Real Queer America / Samantha Allen / 2019
This memoir is a trans woman’s love letter to queer America, living in the red states, starting with Provo and traveling to Texas, then Bloomington, and ending in Atlanta. Allen writes with a chip on her shoulder, casting shade at queer communities in big liberal cities like San Francisco and New York and defending us rural and red state queers with a zeal that might romanticize our communities a tad too much and poke at any wounds you may carry as these red states literally outlaw our bodies. Her story is very much worth telling and her arguments, whether completely convincing or not, expand queer-normative narratives of the LGBTQ+ community and challenge us to be more inclusive of whose stories we tell. As anyone living in a so-called third world or developing nation will tell you, there’s more to our communities than the traumas we have to shoulder and there is beauty in communities, even or perhaps especially when forged by the fire of a shared need for survival and understanding. One of my biggest frustrations with this book, however, is how incredibly white it is. I don’t believe a person of color could have written this book and if they did, they certainly wouldn’t have taken people to Bloomington. Even so, it was nice to see Utah and Indiana reflected through Allen’s mirrors, places I danced in and people I hugged are included in this book. Their documentation and celebration is deeply meaningful, even through Allen’s rainbow-colored glasses, pun intended. This book made me weep a couple of times and shared the stories of LGBTQ+ activists in some of the most precarious states, including an interesting come-up story for Troy Williams and plenty of cogent legal and logical defenses for LGBTQ+ communities. It helps that Allen is a journalist that literally writes on LGBTQ+ legislation all the time. 4/5
