Samantha Allen

Wanting to show that conservative America is not entirely doom and gloom for LGBTQ+ people, journalist Samantha Allen and a fellow trans friend embark on a tour of "red" America. They return to former haunts, visit iconic clubs and restaurants, meet with friends and friends-of-friends, and find welcome and unexpected surprises in both small towns and large cities. One piece of insight they are seeking is, for queer folks choosing to live under the threat of frequently hostile legislation, show more what makes it worth staying?

I had a hard time deciding on memoirs for the "a memoir written by someone who is trans or nonbinary" category for this year's Read Harder challenge, but I'm pleased to have landed on this one. Not only do I love road trip stories, but it was enlightening as well. Allen is an excellent writer, and I loved the clever turns of phrase sprinkled throughout. This book gives me hope for the traditionally and overwhelmingly conservative areas of our country. show less

Samantha Allen, herself a queer person who grew up in a Red State, takes a tour of the country with her Finance's ex-boyfriend (yes, you read that right) to capture the stories of queer people who have carved out spaces for themselves in the very hearts of bigotry and bible banging. Their reasons for not moving to queer bastions such as San Francisco, New York or Portland might surprise you.
It makes a lot of sense that many of these people feel that they can do more good for the community show more by staying and working to change people's hearts and minds or providing a safe place for queer people to gather. Enduring the ridicule, not feeling safe to be who they are in public, having a smaller or even almost non-existent sense of community, these are the prices they have chosen to pay in order to stay in a place they grew up or have come to call home or even are stubbornly committed to shaking some sense into.
I would love to meet and shake the hand of every one of these courageous and inspiring folks, and definitely visit their bars/cafes/community rooms. show less

Winter 2021 (January);
(Non-Fiction Bingo Board Square: LGBT , gender, sexuality and related issues(

This was intensely delightful and educational. I loved the down to earth, awkward humor, and utterly realistic sharing. This book felt like the personal story a friend tells you, late in the evening, when both of you have your feet up on the couch and a third or fourth glass of wine in hand, exchange secrets of the soul.

This was such a poignant look at the journey to realizing you are show more transgender and then to becoming it, in all the ways that can happen, and all the things it ends up impacting along the way from beginning to not-end/but-where-we-are-now. These bite-sized chapter anecdotes and bizarre, yet perfect, analogies will end up sticking with me for a long time to come I bet. Recommending to anyone and everyone. show less

This is an important read, although not without its flaws. I feel some geographic parallels to Samantha Allen, an ex-mormon who did her undergrad at BYU and grad work at Emory in Atlanta (I grew up in eastern Idaho which is heavily LDS and did my undergrad in South Carolina), so I understand a bit where her perspectives growing up may have come from. Part exploration of conservative-state queer communities, part autobiography (she visits places she's lived/places important to friends and show more allies in the community), Allen spends the summer of 2017 criss-crossing the interior of the country, against a backdrop of presidential tweets banning trans servicepeople and the Charlottesville riots. The postscript is already dated- the judge's block on the military ban has already been reversed by now, in 2019. The opening chapter in Provo, Utah is the strongest, I feel, as it not only goes into the baby!trans feels but also an examination of the crossroads queer LDS members find themselves at at the moment, and how tumultuous a change attitudes have taken in the last ten years. I recall in 2009 attempts to start a GSA at my high school failed, but this year, a decade later, my hometown had the largest pride parade they've had at ~2,000 people participating.

My problem with this book is how often Allen pooh-poohs the "coastal elite" queer strongholds of San Francisco and NYC as expensive, complacent places where there's so much choice segregation shakes out again- that while in the Castro you might have bars for specific, individual subcultures, a mid-size metro in Mississippi just has one place for everyone to converge in one happy community. A theme that goes on is that in oppressive places, you find opportunities for connection, especially resisting together, and that IS true- red state LGBTQ communities are resilient in the face of hostile state governments trying to deny their existence- but I don't think it's necessary to punch out at the historic early battlegrounds of LGBTQ rights. I get it, I really do (when I mention I'm from Idaho, I've seen the question marks that pop up on faces because I'm not a white Mormon potato farmer), but that did give me pause. To her credit, Allen does note that as much as she feels comfortable in some of these places, she still carries white privilege and that black trans women, the most vulnerable community, might feel less safe. Pure speculation, but I'm guessing some of the hangups about LA/SF/DC/NYC come from growing up in a conservative LDS environment and even though she's shed both those identities, it takes some self-reflection to get rid of everything.

I would recommend to: red state readers (especially those in the LDS or evangelical communities because narratives about people might be more persuasive than stats), coastal people who have never been to the interior of the country show less