Storytelling in Queer Appalachia: Imagining and Writing the Unspeakable Other

by Hillery Glasby (Editor), Sherrie Gradin (Editor), Rachael Ryerson (Editor)

In one of the first collections of scholarship at the intersection of LGBTQ studies and Appalachian studies, voices from the region’s valleys, hollers, mountains, and campuses blend personal stories with scholarly and creative examinations of living and surviving as queers in Appalachia. The essayists collected in Storytelling in Queer Appalachia are academics, social workers, riot grrrl activists, teachers, students, practitioners, scholars of divinity, and boundary crossers, all imagining how to make legible the unspeakable other of Appalachian queerness.
 
Focusing especially on disciplinary approaches from rhetoric and composition, the volume explores sexual identities in rural places, community and individual meaning-making among the Appalachian diaspora, the storytelling infrastructure of queer Appalachia, and the role of the metronormative in discourses of difference. Storytelling in Queer Appalachia affirms queer people, fights for queer visibility over queer erasure, seeks intersectional understanding, and imagines radically embodied queer selves through social media.

Genres: Queer, Nonfiction, LGBT, Queer Studies, Gender and Sexuality, Anthologies

228 pages, Hardcover

Published July 1, 2020

Reviews

[elle · Rating 5 out of 5]

we exist! we have existed! you cannot erase lived truth!

[Liam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so important and I need everyone I know to read. To have such a collaborative effort like this is so validating as a queer Appalachian. Personally I don’t read a whole lot of academic articles and there was only one essay that I skip because all the rest I could get through. But there’s such a great diversity is authors and writing styles that make each one exciting to read

[Jared Bogolea · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was recommended to me by a lovely person at my local queer bookstore and I really enjoyed it.

As a queer, northern Appalachian, I really resonated with the stories and essays within this collection.

I loved the formatting of personal testimony along with scholarly study. I want/ed to be friends with every single person who had submitted something to this and I felt like I not only KNEW them but WAS them.. if that makes sense.

One of my dearest friends is a queer Appalachian from Kentucky and the second I sent him this book and said “Giving this to you when I finish.” He replied back with “1) Offended I was not asked to be a part of this even though I knew nothing about it and 2) This is my entire identity and interests wrapped into one and I can’t wait to read it.”

It took me a little while to finish, but I’m so glad I did. I have spent the last year or so embracing my roots and where I come from & what that means to me long-term and I have never been more PROUD to be a queer Appalachian. ♡

#YallMeansAll

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very academic book, with intentional phrasing and language. While I recently graduated as a non-traditional (read: old) student at college, I am not an academic. My internet has never been focused on Tumblr, which has a specific culture this book seems to tap into.

So, I'm giving this book more stars than I would generally, since I base my stars on how much I enjoyed reading a book, and I didn't really enjoy this book until the last essay, which was about craftivism, and was written in a more conversational tone.

But I'm doing that because I don't want to tank the ratings on this, and I think it's written for a counterculture I am not a part of, and is probably an exceptionally enjoyable book for it's intended audience.

[Kelly Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this collection is important. As an Appalachian and an ally, I found lots of insight about Appalachian-ism and queer-ism.

I will state that I can't give a higher rating because oftentimes this collection can be a little impenetrable, steeped so deeply in academia that it might not have any impact on the layman. (Speaking as a college dropout myself.)

The best parts, frankly, were the vignettes and personal anecdotes. That's where the gut-punches are; that's where the impact is.

Overall, these essays are broaching subjects not quite as well explored, which I commend.

[Melissa Helton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good collection of essays (some narrative and some heavy in research and theory), mostly dealing with that central issue of how has/can/does/will queerness thrive in Appalachia. The conclusions were as expected (we need intersectionality and to tell the stories of the marginalized). I appreciated the explicit discussion of biphobia (from outside and inside the queer community itself) because that is so rarely discussed in anthologies like these.