A transgender reporter's "powerful, profoundly moving" narrative tour through the surprisingly vibrant queer communities sprouting up in red states (New York Times Book Review), offering a vision of a stronger, more humane America.
Ten years ago, Samantha Allen was a suit-and-tie-wearing Mormon missionary. Now she's a GLAAD Award-winning journalist happily married to another woman. A lot in her life has changed, but what hasn't changed is her deep love of Red State America, and of queer people who stay in so-called "flyover country" rather than moving to the liberal coasts.
In Real Queer America, Allen takes us on a cross-country road-trip stretching all the way from Provo, Utah to the Rio Grande Valley to the Bible Belt to the Deep South. Her motto for the trip: "Something gay every day." Making pit stops at drag shows, political rallies, and hubs of queer life across the heartland, she introduces us to scores of extraordinary LGBT people working for change, from the first openly transgender mayor in Texas history to the manager of the only queer night club in Bloomington, Indiana, and many more.
Capturing profound cultural shifts underway in unexpected places and revealing a national network of chosen family fighting for a better world, Real Queer America is a treasure trove of uplifting stories and a much-needed source of hope and inspiration in these divided times.
Samantha Allen is a GLAAD Award-winning journalist and the author of Love & Estrogen (Amazon Original Stories). A former senior reporter for The Daily Beast, she has been published in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and Out, among other places, and has appeared on MSNBC, CNN, and NPR's On the Media. She received her Ph.D. in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Emory University in 2015 and was the 2013 recipient of the Kinsey Institute's John Money Fellowship for Scholars of Sexology. She met her wife in a Kinsey Institute elevator — a true queer love story.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Queer in Trump's America 1
Chapter 1 Seeing Red 14
Chapter 2 Prodigal Daughter 40
Chapter 3 Texas Outrageous 90
Chapter 4 Boo-mington 146
Chapter 5 Not the Family That You're In 189
Chapter 6 Crossroads 228
Chapter 7 Going Home 264
Epilogue: The Bright Road Ahead 293
Acknowledgments 303
What People are Saying About This
Author of She's Not There and Long Black Veil - Jennifer Finney Boylan
"Samantha Allen's America is filled with buoyant queer people in supposedly red states living their lives with resilience and joy. This moving journey starts out in Utah, but Allen's road ultimately takes the reader to the center of her heart. Surprising, inspiring, and thoughtful."
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