Country Queers: A Love Letter & Nightswimmer

By Vaughn Frantz Miller

Country Queers: A Love Letter  
by Rae Garringer
Most of us within the LGBTQ community prefer the city life. It is not a new trend; it has been noted since the Industrial Revolution. City life makes sense, if for no other reason than that there are more people in cities so the likelihood of finding someone with similar experiences and attractions is much higher. We choose to live in a city for many reasons beyond dating—I know I do. 

Juxtaposed to the majority who live in urban areas is the acknowledgment that many of our community, in past and present, choose to live in the countryside. It is impossible for members of our community not to occupy rural areas when same sex/gender attraction occurs in a minimum 10% of the general population. Documented stories of LGBTQ country people has been discovered as far back as the late 1800s. Even in the present day, evidence of LGBTQ country folk is much harder to find. 

Country Queers: A Love Letter is an anthology of interviews collected from LGBTQ people living across rural America. Gathering interviews by Rae Garringer (they/them) from 2013-2023, the book is almost as diverse as our community, having interviews with people as old as 82 and as young as 19, from California to North Carolina. 

One woman talks about how she kept her lesbian farm safe with firearms. A man speaks some on his history of coming out, then focuses on his passion for environmentalism. A trans woman shares the story of her alpaca farm. This book also provides a glimpse into Garringer’s approach to the interviews, what made them start interviewing people, and how they chose to change their approach to interviewing over time. They were upfront that the biggest drive to create this project was the lack of known stories that LGBTQ country people have. 

“You’re shouldering the burden of writing a small part of our history. This will be around when we are long gone.” 

Reading this book felt like navigating my community in real-life group settings: some parts I enjoyed, some parts I learned from, and some I rolled my eyes at. I personally would have preferred more interviews from LGBTQ country people and less retelling of Garringer’s emotional throes to make this project a reality. I also found it odd that that the book had many pictures of drag queens who were not interviewed or discussed; it felt like a way to add representation that barely existed in the interviews. Regardless, I am glad I read the book and I think you will enjoy it too. Country Queers: A Love Letter is an important opportunity to catch a glimpse of parts of our community we do not know and may never meet. We are all members of this community and we deserve every opportunity to witness the many colors of joy, love, and even hardships which make us who we are. Country Queers: A Love Letter is available to borrow from multiple San Diego Public Library Locations.

Nightswimmer 
by Josh Olshan
Navigating love in 1990’s New York City was no easy feat and readers can get a firsthand look at such trials through the eyes of self-involved Will Kaplan in Josh Olshan’s Nightswimmer. In this novella, Will struggles balancing relationships with an ex-partner (they have split custody of the dog), an off/on lover, a magnetizing new man with similar heartbreak to himself, and the lingering hurt of a charismatic lover who disappeared in the middle of the night 10 years before, dramatically referred to throughout half the book as “him.” 

“We were suffering the same affliction: that a part of ourselves had been torn out, stitched to some stranger’s heart and gone molten in the heat of other loves.”

The book mainly follows the development of Will’s relationship with the famous heartbreaker, Sean Paris. If you are someone who enjoys a bit of an erotic drama, you will probably like this book. Will makes many dramatic assumptions about the weight of his person on the decisions the men in his life make, all the while biting onto the worst version of the stories he is given. He allows himself to be torn asunder by the possibilities of lovers he does not fully know. He takes himself quite seriously, but that does not mean you have to.

While I don’t think I will ever pick up this book again, I do not regret reading it. Nightswimmer is available to borrow from multiple San Diego Public Library locations.