To Belong Here: A New Generation of Queer, Trans, and Two-Spirit Appalachian Writers

by Rae Garringer (Editor)

Overview

Appalachia has long been flattened by national media into a white, Christian, and conservative place. This flattening erases the presence of communities of color and of queer, trans, and two-spirit people across the region. Amidst this ongoing erasure, the pressures of religious fundamentalism, white supremacy, homophobia, and transpbobia continue to antagonize queer and gender-expansive Appalachians, especially Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. These realities have adversely affected queer and trans folks' willingness—and even ability—to comfortably claim their rightful places within the region.
 
To Belong Here delves into how queer, trans, and two-spirit Appalachian people demand, deny, or make sense of their relationships to belonging in the mountains. Featuring a roster of authors whose identities across race, gender, and class make for a uniquely intersectional look at the area, this collection of poems and essays attempts to provide a more nuanced understanding of Appalachia and what it means to represent it. Themes of environmentalism, violence, kinship, racism, Indigeneity, queer love, and trans liberation course through the volume and exemplify the writers' resilience in reconciling their complex, often contradictory, connections to home.

Through a collective exploration of rejection and acceptance, To Belong Here calls for a more inclusive future in Appalachia—one where everyone can thrive.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781985901841
Publisher:	University Press of Kentucky
Publication date:	04/01/2025
Series:	Appalachian Futures: Black, Native, and Queer Voices
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144

About the Author

Rae Garringer is a writer, oral historian, and audio producer living on S'atsoyaha (Yuchi) and Šaawanwaki (Shawnee) lands in southeastern West Virginia where they were raised. They are the founder of the multimedia oral history project and podcast Country Queers, and the author and editor of Country Queers: A Love Letter.

Rae Garringer is a writer, oral historian, and audio producer living on S’atsoyaha (Yuchi) and Šaawanwaki (Shawnee) lands in southeastern West Virginia where they were raised. They are the founder of the multimedia oral history project and podcast Country Queers, and the author and editor of Country Queers: A Love Letter.

Table of Contents

Foreword, by Carter Sickels
Preface, by Rae Garringer
Sanctuary, by Joy Cedar
What You Should Know Before You Kill Me, by Brandon Sun Eagle Jent
They Say All Kinds Are Welcome Here, by Rayna Momen
Where Are You From?, by Lucien Darjeun Meadows
School Eraser, by Joy Cedar
Volver, Volver, by hermelinda cortés
Growing Up Black in Appalachia, by Rayna Momen
To Repel Ghosts, by Joseph Tolbert Jr.
Copperhead, by Joy Cedar
Proximity, by Rae Garringer
Circles/Dances, by Brandon Sun Eagle Jent
Dear West Virginia, by Rayna Momen
What Anchors You Here, by Jai Arun Ravine
Kentucky Waltz, by Brandon Sun Eagle Jent
A Queer Place Called Home, by G. Samantha Rosenthal
An Inheritance, by L.E. Atkins
4 lil poems for 4 big feelins, by Pumpkin Starr
Prayers to a Greater Belonging, by D. Stump
this world loves me too, by Brandon Sun Eagle Jent
Acknowledgments
Contributors

Editorial Reviews

A vital, provocative look at the gender expansiveness and the racialized experiences of BIPOC Appalachians in rural landscapes. This collection answers 'What is home? Who belongs here?' with a resounding song: all of us. Appalachia is not a monolith; this collection reminds us that even expats are not in exile, but can return home, can belong.

Carrying the Bones: Rituals for a Dying World - Eileen Elizabeth Espinoza

A superb and necessary collection. Imagine the suffering and suicide and drug abuse that might have been avoided had such a collection been available in the 1960s. I do imagine it. The movement from there to here enables me to keep faith.

At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life - Fenton Johnson