Reclaiming The Heartland: Lesbian and Gay Voices from the Midwest

Reclaiming the Heartland: Lesbian and Gay Voices from the Midwest. Eds., Karen Lee Osborne and William J. Spurlin. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. xxv + 227 pages. $18.95. Contesting the notion that queer culture resides primarily in urban coastal areas, the editors of this multigenre, multicultural anthology locate the Midwest as a "significant vantage point" for the creation of queer culture. Karen Lee Osborne and William J. Spurlin collect the short fiction, poetry, drama, memoir, essays and photographic work from lesbians and gay men who live or have spent a significant portion of their lives in areas not always assumed to be hot beds of queer activity, such as Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Illinois, Nebraska, and Kansas. To their credit, Osborne and Spurlin's choices of the approximately sixty pieces collected in this volume create an overall fluid narrative of the multiple facets contributing to queer identities, as regards issues of color, class, age, differing expressions of eroticism and desire, locations, and styles. The anthology is structured into five sections which work well as a framing device. The pieces included in Part I, "`When You Were Young': Growing Up in the Midwest" begin the volume with reflections on growing up in the Midwest, developing a queer consciousness, and connecting midwestern landscapes to the psyche and the body. The opening piece, Jess Wells's short story, "Luke Giovanni's Canoe," is a wonderful example of the ways in which the Midwest as a location is incorporated metaphorically in many of the pieces in the volume. Wells explores her relationship with her father as his mental health begins to deteriorate along with his deeply rooted connection to the lake on which they live and in which he eventually drowns. Using natural images common to the Midwest as a geographical space, Wells weaves metaphors of ice cracking and separating to capture the fragmentation and instability of her father's mental health. In this section, several of the writers work with notions of the development of a queer consciousness and a recognition of "Otherness" as part of the process of growing up. For example, in the short story, "Swimming Lessons," Greg Shapiro traces a young boy's awakening to homosexual desire in the context of a public pool setting in which his fears of learning how to swim are woven together with his awakening to homosexual yearnings for the males he counters in that setting. The pieces selected for Part II, "`Lake Michigan Sunrise': The Midwest as Place," work well in blending the geography of the Midwest as tied to queer desire and eroticism, and the Midwest as a backdrop for queer experiences. For example, in Jim Elledge's beautiful poem, "Salt into Wounds," he uses his reference to the expansive "prairie's summer sky," to reflect the long lasting impact of the pain of losing one's lover. Poignantly, several of the pieces collected in the volume are from the late Terri L. Jewell, an African American lesbian poet well known and respected in lesbian cultural and literary spaces. Her poem "Bad Ass" captures the sensuousness found in her poetry, as she explores the black lesbian body through a portrayal of landscape imagery, "My sweat carves out valleys, wells like sweet water at the edge of my spine. I am black as boxcars bringing oils from Tuinisia, lovers curled hot into earth creased over from your momma's dreamworld." The Midwest functions as a backdrop in several of these pieces for the exploration of queer experiences. D. Travers Scott's, "Digestion," is a neatly crafted short story of dialogue that simultaneously offers humor, depth, and an examination of such politically loaded issues as men and monogamy, straight men who fuck gay men, safe sex, and interracial relationships to name just a few. In a brief space, Scott deftly crafts three dimensional characters who offer differing perspectives on some very intense issues as they sit and eat brunch together. …