Review: Real Queer America by Samantha Allen
Real Queer American chronicles journalist Samantha Allen as she goes on a road trip across America interviewing queer Americans in red states. It is a deeply engaging and moving chronicle of queer people in "real" America.
This book makes excellent use of its premise. The idea that queer folks are a phenomenon of big coastal cities, or that all queer people want to or are able to leave the communities they grew up in is obviously false and wildly underrepresented. Allen is a trans woman married to another woman, she chronicles her own childhood in Utah, her living in Indiana, Tenessee, Georgia, and now Florida. She talks about her own deep and abiding love for these places, how she does not like the coastal cities presented as idyllic for queer folks, and enumerates the ways in which presenting those locals as the only places queer people can thrive is harmful.
Reading through reviews of this book there seems to be quite the contingent of people who do not like the way she talks about places like New York or San Francisco and I don't really understand this criticism. The whole concrete of this book is that there are queer people, who are working incredibly hard to change the places they live, who are building community where they are, why would she need to explicitly layout why some queer people want to get out, why they might love NYC or the bay area? I think it is fine for her to very gently poke at these places, and list reasons why people might not want to live there. I am so confused as to why this detail is a sticking point for multiple folks.
Allen does not just talk about her own experience, she interviews multiple people in each state she visits as a part of this road trip. I really loved getting to meet so many different people with very different concerns and lives all connected by their queerness and willingness to share their stories. I was particularly moved by the continuous theme of people wanting to stay to affect change in their own communities, to make things better for the queer people that will come after them, and for the queer people who are already there. The constant refrain of this place needs me, it needs action, and if I leave who will take it? It is a beautiful sentiment and there are so many people taking up this mantle all across the country in very different ways.
This book shows people involved in government, in activism, in affecting religious change, changing schools, in building community centers and restaurants, and clubs. All of these public and political actions in addition to the people who are affecting change just by being active members of a community. As Allen makes note of, the number of people who support queer rights increases in tandem with the number of non-queer Americans who say they personally know queer people.
Allen talks about these places with deep compassion. She talks about the beautiful scenery, the food, the people who make up these places. While showing this compassion she does not glaze over the ways in which these places are regressive or outright hostile. She just tries to paint an accurate picture that there are active queer communities all across the country, and the communities in places without as many legal protections are the communities that need support and not derision.
I really love nonfiction where the author does not try to obscure themselves out of the narrative. I always find it disingenuous when books are written as if they have no author or where it feels very impersonal right un until the author's actions need to be talked about for some reason. These obfuscations always come across as disingenuous and clunky. I really liked how Allen was so present in this narrative, she really makes it feel like the reader was her companion in speaking to all of these people like we were all in conversation.
If you are the kind of person who cries in books, I would guess this book will make you cry, it certainly made me cry several times, and for a variety of reasons. I cried because things were sad, but I also cried because something was too sweet, or because Allen wrote something that was beautiful and hopeful and I am a sucker for that kind of thing. I just truly loved the way Allen wrote this story.
I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone looking for a chronicle of queer America. I really loved this book and am so happy I picked it up today on a whim.
