FEATURE
A Conversation about Country Queers and Oral Histories
The Desk outside Alpine, Texas, June 2014. Jumanos, Ndé Kónitsąąíí Gokíyaa (Lipan Apache), and Mescalero Apache lands. Photo by Rae Garringer.
Rae Garringer (they/them) launched Country Queers in 2013 to document rural and small-town LGBTQIA2S+ lives after discovering a lack of positive representation. Over the last decade, Country Queers has collected 90+ oral histories, produced a podcast series, mounted gallery exhibitions, and published Country Queers: A Love Letter (Haymarket Books, October 2024). We are thrilled to connect with Rae for this conversation on oral histories, queer representation, and the power of stories.
Legacy Magazine
Country Queers is amazing. What first inspired you in 2013 to pick up that recorder and start documenting rural queer stories, and what were those first months like—particularly as someone not formally trained in media production or oral history?
Rae Garringer
The project was born out of really intense frustration. I hadn’t known any out queer people in West Virginia growing up, and our existence was totally swept under the rug locally, as well as in national queer media.
I went to college in the northeast, where I came out and met queer and trans people my age for the first time, and then I spent almost a decade away from home, achingly homesick the whole time, because I bought into this long-standing narrative that the only option for queer people raised in the country was to move to the “safe space” of some major city.
When I moved home in 2011, I started to see queer people around town when I got off the farm, and I started to meet other young Appalachian queer people through the Stay Together Appalachian Youth (STAY) Project.
I felt like I’d been lied to by omission by my local community and by national queer spaces about the fact that there have always been country queers in rural WV and in rural places all over what’s currently known as the United States.
Legacy
In your experience, what are (or were) the mainstream narratives about rural spaces and LGBTQIA2S+ lives?
Rae
When I started thinking about the project in a more concrete way in 2012, the landscape for easily accessible rural queers stories was super bleak. A google search for “rural queer” or “small town gay” came up almost empty, other than an article or two written by people raised in rural spaces who had moved to New York or San Francisco.
Of course, there were stories of tragedies and violence. There was the infamous story of the murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. There was the story of the rape and murder of Brandon Teena, in Humboldt, Nebraska, made famous by the 1999 film Boys Don’t Cry. And Brokeback Mountain came out in 2005 when I was in college—which is a film that I love, but again, in the end, one of them is murdered with the suggestion that it was due to his queerness. And the whole underlying premise of the film is about the impossibility of this queer cowboy love in a rural context, that the only possible ending is closeted depression or murder. Also, every single one of these stories centers white masculine folks.
Dorothy Allison at home in Guerneville, California, August 2018. Kashia, Coast Miwok, Southern Pomo, and Graton Rancheria lands. Photo by Rae Garringer.
Legacy
How did these mainstream narratives, often pivoting on violence and centering white masculinities, then influence how Country Queers entered the oral history space and what your goals for the project were?
Rae
When I finally moved back home to WV in 2011 after almost a decade away, I was overwhelmed by the joy and comfort I found, and I was meeting other rural queer people across central Appalachia who weren’t depressed and also weren’t either closeted or being murdered. So, I wanted the project to resist those tropes of violence and death for rural queers, and, instead, to center the folks who were organizing and building community and having dance parties in fields. I wanted to hear about the hard stuff, but also about the things people loved about their lives and communities. I was really curious to hear about how people navigated conservative small communities as out queer people, how people did or didn’t feel connected to queer scenes in big cities, how they met friends and dates in small towns, what they did for fun.
Legacy
Early on in the life of Country Queers, you explicitly began asking narrators about joy and celebration—and it sounds like (in contrast to those old, dominant narratives) these stories were, also, already coming from folks and the stories they were telling?
Crisosto Apache at home in their backyard, Denver, Colorado, June 2014. Núuchi-u (Ute), Tsitsistas (Cheyenne), Ndé Kónitsąąíí Gokíyaa (Lipan Apache), and Hinono'eiteen (Arapaho) lands. Photo by Rae Garringer.
Rae
Yes. Largely, again and again, the folks I interviewed didn’t tell stories that were mostly focused on violence or oppression. They told stories about their farms and animals, their local communities, their families, sometimes their churches. There was pain and hardship within them, because of course, but there was also a lot of contentment and connection and community and attachment to place and land.
So, I hope that the project has helped add some complexity and nuance to stories about rural queer experiences, but also to representations of rural communities. For a long time our places have been depicted as monolithically white, straight, and conservative.
But not only are there lots of rural queer and trans people, there are lots of Black, Brown and Indigenous rural queer and trans people. There are a lot of brilliant leftist organizers who are queer and trans in rural spaces. There are all sorts of diverse religious and political and economic realities for rural people. I hope that Country Queers has helped complicate those old narratives that flatten our places into monoliths.
Legacy
Speaking of complicating narratives, you’ve worked in a range of genres: audio, text, photography, and now a book! How do you decide which medium best serves a story?
Rae
I wish I could say I had a very thoughtful and deliberate process for deciding when to uplift some oral histories in podcast form, others in book form! But the reality of Country Queers is that it has always had limited (and more often zero) funding, and, for the first eight years, it functioned entirely as a volunteer project outside of full time nonprofit jobs and graduate school. The majority of the funding the project has gotten over the past 12 years has been from crowdfunding. The vast majority of my time working on this project, and the time the brilliant editorial advisory team has spent on the podcast, has been unpaid.
All of which means: the project’s evolution was shaped less by thoughtful planning and more by the realities of ebbing-and-flowing funding and capacity.
I’m really glad the project did evolve how it has to include the podcast and book forms. I think there are strengths to both formats. For the podcast, I love so much about listeners getting to hear the voices of the people who shared their stories with me: the pacing and accents, everything held within the long pauses, and especially the laughter, add so much depth.
And, I love that, in the book (thanks to Haymarket investing in a full color design-rich beauty), you can see faces and places through the photographs and the added ephemera. It has a more tangible, touchable feel. And I love that the book can exist totally absent of screens.
Robyn Thirkill at home with her goats, Prospect, Virginia, September 2016. Monacan and Occaneechi lands. Photo by Rae Garringer.
Legacy
So much storytelling happens in small, close-knit spaces—so when we publish or release the work, we just cross our fingers and hope it connects with someone, in some way. Do you ever hear back from listeners, readers, or participants?
Rae
I hope Country Queers has supported some kind of tangible change and in-person community building, but, like writing and storytelling in general, the thing about this kind of work is that you really don’t know how it’s being engaged with or what it’s “doing” out in the world unless people write to let you know. And often in both podcasting and writing, you send this thing out into the world and try to have faith that the people who need it will find it.
Over the past twelve years, I’ve gotten so many lovely emails and messages from rural queers all over what’s currently known as the U.S. and from other countries too, saying folks have found comfort, connection, inspiration, and a sense of being finally seen through hearing other country queer stories. That to me is success.
This project has always been for other country queers, and my hope has been that it could provide some sense of connection and community across great geographic distance, for all the other rural queer and trans folks who sometimes feel isolated, lonely, unseen, or out of place.
Rattlesnake grass by the California coast, August 2018. Graton Rancheria and Kashia lands. Photo by Rae Garringer.
Legacy
The practice of building relationships in rural queer communities and sharing these diverse stories—not to mention simply existing as a queer nonbinary person in the United States at this moment—is crucial, and it’s hard. How do you sustain your own well-being (and your passion, and motivation, and hope, and…) in these times?
Rae
It’s hard, to be totally honest, especially in these times. I still have days where I doubt if I can stay in WV, which I love more than anything or anyone else I’ve ever loved. I have days where I feel heartbroken. Many of my trans friends especially are moving out of the state.
I still feel isolated, all these years and interviews later. I think in the beginning I naively thought I’d talk to people who knew how to make this work and then I’d know.
But I still have almost as many questions as I did all those years ago when I set out with a recorder and no training to interview other country queers, about how to make my life work in this place as a chronically ill, queer and trans person with radical politics and an obsessive commitment to staying.
Sam Gleaves at home in Berea, Kentucky, July 2016. Anitsalagi (Cherokee), S’atsoyaha (Yuchi), Moneton, and Tutelo lands. Photo by Rae Garringer.
Legacy
But, even in such a challenging space, there is joy?
Rae
Without a doubt. Again and again, what brings me the most joy, the most support, and the most grounding, is being outside in these mountains that I love so much. Walking the goats in the woods, mucking out the goat shed, swimming in the river, splitting firewood, sharing food with friends on the porch, watching the seasons change across the mountain across from my camper. Getting to be here in this place with this landscape still feels like it’s worth all that I give up by living here.
I believe in the underlying goodness and care of rural people, despite these deeply polarized and horrific times. Mountain people have always taken care of each other cause we’ve had to. And that continues, even in the intensity of this moment.
Legacy
Looking forward into the future, it seems like we’ve all got a lot to learn about taking care of each other. I love how, in your 2024 interview with Voice of Witness, you described oral histories as “moving slow and healing things.”
Kasha Snyder-McDonald outside the West Virginia Black Pride Foundation, Charleston, West Virginia, July 2023. Šaawanwaki (Shawnee), S’atsoyaha (Yuchi), and Adena lands. Photo by Rae Garringer.
North Carolina piedmont sunset from the road, May 2017. Occaneechi, Eno and Haliwa-Saponi lands. Photo by Rae Garringer.
Rae
In these times of increasingly escalating climate catastrophes, back-to-back-to-back in Appalachia, I’m reminded every time: no one is ever coming from the outside to support rural mountain people. We have always had to rely on each other and we will need to keep doing so into the future, more than ever.
When you turn off the news or social media, community care and mutual aid and taking care of your neighbors are still very much woven into the fabric of rural Appalachian life. That gives me a lot of hope and a lot of inspiration. Plus the quirky, resilient creativity of country queers who always create what we need, for each other.
Legacy
Thank you so much for your time today, Rae, and for this gorgeous, essential work.
Last: if you could go back and visit the Rae who was about to begin Country Queers in 2013, what advice would you give them?
Rae
What I’d tell late-twenties Rae, who was setting out on this big ambitious project with no experience, training, funding, or clear vision of where they were going is: to trust their gut that this obsession has a purpose in the world that isn’t pointless, to embrace and soak up the meandering adventure and lessons in it all, and that finding a team to co-think, co-dream, and help shape some guardrails for scope, and scale, and timeline is a great idea.
A decade of unbridled wandering is both a gift and a real good recipe for deep burnout and overwhelm. I’d also tell them to listen to Dorothy Allison’s warnings about the long-term health effects of running yourself into the ground for years. But I’m so grateful that I’ve gotten to spend so many years on the journey, and for all the country queers who invited me into their homes and lives, for trusting me with their stories.
