App State hosted writer Rae Garringer Tuesday evening for a discussion of their book, “Country Queers: A Love Letter,” released in September.
The book is an extension of the “Country Queers” oral history project and podcast Garringer started in 2013, which consists of multiple interviews of LGBTQ+ individuals living in rural and southern areas.
Garringer began the event by reading from the introduction of the book. The book details their personal experiences growing up in the rural South, discovering they were queer, moving away to the city and returning again to Southeast West Virginia, where they grew up.
The book’s introduction went on to describe multiple experiences Garringer had with other LGBTQ+ individuals in the South, both before and after they recognized their own queerness. They came to realize their uniqueness in being an LGBTQ+ person in a Southern rural community.
“I needed to find people who understood how to navigate the tension of loving a place unconditionally, even while some community members tell you you don’t belong here,” Garringer said. “I wanted to meet people who had insights about how to build community and create expansive queer families in rural places.”
Garringer said this was the inspiration for the original “Country Queers” series of interviews. After they finished reading from the introduction, Garringer presented clips from interviews that were featured in the book.
The first interview was with Elandria Williams, who Garringer spoke to in 2013 while they were both at the STAY Project. Williams, who also used gender-neutral pronouns, spoke about their evolving relationship with East Tennessee where they grew up in the 2013 interview.
“I hated East Tennessee. Hated it. When I think country, I think East Tennessee and it took me like 23 years to be fine with East Tennessee,” Williams said in the interview.
Williams said in their interview that they were also not an urbanite. The experience of being queer in a city like New York was not what being queer was to them personally. They felt more at home in the country.
Other interviews from the book included Cameron McCoy, who runs a horse rescue ranch with his husband, John, Kasha Snyder-McDonald, who was a trans activist and drag queen in Charleston, West Virginia; and Dorothy Allison, a literary fiction writer best known for her novel, “Bastard Out of Carolina.”
To close out the event, Garringer fielded questions from the audience. Greysen Freeze, a sophomore anthropology major, asked, “What’s an important lesson you think you learned from this project?”
Garringer said life as an LGBTQ+ individual in rural communities can feel isolating, but this project taught and reminded them that queer people have always and will always be in the South.
“I think that a really long standing narrative of the way to be able to have a happy, queer life is to go to New York or San Francisco. It’s not true. It’s not ever been the only truth,” Garringer said.
Freeze said the message spoke to his heart and is why he was drawn to attend the event.
“I grew up in the South, I’ve always lived here. This hits close to home,” he said.
Shlo Harris is an App State alum who is on the committee for Boone Pride. They spoke about the importance of community and volunteers at this time.
“Be here and celebrate,” Harris said. “Because that is a form of resistance in itself.”
