The Un-Natural State
Arkansas and the Queer South

Brock Thompson (Author)

9781682262740

Paperback / softback, published 3 February 2025

264 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.34 kg

&ldquo In The Un-Natural State readers learn a great deal about the history of queer Arkansas. Thompson does an admirable job of linking contradictory discourses around gender, sexuality, class, and race to show how they affected the emergence of a queer community across the state. &hellip what Thompson gives us with The Un-Natural State is a bird&rsquo s eye view of the queer South in all its contrariness, complexity, and irreverence.&rdquo
&mdash E. Patrick Johnson, Teachers College Record, July 2 &ldquo Thompson&rsquo s book is a readable, informative, and thoroughly researched addition to scholarship about LGBT life in the South.&rdquo
&mdash Jeff Mann, Appalachian Journal, Fall 2 / Winter 2 2 &ldquo Unlike most queer histories, this book is notable for its discussion of lesbians alongside gay men and drag. Thompson&rsquo s innovative use of oral histories, newsletters and newspapers, and court, prison, and legislative records reveals a rich narrative that traditional historical methods would never have uncovered. &hellip Thompson&rsquo s book is of vital importance for all historians and queer scholars alike.&rdquo
&mdash Michael P. Bibler, Journal of American History, September 2 &ldquo In this book Brock Thompson mixes personal family history with a study of the construction of rural queer spaces to provide an innovative look at Arkansas and the South more generally.&rdquo
&mdash David K. Johnson, Journal of Southern History, Nov. 2 2 &ldquo The Un-Natural State successfully demonstrates the malleability of sexual boundaries in postwar Arkansas. By using the broader term queer, Thompson offers several portraits of sexual transgression that were visible and, at times, encouraged by the mainstream. &hellip A must-read for anyone interested in the history of southern culture and sexuality.&rdquo
&mdash David B. McRae, Southern Historian, May 2 2 &ldquo Ultimately, what Thompson&rsquo s book establishes most persuasively is the fact that Arkansas is not, and never has been, New York, San Francisco, or any of the other gay metropolises about which historians of queer life in the United States have taught us so much. And that is precisely why we should all be queuing up to buy a copy and read it.&rdquo
&mdash American Historical Review, Feb. 2 2 &ldquo There is no doubt that Thompson has written a ground-breaking work. &hellip The Un-Natural State may be the most important recent study of the state&rsquo s past.&rdquo
&mdash Joseph P. Key, Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Autumn 2 &ldquo Brock Thompson not only adds Arkansas to the list of places with a fascinating queer history but also contributes to our understanding of gay and lesbian history in the South and in rural communities more generally.&rdquo
&mdash Leila Rupp, author of A Desired Past: A Short History of Same-Sex Love in America

The Un-Natural State is a one-of-a-kind study of gay and lesbian life in Arkansas in the twentieth century, a deft weaving together of Arkansas history, dozens of oral histories, and Brock Thompson's own story. Thompson analyzes the meaning of rural drag shows, including a compelling description of a 1960s seasonal beauty pageant in Wilson, Arkansas, where white men in drag shared the stage with other white men in blackface, a suggestive mingling that went to the core of both racial transgression and sexual disobedience. These small town entertainments put on in churches and schools emerged decades later in gay bars across the state as a lucrative business practice and a larger means of community expression, while in the same period the state's sodomy law was rewritten to condemn sexual acts between those of the same sex in language similar to what was once used to denounce interracial sex. Thompson goes on to describe several lesbian communities established in the Ozark Mountains during the sixties and seventies and offers a substantial account of Eureka Springs's informal status as the "gay capital of the Ozarks." Through this exploration of identity formation, group articulation, political mobilization, and cultural visibility within the context of historical episodes such as the Second World War, the civil rights movement, and the AIDS epidemic, The Un-Natural State contributes not only to our understanding of gay and lesbian history but also to our understanding of the South.