Book Review: Real Queer Ameria

By Al Preston

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            Real Queer America: Stories from Red States by Samantha Allen is another book I have read before. Well, I’ve listened to it before. The audio book was read by Allen herself and adds a bit more passion into the narrative of the book. I listened to it not long after listening to Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein. I didn’t cry while stocking shelves during this book, but I was rather inspired by Allen’s goal for this book.

            Allen wanted to showcase what it looks like to be queer in America’s red states, the south and a few places in the mid-west. To be gay in the most conservative states in the US. Utah, Georgia, Texas, and Mississippi all make an appearance. The timing of this book is equally important. Allen went on this road trip in the summer of 2017, during the first Trump presidency.

            The time and place matter a whole heck of a lot to this book. Allen wanted to capture ‘queer oasis’ in conservative states and how they have fought to exist in the most hostile environments of America. She also wanted to show that there are more places for queer folks than on the east and west coasts.

            This secondary goal might sound a little familiar. In Search of Gay America by Neil Miller, is another book looking to small towns and conservative states to find out how queer people live outside of the big coast cities. Allen, however, has a foot up on Miller. She came out in the South and transitioned there. Currently, she lives in Florida with her wife.

            Despite growing up in California, she knows many queer folks throughout red states and spends the summer of 2017 road tripping across those states to interview those old friends and other activists. Allen is well aware that queerness finds a place to live wherever queer folks make their homes.

            Allen joins a protest in Texas over the bathroom bill that the state government was attempting to pass. The bill would prevent transgender people from utilizing the bathroom that aligned with their gendered appearance. In Mississippi, she talks to the owners of Jackson’s one gay bar which welcomes all through its doors because there truly is nowhere else to go. She talks to a transgender Mormon in Utah whose ability to remain within his faith is always teetering between acceptance and complete rejection.

            Every chapter has a collective theme that Allen’s time in the accompanying state supports. For the chapter in Johnson City, Tennessee, Allen discusses found families and the way queer folks forge familial and platonic bonds with other queer folks in order to survive, especially in places where there are few protections for them. She also talks with her best friend and her husband whom Allen has familial bonds with.

            In the chapter about Mississippi (chapter 6), Allen talks to queer folks who have chosen to stay in one of the most conservative and dangerous places for LGBT+ people simply because they love the state and know they have to fight for it to be safer. When she arrives to Mississippi, the Neo-Nazi, tiki-torch, near celebration occurred on the University of Virginia Campus. With all of the intense moments of this current Trump presidency, I entirely forgot about that pure show of bigotry form the first.

            Allen talks to Tyler Edwards, a journalist for the Jackson Free Press and a gay man. Edwards talks about how he had a chance to leave Mississippi and go to Washington DC where he would be more welcome, but he knew that he would be running away from the problems of his home state. So, he chose to stay instead and be the activist the state needed. She also talks to the owners of WonderLust, Jackson’s gay bar who pushed through financial struggles to remain open. There would be nowhere for Jackson’s queer community to gather otherwise.

            She also speaks to an activist who came to Mississippi as an adult and chooses to stay because leaving wouldn’t make the state any better. The theme of this chapter is twofold, brain drain, the notion of academics, professionals, and intellectuals fleeing from a particular place, and choosing to stay despite the odds.

            Change doesn’t happen when people run away. If the people who know the most about pushing back against controlling and dangerous powers leave and take their knowledge with them, they can’t help anyone. Mississippi is a good show of that. The state itself is facing population decreases. Yet, some choose to stay and try to make the state somewhere people want to go. Which is never an easy task.

            However, they are successful. Activists have pushed them to have pride parades and succeeded in making them happen. They’ve made little steps towards general acceptance by the state and its government. It’s slow progress, but progress none-the-less.

            The other states and the people Allen talk to throughout this book have similar messages and goals. They choose to live in red states because they love them and the people there. On average, the normal, everyday person is nowhere near as volatile as they are expected to be. Many people find that they don’t mind LGBT+ folks all that much, as long as they get to know one.

            That’s not uniformly true, there are and always will be horrible people out there, but that is a horribly loud minority of people. The way these activists describe their situation and their goals, reminds me a lot of Pittsburgh. The way they describe their states as polite or mild-mannered. The people as easy going and generally rather accepting even if their government is not.

            While our government is far more outwardly accepting, it’s that easy going and polite nature that feels familiar to me. Many of these activists that Allen talks to, and Allen herself, are trying to make a way for themselves. Trying to prove that queerness is everywhere and everywhere there is queerness is important. Queerness should not and does not all look like New York City or San Francisco. There’s something vastly different, but just as inspiring, happening between the coasts.

            I’m reminded of some of our oral history narrators who spoke about what makes Pittsburgh different from other cities when it comes to queerness. Nearly all of the activists said something similar. That we’re far more mild-mannered, that we virtually asked for our rights, asked for respect and received it because we were clearly respectful folks. The methods of getting rights and protesting that work in radical cities like New York and San Franciso wouldn’t work in Pittsburgh. Nor do I think they would work in Jackson, Mississippi, Atlanta, Georgia, or Johnson City, Tennessee.

            It’s a different world in the red states. It’s a different queer community as well. Allen does a wonderful job of portraying that to the reader as well as including very insightful views of supporting articles. This book reads very much like a work of pure passion for Allen. A way to process her own feelings about the state of the country during the first Trump Presidency. A way of showing proof that queer folks can and will exist everywhere and anywhere no matter the circumstances.

            I highly recommend this book. It’s a nice introduction to some niche concepts within queer theory and academia without bogging the reader down with the actual theory. It also provides a viewpoint not many consider when they talk about queer cultures. Sometimes, it does feel like Allen has lost the plot a little, where conversations about the state she’s in or the theory she’s explaining don’t get connected back to the major theme of the book.

            This is a book just as much about Allen herself and her introspection of herself as it is about showcasing the American South and Mid-West as places where queer folks can thrive. After all, Utah, Georgia, and Tennessee are some of the states where Allen came out, began to transition, and found her wife. It’s a special place for her and it’s a special place for those she talks to.

            I think this book makes a pretty good argument for why these cities in conservative red states should be looked at with more nuance than some may give them. These places are special, and where one queer oasis is, there must be more somewhere along the way.