. Indigenous American activists trying to reclaim their culture and their queerness. Gay bar owners who fought long and hard to keep their bar against a homophobic town. The gay community gathering around tragedy to come out stronger.

            These queer folks in 1989 laid the foundation for the progress Allen got to benefit from when she took her road trip in 2017. It’s rare that two books cover the same subjects almost so perfectly. The only thing that didn’t change in those years, was that both Miller and Allen felt the need to show off the more conservative parts of the United States. At the time of writing, it’s still rare to have the image of a queer person be from anywhere within the middle of the country.

            Miller and Allen both point out that more queer folks live between the coasts than on them. Today, it is a bit easier to find someone queer from Utah or Texas, but it is usually assumed that they live in the big cities of those states. I would have loved for Allen to go to Bruceton, Missouri just to see what it was like there now. Alas, Allen didn’t have the same amount time to explore tiny towns as Miller did.

            Another similarity between Miller and Allen is their secondary goals of writing. While Allen was far more familiar with what being queer in the American South was like, she was writing for much the same reasons as Miller.

            Both of these books are also self-reflections. Allen wanted to show off the queerness she was familiar with, the places where she came out, found love, and became herself as a transgender, queer woman. Miller, an East coast gay, was seeing homophobia from Florida, finding gay people fighting in conservative states, and wanted to break his own bias toward the coasts.

            After talking to all of his narrators and exploring the American mainland, Miller wrote In Search of Gay America to reflect on what he learned and the people who inspired him. It is wonderful to see these two books in this amount of time, show that queer folks can always be inspired by each other.

             Thirty years is a long time, and a lot has changed. However, some things are seemingly timeless. I hope in thirty more years, another book can be written about the space between the coasts, and it will be much just as different as these two books in a positive direction.