50
Used, New, and Out of Print Books - We Buy and Sell - Powell's Books
Cart |
|  my account  |  wish list  |  help   |  800-878-7323
Hello, | Login
MENU
  • Browse
    • New Arrivals
    • Bestsellers
    • Featured Preorders
    • Award Winners
    • Audio Books
    • See All Subjects
  • Used
  • Staff Picks
    • Staff Picks
    • Picks of the Month
    • Bookseller Displays
    • 50 Books for 50 Years
    • 25 Best 21st Century Sci-Fi & Fantasy
    • 25 PNW Books to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Books From the 21st Century
    • 25 Memoirs to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Global Books to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Women to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Books to Read Before You Die
  • Gifts
    • Gift Cards & eGift Cards
    • Powell's Souvenirs
    • Journals and Notebooks
    • socks
    • Games
  • Sell Books
  • Blog
  • Events
  • Find A Store

PowellsBooks.Blog
Authors, readers, critics, media − and booksellers.

Powell's Picks Spotlight

Powell's Picks Spotlight: Samantha Allen's 'Real Queer America'

by Powell's Books, March 25, 2019 9:50 AM
Picks of the Month Spotlight: Real Queer America

This week we're taking a closer look at Powell's Pick of the Month Real Queer America by Samantha Allen.

Samantha Allen traveled thousands of miles looking for thriving queer individuals and communities in America’s most conservative states. She found them. And in telling their stories and her own, she overturns many of the narratives held by those of us in coastal cities. — Keith M.

Samantha Allen heard the clarion call of red-state exodus after the 2016 election — and she told it to shut the heck up. Frustrated with the cost of living and lackluster LGBTQ activism she observed in coastal cities, and equally irritated by progressive dismissal of “flyover country,” Allen turned to the vast American interior to examine how queer people and communities fight and thrive in deeply conservative states.

Originally from the west coast, Allen attended Utah’s BYU and has since spent a considerable amount of time living and working in the South and Midwest. Her story is an interesting one: Allen started college as a devout, male-presenting Mormon. Over the course of 10 difficult years, she transferred schools, transitioned, earned a PhD in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, and met her wife while on fellowship at the famed Kinsey Institute. Throughout Real Queer America Allen is open about both the challenges she faced while coming-of-age and transitioning and the joys she experiences as a happily married woman with a successful journalism career and, as becomes clear, a rich and growing community of friends and mentors.

Chatty and diligently informative (there are footnoted sources on nearly every page), Real Queer America is a hybrid travelogue-corrective that asks readers to reconsider their preconceptions about LGBTQ bias and violence in red-state America, and it succeeds on every level. Allen’s narrative voice is bubbly and candid, adorable and quirky enough to engage the reader on a personal level (there’s a photo of a “creepy bird” spotted in Sherman, TX), while maintaining journalistic credibility and academic mastery over the book’s subject matter. She’s especially deft with character studies, so that even chance encounters with the many interesting people she meets on her “something gay every day” road trip — activists, academics, drag performers, homeless youth, among others — feel fully fleshed-out and sensitive to each person’s story.

In its review of the book, the LA Times notes, “[Allen] doesn’t try to sell middle America as a fuzzy warm place that is unilaterally safe for or welcoming of queer folk....But she’s sharing the beauty of the spaces that LGBTQ+ people have carved out for themselves and she’s giving credit where credit is due.” It’s impossible to read Real Queer America and not share Allen’s optimistic conclusion that despite major political setbacks for LGBTQ communities across the U.S., queer people will continue to win personal and legislative victories by fighting back in the simplest but bravest way: By living their lives as they need to, wherever they want to.

Check out the rest of our Picks of the Month here. 



Books mentioned in this post

Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States

Samantha Allen
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##

Most Read

  1. Best Books of 2022: Fiction by Powell's Staff
  2. The Big List of Backlist: Books That Got Us Through 2022 by Powell's Staff
  3. 25 Books to Read Before You Die: 21st Century by Powell's Staff
  4. Powell's 2023 Book Preview: The First Quarter by Powell's Staff
  5. 7 Essential Authors Recommend Their 7 Essential Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books by Powell's Staff

Blog Categories

  • Interviews
  • Original Essays
  • Lists
  • Q&As
  • Playlists
  • Portrait of a Bookseller
  • City of Readers
  • Required Reading
  • Powell's Picks Spotlight

Post a comment:

*Required Fields
Name*
Email*
  1. Please note:
  2. All comments require moderation by Powells.com staff.
  3. Comments submitted on weekends might take until Monday to appear.
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Instagram

  • Help
  • Guarantee
  • My Account
  • Careers
  • About Us
  • Security
  • Wish List
  • Partners
  • Contact Us
  • Shipping
  • Transparency ACT MRF
  • Sitemap
  • © 2023 POWELLS.COM Terms