Booksology The book’s interviews are excerpts from longer interviews (you can listen to them on the podcast), but even the quickest interviews are great. People talk about how much they love and live in the scenery and communities they come out of, the difficulties they face in the same community, the compromises they sometimes make, and the connections they can build in rural places and small towns they don’t find in the city. They talk about strange organisation, animal care, loneliness, country joy, racism, family, and nuances of going out.
Although the focus is on the interviewees, Garringer’s overall voice leads the difficult life of a rural queen, warm, interesting, thoughtful, caring, complicated and contradictory, joyous, celebration. They grew up in the mountains of West Virginia, and their own experiences of leaving and returning home are woven into the fabric of the book. Their love for the South of the country and the richness of the Southern queer culture of the country are at the heart of this project, but also offers thoughtful context in their introduction to the scope and limitations of the project, as well as their status as a white oral historian.
Although not explicitly stated, I would like to note that Garinger’s focus is on the South, and that most of the interviews take place there. Although there are commonalities across geography and regions, the strange experiences of agriculture and countryside are geographically tangible. It makes sense that the book focuses primarily on queer experiences in the South. Don’t enter it, hoping to hear from rural Queers across the country.
Our strangest shelf
Sign up for BookIsh LGBTQ+ news and recommendations!
In a world that completely erases the strange people of the country, or portrays country queer life as a desolate and tragic thing, this book is a perfume. I hope it opens the floodgates and starts to see such a strange country story.
