Feminist and Queer Approaches to Rural America: Thinking with "Bad Subjects"

AS I WRITE THIS REVIEW IN THE SPRING OF 2024, White Rural Rage: The Threat toAmerican Democracy by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman hovers amid the top ten books on the New York Times bestseller list. While the subject of White Rural Rage is rather unremarkable- an entire post-2016 industry has emerged in which political scientists, sociologists, and journalists purport to capture who rural Americans are and what they are thinking-what is striking about Schaller and Waldman's text is its especially vitriolic, damning portrayal of nonurban Americans.1 While the authors contend that the book is "not intended to be mere polemic or a broadside critique of rural Americans,' Schaller and Waldman describe people living outside of cities as resentful, afraid, hateful, dangerously conspiratorial, and a violent threat to the United States.2 BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ESSAY Peculiar Places: A Queer Crip History of White Rural Nonconformity. Ryan Lee Cartwright. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021. Visibility Interrupted: Rural Queer Life and the Politics of Unbecoming. Carly Thomsen. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2021. Queering the Midwest: Forging LGBTQ Community. Clare Forstie. New York: New York University Press, 2022.