Country Queers: A Love Letter

by Rae Garringer

Part photo book, part memoir, part oral history project, this volume paints a vivid portrait of queer and trans experiences in rural areas and small towns across the US.



In 2013, Rae Garringer embarked on the Country Queers oral history project with a borrowed audio recorder, a flip phone, and a paper atlas in a Subaru Forester with over 160,000 miles on it. Raised on a sheep farm in southeastern West Virginia, they were motivated by an intense frustration with the lack of rural queer stories and the isolation that comes with that absence. “Queers, in all our forms, have always existed,” Garringer writes, “all across this continent since before it was colonized.”



 After years as a DIY, minimally funded, community-based oral history project, the work now takes a new form in Country A Love Story—a book of full-color photos and interviews with rural folks from Mississippi to New Mexico and beyond, with Garringer’s account as traveler and interviewer woven through the pages. In these intimate conversations, we see how queerness—shaped, as all things are, by race, class, gender, and more—moves in rural and small-town spaces, spotlighting how country queers make sense of their lives through reflections on land, home, community, and belonging. While media-driven myths suggest that big cities are the only places queer folks can find love and community, Country Queers resists that trope by centering rural queer and trans stories of the joys, challenges, monotony, and nuances of their lives, in their own words.

Genres: Nonfiction, Queer, LGBT, Memoir, History, Gay, Historical

249 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 8, 2024

Reviews

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book after my little southern queer heart. Garringer crisscrosses the Bible Belt, collecting a scrapbook and oral history of various LGBTQ+ people living in the rural margins. The older interviewees—the elders who survived the AIDS crisis and more—are the best and most emotional part. It’s easy to get miffed when people act like the Brooklyn or San Francisco subcultures are the only ones that matter, or like gay and trans people don’t exist in the south except to be persecuted. Yes, the political climate is often dire, and there is a wealth of queer culture, community, and joy in the smallest and southernest of places. This documents the lived reality of the former with a celebration of the latter.

ARC kindly provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Joanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boy did reading this feel timey in the same month where Chappell Roan refused to play at the Whitehouse but then got hate from white privileged city queers for touring in red states. As if queers in those states or in country states don't also deserve a connection to culture.

I adored this book, such a beautiful and valuable insight into a different side of the queer community that get's much less attention. I loved how many of the participants were older (40+ but quite a few older as well) - it's so valuable to hear the stories of our elders, particularly considering how few of them there are and how little of that history has been recorded. The few people who touched on the AIDs crisis was very valuable reading.

I think it's also really necessary to shine a light on queer folks whose experiences are very far removed from that of the mainstream city queers we see online and in media because while everything isn't perfect for city folks sometimes we can take for granted the community and privilege our locations can afford us.

The ONLY issue I had with this book (which is not it's fault at all) is that the arc provided to me was missing a huge amount of pages - almost every single person's story seemed to be missing at least one page because their story would just cut off mid-sentence and the next page would be a new person. This was such a huge disappointment, I know arcs aren't perfect but to be missing so many pages seems like they didn't even proofread it before putting it up for request.

Thank you to NetGalley and Haymarket Books for an arc in exchange for a free review.

[Abbrosy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gorgeous book for all the rural queers, who have been forgotten and ignored time and time again. I loved the photos and the words and the format of this book. What an incredible project with incredible stories!

[Hannah Showalter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sooooo beautiful. The intersection of queerness and rural areas is something so near to my heart. Such moving interviews here from all kinds of people and varying relationships to country life.

[fj · Rating 5 out of 5]

BEST BOOK EVER I LOVE RAE THIS BOOK IS SO IMPORTANT COUNTRY QUEERS FOREVER

[Cheyenne · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 ⭐ CW: Homophobia/transphobia, discussions of violence, discussions of AIDS/HIV, suicide mentions, discussions of racism

Country Queers: A Love Letter by Rae Garringer is a nonfiction collection that is the culmination of a multimedia oral history project. I was lucky enough to attend a book event being hosted in my tiny rural town, where I got to meet Rae, hear their story, and listen to audio clips from a few of the interviews they did for the project. This was a book I didn't know I needed, and reaffirms how important the work I do with Downeast Rainbow Alliance is.

Rae came from the country in West Virginia, and never really saw or talked about queerness until they moved away. Many people, including myself, who grow up and live in very rural areas never heard of queerness being talked about, and therefore didn't know it existed. Country Queers was a way for Rae to find these people that very much do exist, and get their stories and perspectives. So much of queer representation and conversation happens in cities, and it can make those of us living rurally feel like we are alone. That we are the only ones. Country Queers shows us that that isn't true.

Rae interviewed many people between 2013-2023 about their lives and experiences. I love that this wasn't just a book about queer suffering and how hard it is to be queer in a rural place. It showed how much joy there is in living in the country and among people you've known your whole life. There was such a love of place in this book. Rae also sprinkled in full color photos of people and landscapes along with bits of ephemera from their travels. It was so raw and emotional what these people shared. The ups and downs and mundanities of life.

Rae was also honest about their own biases as a white documentarian. They made sure to acknowledge what they didn't know and what blind spots they had, and the inherent power dynamics therein. I thought this was handled with such respect and dignity. Though most of the people interviewed are from the rural South and southwest, and I am from Maine, I have never felt more seen. I would love to see more rural queerness depicted. We don't all live in cities, and we all don't want to move to cities.

I highly encourage queer people to pick this book up, especially if you are a rural or country queer. I also encourage those that aren't queer to pick this up, especially if you think queer people don't exist or can't exist where you are. What a great book to end the year on. Thank you Rae Garringer.

For more information on the oral history project, buy the book, or to listen to the Country Queers Podcast, visit https://www.countryqueers.com/ .

[Lauren Swarr · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an outstanding collection of rural perspectives. Rae Garringer is an amazing human, and their dedication to collecting such essential and silenced oral histories is a gift to all those who engage with their work and queer history as a whole. I had the opportunity to meet them and have a great discussion this past fall during the book tour, and they are just as amazing and passionate in real life as they come across in this work. So thankful for the work Rae and the Country Queers project do and look forward to more content created by them in the future.

[Elese · Rating 5 out of 5]

I savored this book, loved that it holds the complexity of rural life and queerness.

[*JEN the booknerd* · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC!

I will definitely be taking a second look at this book when it is published. I had a hard time with the scrolling on NetGalley and I feel I missed a lot this way.

[andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

thanks to NetGalley and Haymarket books for the advanced digital copy.

this little treasure comes out October 8th, 2024.

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hello, not that you need them, but here are my credentials for reviewing this book: i am queer and i live in the country, specifically on an old highway in rural north carolina and i'm surrounded by cornfields on three sides.

i deeply appreciated a book that explored the nuances of being queer in the country (not just the south, too!) because based on the memes i see, the jokes on social media, it does seem like a lot of left-wing people tend to unilaterally assume that country people are trump-supporting rednecks. but! we exist! we exist in small, tiny communities. we are farmers, we're residents of land that's been in the hands of our families for generations, we're here and very present. so whenever i hear a political take about certain states being losing causes or resources being sent elsewhere because it's assumed queer people don't live in rural areas... i get very angry. and for that reason, i'm happy that this book exists.

this book is a collection of interviews from rural queers from all walks of life - black queers, trans queers, elder queers, lesbians, gays, pans, bisexuals, 2-spirit people. i really appreciated the dedication to making sure that the interviews weren't exclusively given by all cis, white queer people. i also really appreciate that each interview announced the interviewee's hometown as well as the indigenous tribes whose occupied land each person is/was living on.

there's so much here, so much about how living in these small, rural communities is in our blood and how hard it is to exist in a space where we're proud of where we're from while also existing happily in our queerness. this book also expressed the importance of documentation and history - how at every turn people will try to obfuscate, destroy, or otherwise edit the history of queer individuals and that often happens at the expense of unsupportive families simply wanting to put a deceased butch into a dress or read a eulogy about what a ladies' man a gay man who has died of aids was in life.

i found myself crying a LOT. it's pretty obvious that we're in kind of a queer insurgence within popular culture (i love you chappell roan) but i think often what's left out of the narrative are those of us who don't live in major cities, don't have access or safety to explore our identities the way that we constantly see in popular media.

if i had a criticism for this book, it would be that i wish it was about 5000 pages longer. i wish we'd learned more about the intersection of rural living and poverty, how both of those things have informed the rampant xenophobic nature of our neighbors, how people have lived and flourished in spite of those things. very excited to taking a listen to the podcast, though!

[Claire Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a fellow country queer, I was really excited to delve into this text. Unfortunately, the ARC I received was missing approximately 50% of its contents (according to the page count on NetGalley). Despite this, I found what was available deeply engaging and, although I was frustrated when the interview or introductory/contextual sections by Garringer were truncated, my overwhelming emotion was a desire to read the text in its entirety.

Country Queers began as an oral history project, which then became a podcast before evolving into this current form as a selection of interviews accompanied by Garringer’s commentary and parts of their own story. In the best tradition of politically conscious scholarship, Garringer does their best to avoid the damaging, extractive and unethical patterns that so often accompanies the gathering of accounts of marginalised peoples. By underpinning this project with an ethos of deep collaboration, and firmly locating themself and including explicit interrogations of the project as part of the text, Garringer encourages readers to both enjoy these stories of country queers who have survived and thrived as well as to think critically about how settler colonialism, racism and other forms of oppression have shaped their experiences and participation in the project. Critically this text does not seek to resolve the tensions it identifies and the complexities it acknowledges. Instead it is informed by an imperative and an ethic of situating the individual narratives contained in their broader historical and political contexts.

The result is a collection of moving, funny, sad, joyful, inspirational, and challenging insights into the lived experiences of the people interviewed. The selection of stories is diverse and at times makes for difficult reading, but the text also allows readers to gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which people’s rural existence can be similar and different across intersections. It also encourages its audience to ponder the ongoing barriers for country people – some specific to being queer, others more universal – and to think about how this might shape our daily lives and political activism. In the Preface, Garringer writes that rural queer have and will always radically claim “our queerness and country-ness at the same time”. While this is undoubtedly true, projects like this play such an important part in breaking down the isolation and loneliness that can accompany the sense of being the first or the only queer in the village. I look forward to engaging with the book as a whole come publication day.

Thank you NetGalley and Haymarket Books for the advanced copy. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

[Kelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is a wonderful book of interviews with queer people who live in the rural countryside in the USA, and these are both broad definitions so it is an interesting mix of people of different races, ages, genders, etc. from a variety of places.

I resonated so deeply with many of the things they talked about, like how it can feel so impossible to imagine you can belong both to the queer scene and simultaneously to the country scene when both somehow feel like home, and the moment they first realized this could be true for them. I criedddd, y'all. That moment for me was learning about queer country music through another amazing book, Queer Country by Shana Goldin-Perschbacher, which I would definitely recommend if you liked this!

The very specific cultural experience of southern/country manners and efforts at respect and coexistence often leading to a polite erasure of queer topics in southern culture- mannn, I felt that too! You can have family and friends that accept and love you, yet never speak a word about the topic of your queerness, and this is such a specific and complicated experience, and often the best outcome we can imagine after years of worrying that we will lose an entire deep-rooted, extended family network that is the backbone of our entire lives if we were to be honest about our queerness to them. This book reflects on these types of specific experiences of queer people who grew up in rural/country areas and how this has shaped them.

This book also captures the wish of its interviewees to remain in the rural/country areas where they live and were raised, and their connections to the land and nature there and the belonging they feel in their communities, which I think is not often talked about when telling queer stories.

My only wish is that this book were longer, or the (earlier especially) interviews had more of a flowing structure, because the questions felt random sometimes and I Kept wanting to hear much more about some of the people's stories. The older individuals in particular- as the author mentions, it is through their stories that you can really see not only how far we have come but really how much has been lost due to HIV/AIDS especially.

Overall I would definitely recommend this, it is a quick and easy read but really touched my heart.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

At times, pretty obnoxious, but a few interviews are gems.

I don't listen to podcasts, so the book is a stand-alone work for me. The author is very holier-than-thou in a lot of ways about interviewee selection and whose voice gets silenced or heard and made no real effort to include vast swaths of rural parts of the country, including much the rural West and Northwest. The book is mostly focused on the Eastern US.

Many of the interviewees, not all, had a very disengaged, pick-me mind set without much care concern for LGBTQ struggles in the wider world. These people were depressing to read about and I felt like, no wonder we haven't come as far as we should have without everyone pulling their weight. This is especially true of many earlier/middle interviews, but less so later in the book.

With few exceptions, urban queer people are better than country queer people. I had never thought about before reading this book. But the author sold me on it. Most of the good ones? Urban/suburban background or something else unique/non-country that they brought to the table. For my part, my sensibilities are 100% urban. I'm embracing that now, in spite of where I was born.

The stand-out interviews that earn the book more than the obligatory star - Elandria Williams, Sharon Holland, Silas House, Penelope Logue, Suzanne Pharr, and Kasha Snyder-McDonald.

So here are my recommendations to read instead: To Survive on This Shore (Dugan) about trans elders, The Book of Pride (Funk) about heroes of the LGBTQ rights movement, and Authentic Selves (Gillespie) about trans and nonbinary people and their families.

Overall, really disappointing given how much info on this topics is needed and how alienating and myopic the treatment is here. In some ways, it is surprising that this was worthy of publication in print format.

[Cassidy · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I came across this book I knew I had to read it. As a country queer myself in always excited to see representation of queers in the country, especially since it’s not representation I see often.

This books is a passion project and you can tell how much love and care Rae Garringer put into creating this book. Collecting a series interviews from fellow country queers from people of different sexualities, genders, ages, and races. Collected all together like this it paints a beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking of the wide variety of experiences and this book does a fantastic job of representing all the different ways being a country queer can look like.

While no I did really enjoy this book, unfortunately a large portion of it is missing from the ebook copy of the ARC. The missing pages occurred at varying times of different interviews and that made it difficult to understand what was going on. Despite that I can see the bones of this book and tell how impactful it will be in a completed format. I’m looking forward to this book being published and being able to read the story in its totality.

Thanks for much to Net Galley, the publisher, and the author for giving me the chance to read this book!

[Molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

!!!!!!!!! This was fantastic. I loved all the photos and stories/interviews from people all over the country and from all walks of life talking about their experiences being queer. And I really liked seeing the way this project evolved over the ~10 years since Garringer started working on it. The way they learned more about how to conduct interviews, what to talk about, how they specifically made a point to reach out to a more diverse pool of people after the initial road trip in 2013, etc.

Not to drag a similar book I read last month, but this is EXACTLY what I wanted Real Queer America to be, and now I want to drop my rating of that one even lower lol. They have similar premises, but I like that despite the fact that I also learned a decent amount about the author in this, they put the focus on the people they were interviewing, and didn’t do a bunch of navelgazing about why cities suck and why all queer people who live in cities are miserable.

Thanks to NetGalley and Haymarket Books for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. Unlike the other reviews, I didn’t have any issues with my NetGalley file, so don’t be discouraged from reading it for that reason, they seem to have worked out the issues.

[Jess Svajgert · Rating 3 out of 5]

*Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this free ARC in exchange for an honest review. Pub date: October 8, 2024

Clearly a passion project spanning years, and clearly important work. It felt a bit disjointed to me despite being right there in the description—part photo book, part memoir, part oral history project—so that’s on me.

The interview excerpts are quite short and I found myself constantly yearning to hear more from these interviewees. There are many afterthoughts about how there is more to their stories but it isn’t being shared and that I can go listen to the podcast. If permission was given to have it on the podcast, why couldn’t it be included in the book? This was presented as discretion but it came across as just dangling a carrot, farming for podcast numbers, and left a lot of this feeling a bit incomplete.

Sharon P. Holland — the stand-out interview for me in here…I immediately wanted to hear more from her and am thankful that she’s written a number of books that I can check out. Some people just exude knowledge so effortlessly and I don’t think any number of conversations with her could get me up to speed!

[Ande Davidson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, my heart. Country Queers is a memoir/photo book that details the varied experiences of queer individuals living in the country in the US. I grew up queer in a small town in Texas, and this book really did a great job of capturing the voice of queer individuals who do not live in the city.

I loved that there was a focus on BIPOC, trans, 2 spirit, and elder queer voices. Some interviews highlighted coming of age during the AIDs epidemic, while others discussed growing up queer in the 1940s. I appreciated hearing everyone's stories & the care with which Rae Garringer presented them. I also appreciated the love for the rural atmosphere that was seen in so many of the stories.

Thanks so much to NetGalley, Rae Garringer, and Haymarket Books for the chance to read & review! I will be thinking about this one for a long time.

[Ime Corkery · Rating 5 out of 5]

emotional informative reflective fast-paced
4.75

This book looks at the lives of queer people of all ages but skewed to older generations. The book looks at people’s individual stories and in the process covers trauma like AIDS pandemic and the impact it had on a generation of queer people. The shows the many different ways it means to be queer. I wish some of the interviews were extended and the book briefly touches on chronic illness and queerness. I would have loved for the book to explore more of this. The book looks at the intersectionality of queerness and race and statehood. The book looks at the beautiful and difficult moments people have faced around their queerness.

Content Warnings
Moderate: Homophobia

[Vianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up because I cannot resist a book that claims to be a love letter to queerness, and I'm happy to say that this Country Queers lived up to my expectations. This book is exactly what it promises to be. I loved the variety of people whose stories were featured and getting to hear what each of them had to say. The book was also put together very well with pictures and interludes that made for a coherent narrative despite the isolated interviews. Definitely makes me want to check out the Country Queers podcast!

eARC provided by publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, thanks!

[Tuni · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great little window into much larger conversations available elsewhere. They felt short, but I think that helped to keep the momentum moving through the book. You’re not getting the full picture, but you’re also not getting bogged down either. And the info on where to go for the stories that really spoke to you is readily available.

I think the importance of visibility can never be overstated. Visibility and community. These are every day folk and even if out lives are not exactly the same, they are still deeply relatable in all the ways that matter.

[Novels and Nummies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Special thanks to Netgalley and Haymarket Books for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I love the topic of this book. It is so important to recognize that lgbt+ people live everywhere and have different experiences, also the diversity in this book was awesome. My favorite part were the interviews.

This book was not especially compatible online. It was hard to clearly see some of the pages and many pages were missing.

[Natalie D.C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A genre-defying collection of interviews that celebrates generations of country queer joy and resilience. I loved everything about this memoir/photo book, from Garringer's hopeful writing voice to the sheer breadth of queer stories that transcend boundaries of race, class, gender, and sexuality. This is definitely one of my favorite nonfiction stories that I've read in a long time and I'm excited to check out more from Garringer and Haymarket Books in the future!

[halloween party · Rating 4 out of 5]

took me so long to read n idk why. anyhow was very nice. made me examine a lot of privilege i have. the older lesbian woman who wanted anonymity was my fav probably. wil n loring was hard to get through for content reasons. all n all a worthy read

[Christian Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really, really beautiful book full of hope and heart. It’s presented in a way that provides with the utmost intimacy and closeness with each subject.

I couldn’t recommend this any more.

[Elizabeth Norman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Country Queers by Rae Garringer is a delightful and uplifting read. At a time when our country is getting more divided and there are stereotypes of rural people, it is refreshing to read about diverse three dimensional people living in diverse and often supportive families and communities in rural areas across the U.S. the author and interview subjects bring in a good mixture of seriousness, fun and joy. I loved learning terms for self description like Fabulachian. I also appreciated the connection to land and concepts of home. I look forward to listening to the accompanying podcast. Thanks to Haymarket Books and NetGalley for the eARC.

[Mx Phoebe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this would make a great addition to a high school reading list. Diversity matters and Rae Garringer just brought a great conversation starter to the table.

I received an ARC of this book and I am writing a review without prejudice and voluntarily.

[Atlas Conrad · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is pretty worldview changing and deeply touching, I think it will stick with me forever (in a good way).

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cool compilation of oral histories of queer people across rural towns and areas across America - gorgeous photography, beautiful stories. Would've wished it was more standalone than it was but that's okay! I will definitely check out the main podcast.

[Jenn Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

So I know this is probably pretty obvious by the title, but it is the story of queer people who live in the country. As someone who lives in the country and usually only sees the negative side of this, I loved it. The stories were interesting and powerful. There was joy in this book and the photos were great!

5 stars