Miss Southeast: Essays

by Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers

A collection of narrative essays on femininity, sexuality, community, and belonging


Miss Southeast explores the strange, often contradictory cultural circumstances of being queer and female in the American South and beyond. Born and raised in North Carolina, the youngest in a family of precocious daughters, Rogers spends her teenage years as a half-closeted lesbian desperate to escape the South, convinced the rest of the United States must be “more enlightened than our cow-dotted corner of the county.”


Adulthood takes Rogers to Ohio, New York, Louisiana, Arkansas, Washington, DC, and China, but each essay finds her reckoning with participation in and resistance to rigid cultural institutions—whether a coming-out story set at a high school beauty pageant or a meditation on swimming pools as emblems of racial divides across the South. In lyric prose enlivened by a poet’s sense of musicality, Miss Southeast considers how both place and our layered identities shape our sense of belonging.

Genres: Essays, Feminism, Nonfiction, LGBT

216 pages, Paperback

Published September 15, 2024

Reviews

[CJ Alberts]

Kinda good but then got repetitive towards the end and repeated info in earlier essays that’s seemed gratuitous???

[Rach · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such an interesting read, the collection of essays bound together that cover retrospective opinions and experience on the writers life, living in the American south from the early 2000s up until the 2020s. Many items are very thought provoking and at times could be seen as triggering depending on your views. I did find some areas hard to resonate with but as a non-American reader found some of these essays lacking emotion especially around the area of the country club but I do appreciate that this is not a work of fiction. I felt as if I was looking in on somebody’s experiences that felt at times detached, an observation on the world in New Orleans (mainly), snippets of other American areas and a few regions of China. The essays are not fully linked to each other and certain essays do jump around in time that is not linear but they all link together in a certain way. This is very well written, but I do have to wonder what was the point of these essays, was this a blog? Or something editorial? It is not an overly long read but I think personally best read at stages as the essays are standalone subjects and can be quite weighted in places. Thank you NetGalley for an opportunity to read this book for an honest review.

[Morgan Copas · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author's relationship with their grandparents is what struck me most. I was intrigued by the analysis of their grandparent's relationship and how a symbol of a family dynamic that you don't want to end up like doesn't stop you from loving and appreciating them for who they are.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

N is just a line
(that points up
(at the ceiling;
(N is no more real
(than you
(or me)))))

Imagine the dream
(where you’re naked
(in class,
(but the nakedness
(lies
(in your voice)))))

Work between the cracks
(this time;
(hold your breath
(then hurry
(toward the air))))

[Joanna Pearson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine smart, delicious, thoughtful Leslie Jamison-ish essays, but more queer + more reckoning with being from the American South. If that sounds good to you, you will love this book like I do!

[Jennice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorite essays:
A Bearing
Shame
Public Swim
One Person Means Alone
Some Mothers