Books about being gay in rural south

If I had witnessed queer characters fall in love and thrive and build lives — joyous, wonderful, full lives — in the places they are from. A young, gay, black man in a small, rural town in the South feels trapped by community, by the oppressive religion of his family, and by his own sexual repression.

Make a one-time donation today and ensure that quality journalism continues to flourish. Every day we scour the internet for the best longform writing, and every day we send you our editors' picks. Queerness in these narratives was a secret shame, one that, if revealed, led to loss and disappointment.

But queer Southern literature isn’t just about the struggles LGBT people have to deal with while living in the South. And I did leave, eventually, running to New York City for college. The stars were bright overhead, his mouth tasted like tobacco, and I remember thinking that one day I would kiss someone and I would hope that it would never end.

By Spencer George. If you are interested in Southern literature, here are some compelling pride books that reveal the hardships of homophobia in the South. Our privacy policy can be found here. Somewhere deep within me, there was a truth I was uncovering, and it was one I felt I had no guidance for.

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9 Books About Being

An account was already registered with this email. I had never imagined what it would be like to live fully as myself in this place; I had never seen what it looked like to be here and love someone else, someone else who looked like me.

Here at Bookstr, we believe all voices matter, and we’re here to shine a light on powerful LGBTQ+ authors who redefine social norms, particularly in areas where other sexualities are considered taboo. I often think that I would have come out years earlier if I had been able to see myself represented in different ways.

As soon as I started to realize I fit outside of the binaries of sexuality, I assumed I would have to leave if I were ever to explore that side of myself. Please check your inbox for an authentication link. In popular culture, the stories I saw of Southern queerness often involved leaving.

The first person I kissed was a boy, on a beach, late in the evening. ‘We Are Everywhere’: How Rural Queer Communities Connect Through Storytelling (Nicole Blackwood, National Geographic, September ) This beautiful piece follows the story of Rae Garringer, creator of the oral history project Country Queers, which originated from a road trip through rural America to document the stories of queer people.

I did not anticipate how much I would miss the South; I did not anticipate how isolated and far from home I would feel in the city. It was summer in the American South and the air was sticky with rain. When you search for the term "longreads," you're looking for a great story to sink into.

LGBTQ+ people live not just in cities but in small and remote towns, too. Register with Longreads for free and get access to our editors' picks collecting the best stories on the web, as well as our award-winning original writing.

While many of these books explore the hardships LGBT southerners face, I’ve made it a point to include texts that highlight the joys of being Southern and gay as hell, y’all. Most of all, there seemed to be no way to have that joy without removing oneself from home entirely.

If there were happy endings to these stories, it was only because the characters left everything behind, escaping to distant metropolises where they could begin anew. There seemed to be no bridge between lives once lived and futures where the possibility of joy existed.

I had come for community, after all. Sometimes, standing in it, I would find myself hoping for the clouds to clear and show me who I ought to be, or, even better, a path toward outwardly becoming the girl I knew I was inside.