We’re Here Too: 9 Queer Memoirs From Red Areas

Despite the stereotype, Appalachia isn’t the white monolith it seems to be, and Neema is proof of that. She’s a queer Desi woman who grew up in West Virginia and lays out her memoir in essay format, where not only will you learn what it was like for her to grow up as an Indolachian daughter of immigrants, but also learn what Appalachia is actually like, the economics of the region and the culture. It balances humor and harshness masterfully and challenges you to re-examine your beliefs about the area. It’s a love letter to Appalachia from a queer perspective.

There’s a certain homesickness that comes from being from an area that doesn’t quite get who you are as a person. They’re not actively hostile, but are also waiting for you to move on from this silly phase you’re in right now. Melanie Hoffert gets it, being from rural North Dakota. She still goes home to help out on the family farm during harvest, and as with most homecomings, ends up seeing the area in a new light. Past memories are intertwined in with the present as Hoffert comes to terms with her sexuality in regards to her Christian beliefs and the beliefs of those in her hometown.

Being Black in the South is difficult. So is being queer in the South. Being Black and queer? Far, far more difficult than it should be. Saeed Jones knows and tells us about it in vignettes about trying to find a place to belong, his difficult relationship with his family, and each fleeting relationship that came and left his life. Transitioning between prose and poetry and full of the biting humor he’s known for on Twitter, he tells the story of how he turned himself into a weapon growing up in the South in the ’90s and 2000s.

Brian Broome grew up in Ohio, and he lays out his youth intermingled with vignettes of watching a Black father with his son on a Pittsburgh bus. His relationship with his father was abusive, as he was beaten by him for not being manly enough, and he shares his mother’s own traumatic life experiences. He also confronts his own internalized bigotry on the pages, laying out the shame, awkwardness, and confusion he had growing up and learning how to hide as a Black boy who had crushes on other boys.

You probably heard of his advice column by the same name, a sort of “Dear Abby” for the queer community. I read a few of the stories, and let me tell y’all: they were wild. But JP has such a distinctive voice, funny and warm with wisdom hidden between the lines. And that voice carries on in this book. He answers some of the questions plaguing the queer community (can you really be too gay? What about not gay enough?) with stories from his life, including literally coming out to a crush in a Walmart parking lot. Look, sometimes country queers gotta make do.

Casey Parks tells more than just her story in this memoir; she also digs up the story of Roy Hudgins, a small-time country singer from her grandmother’s home town who happened to be a trans man. Parks digs around rural Louisiana trying to find whatever trace of Hudgins she can while also dealing with the reaction her coming out had within her very religious Southern community in 2002, like her mother beginning to shun her and her pastor praying for her to be punished by God. As well as being a telling story of what it can be like in the South for a queer individual, it is also a stark reminder of the fact that we have always been here.

Yet again, Appalachia is not the WASP monolith that people like to paint it as. There are queer communities carving spaces for themselves, refusing to give up land to people that would rather queer people didn’t exist. This collection of essays is proof of that. Queer people belong in the holler alongside the trees and mountains. Written by various individuals from the Appalachian area, it not only defines labels that are used in the area but also challenges the definitions of other labels and assumptions made while delving into critical race theory, queer theory, and Appalachian history.

“Something gay every day” was Samantha Allen’s motto as she traveled cross country across the United States, telling the stories of queer communities fighting for their rights and pushing for change like the first openly transgender mayor in Texas history or the manager of the only queer night club in Bloomington, Indiana. She tracks cultural shifts happening across the “flyover country,” covering stories that are often ignored by larger media companies alongside sharing her own story of transition from a Mormon missionary to the woman she is today.

Sweetgum trees are iconic to the American South, and the Sweet Gum Head was iconic to the drag scene during the ’70s. Like I said, Atlanta is and was a Mecca for queers in the South, and the Sweet Gum Head was the place to be if you wanted to be a drag star. This book tells the story of two gay men: John Greenwell, a runaway from Alabama who found himself on the stage as Rachel Wells, and Bill Smith, who fought tooth and nail as an activist for queer rights. It also tells the history of police violence, threats, and other daily struggles the queer community in the area fought against as they began to build what is now Atlanta’s queer scene.