A review by deepbutdazzlingdarkness
Country Queers: 11,000 Miles of Back Roads on a Quest for Our Stories by Rae Garringer

emotional hopeful informative reflective

5.0

!!!!!!!!! This was fantastic. I loved all the photos and stories/interviews from people all over the country and from all walks of life talking about their experiences being queer. And I really liked seeing the way this project evolved over the ~10 years since Garringer started working on it. The way they learned more about how to conduct interviews, what to talk about, how they specifically made a point to reach out to a more diverse pool of people after the initial road trip in 2013, etc. 

Not to drag a similar book I read last month, but this is EXACTLY what I wanted Real Queer America to be, and now I want to drop my rating of that one even lower lol. They have similar premises, but I like that despite the fact that I also learned a decent amount about the author in this, they put the focus on the people they were interviewing, and didn’t do a bunch of navelgazing about why cities suck and why all queer people who live in cities are miserable. 

Thanks to NetGalley and Haymarket Books for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. Unlike the other reviews, I didn’t have any issues with my NetGalley file, so don’t be discouraged from reading it for that reason, they seem to have worked out the issues.