How Places Make Us: Novel LBQ Identities in Four Small Cities

Description

We like to think of ourselves as possessing an essential self, a core identity that is who we really are, regardless of where we live, work, or play. But places actually make us much more than we might think, argues Japonica Brown-Saracino in this novel ethnographic study of lesbian, bisexual, and queer individuals in four small cities across the United States. Taking us into communities in Ithaca, New York; San Luis Obispo, California; Greenfield, Massachusetts; and Portland, Maine; Brown-Saracino shows how LBQ migrants craft a unique sense of self that corresponds to their new homes. How Places Make Us demonstrates that sexual identities are responsive to city ecology. Despite the fact that the LBQ residents share many demographic and cultural traits, their approaches to sexual identity politics and to ties with other LBQ individuals and heterosexual residents vary markedly by where they live. Subtly distinct local ecologies shape what it feels like to be a sexual minority, including the degree to which one feels accepted, how many other LBQ individuals one encounters in daily life, and how often a city declares its embrace of difference. In short, city ecology shapes how one “does” LBQ in a specific place. Ultimately, Brown-Saracino shows that there isn’t one general way of approaching sexual identity because humans are not only social but fundamentally local creatures. Even in a globalized world, the most personal of questions—who am I?—is in fact answered collectively by the city in which we live. Contents......Page 8 Introduction......Page 10 One / Ithaca: Integration and Post-Identity Politics......Page 30 Two / San Luis Obispo: Lesbian Identity Politics and Community......Page 70 Three / Portland: Hybrid and Hyphenated Identity Politics......Page 112 Four / Greenfield: Lesbian Feminist Longtimers and Post-Identity-Politics Newcomers......Page 162 Five / How Places Make Us......Page 206 Conclusion......Page 242 Acknowledgments......Page 258 Methodological Appendix......Page 262 Notes......Page 276 References......Page 306 Index......Page 328