A review by sweddy65
Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States by Samantha Allen
3.0
I wanted to like this book more.
Maybe the problem is that I live in red America and do the really hard work of trying to make it a safer place for LGBTQ+ people. Many days I feel like the work is impossible, despite some gains. This doesn't stop me from working toward those gains, but it also exhausts me.
Maybe because of that I think Allen mythologizes people like the people I know to too great an extent.
I also think that she dismisses the good work of people in cities too easily. She writes of her friend Michael that "he realized that many of his new coworkers at the HIV/AIDS advocacy organization were more interested in climbing ladders than they were in saving lives" (19). While that may very well have been Michael's experience, in 1980s San Francisco and in 1990s Boston, the people I worked alongside were radicals who wanted to save lives and make a better world, who weren't cliqueish, and who worked across all sorts of dividing lines.
While I may find myself living in this red community for the rest of my life, I will never stop yearning for a city. Not only did I feel like I was home in cities in a way I never will in this community, I also had access to other things that are important to me.
I miss independent cinema and film festivals. I miss vegetarian restaurants (and the ones I frequented were not the expensive ones). I miss theater. I miss so many things that cities offer. For someone like me, these other things that are tied to my lesbianism but also apart from it, help to make the world a better place.
There are definite strengths to this book. I loved the introduction and may use it when I teach LGBTQ Studies this fall. I loved Allen's discussion of *queer*. But, in the end, the red America she painted rang false to me. In the end, it seemed too much like the other books I have read recently where experiences are inflated to become a universal rather than the individual stories they really are.
Maybe the problem is that I live in red America and do the really hard work of trying to make it a safer place for LGBTQ+ people. Many days I feel like the work is impossible, despite some gains. This doesn't stop me from working toward those gains, but it also exhausts me.
Maybe because of that I think Allen mythologizes people like the people I know to too great an extent.
I also think that she dismisses the good work of people in cities too easily. She writes of her friend Michael that "he realized that many of his new coworkers at the HIV/AIDS advocacy organization were more interested in climbing ladders than they were in saving lives" (19). While that may very well have been Michael's experience, in 1980s San Francisco and in 1990s Boston, the people I worked alongside were radicals who wanted to save lives and make a better world, who weren't cliqueish, and who worked across all sorts of dividing lines.
While I may find myself living in this red community for the rest of my life, I will never stop yearning for a city. Not only did I feel like I was home in cities in a way I never will in this community, I also had access to other things that are important to me.
I miss independent cinema and film festivals. I miss vegetarian restaurants (and the ones I frequented were not the expensive ones). I miss theater. I miss so many things that cities offer. For someone like me, these other things that are tied to my lesbianism but also apart from it, help to make the world a better place.
There are definite strengths to this book. I loved the introduction and may use it when I teach LGBTQ Studies this fall. I loved Allen's discussion of *queer*. But, in the end, the red America she painted rang false to me. In the end, it seemed too much like the other books I have read recently where experiences are inflated to become a universal rather than the individual stories they really are.