Ok this one wins.  Turns out the most homophobic city in America is my favorite.

So I might have just sent a fan letter to this author.

I mean it is her first novel, and it is officially my favorite book that I have reviewed so far, but even if it weren’t her first novel, I would have sent it anyway.  It is one of my foundational beliefs that people don’t get complimented enough. I mean it’s not like I got drunk at an Amy Ray concert and wrote a sloppy note on a napkin about how her music had changed my life since my brother first gave me an Indigo Girls cassette tape in 1988 and then begged my friend who is her friend to give it to her at the Star Bar.  (Oh, well, yeah, I did, but that’s just a standard right of passage for my people.)

Under the Rainbow is set in Big Burr, Kansas, a fictional town that becomes labeled as the “Most homophobic town in the US” by a national nonprofit.  A large LGBTQI organization with money decides to send part of their task force called “Acceptance Across America” (AAA) to live there for two years and to try to make change in the town through bill boards, listening circles, town hall meetings and other events. 

There are twelve chapters in this book that are told by a different narrator each time (except for the last chapter where one of the characters reappears to narrate the conclusion).  At first, I have to say, I was irritated because the character and narrative voice in the first chapter (like in all of them) was so compelling, believable and intriguing that I was pissed that I wasn’t going to hear from her again.  It turns out the characters do show up as mentions in other people’s narrations so you can find out what is going on with them, and all of the characters are so well written you stop being pissed off about one leaving because you are too interested in the next one that has arrived.   The really outstanding thing about the book is that four of the narrators came to Big Burr from other parts of the country as part of Acceptance Across America (one as the daughter of an employee) and the other seven narrators are all from Big Burr.  This is so amazing to me because it turns this whole notion that there are big city queer people and there are small town straight people right on its head which is so well done.  These groups aren’t separate.  The daughter of one of the AAA people is heterosexual and doesn’t want her mom to know.   A married man finds the courage to accept his gayness after decades, but the merging of the worlds and the blending of the lines doesn’t stop with these more often told story lines.  There is a gender queer person who addresses their own loneliness and need for connection by visiting an elder in a nursing home.  This chapter is actually one of my favorites.  Anyone who has struggled with calling an individual “they” or understanding non binaryness should read Elsie’s (the lady in the nursing home’s) take on it.  It is so well done and heartening.  Lizzie is the married, heterosexual manager of a beef packing plant who doesn’t want to get pregnant.  She is one of several characters who reaches out to people in AAA in order to receive the queer people’s understanding about their non normative ways.  I just love this so much about the novel. 

It takes this idea that there are some of us who are different and therefore need to be tolerated, accepted and understood, and turns it on its head….positing instead that everyone struggles with the strictures of societal normativity and that many, if not most people suffer from it….so it instead looks with empathy on people’s struggles from all walks of life.  This book is such an outstanding example of how LGBTQI liberation is good for everyone.    I’m not going to say too much more about the book because I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment of discovering these characters for yourself.  Order the book from Charis Books and More,one of the south’s last remaining feminist bookstores.  https://www.charisbooksandmore.com/search/site/celia%20laskey

With any luck, Covid will end and Celia Laskey will come to the bookstore to do a reading and I will write some mushy note on a napkin with eyeliner about how she inspired me to finish writing my stuff.  I’m sure I wouldn’t make it weird, right, Amy?