Queer Appalachia: Where we Belong
Written by Holly Williams
During my fourth semester at Berea College, I had the pleasure of being in Bobby Starnes’ Appalachian Studies class called: Contemporary Issues in Appalachia. Our class began a campaign called the Appalachian Awareness Campaign to combat harmful stereotypes of the Appalachian people. When coming up with what we wanted to accomplish by the end of the semester, my mind went straight to having speakers from Pikeville Pride come to Berea and talk to students about Queer Appalachia. This essay is the revised introductory speech I gave to present our guests, Cara Ellis from Pikeville Pride and Elizabeth Banks from MoreLove and YouDeserveLLC. My story gives context as to why I wanted this event to happen so badly.
My name is Holly Williams. I am from Eastern Kentucky. Paintsville to be exact. I grew up in a single wide trailer in a holler with my sister and my parents. I’d go to my grandparent’s house, just a 3-minute drive away, and have fried apples and gravy & biscuits for breakfast and vegetable soup and cornbread for dinner. Dessert consisted of my Mamaw Ruth’s red velvet cake recipe with the red velvet cake icing. No, not cream cheese icing. Red velvet cake icing. My Granddaddy would show me his multiple binders showcasing my paternal family tree all the way back to the Nineteenth century, including names and birth dates. All of them were Appalachian. The downside was how the older the photo was, the more it creeped me out. When I'd stay at their house and sleep in my Grandmother's bed with her and my sister, she would always read the bible. Not necessarily to us, but to herself.
My Appalachian heritage consists of food, family, and just a dash of Christianity.
I have never been to a real church service. However, I did go to my local Vacation Bible School for one week each summer until I was in 6th grade, getting ready to go to middle school. So I’ve seen religion. I had a taste. It just wasn’t my thing.
That fact didn’t stop me from being scared to go to hell.
When I got older, I started discovering myself. I'd do the classic queer tween with unrestricted internet access thing and look up “girls kissing” on YouTube. I'd also watch queer short films that never failed to made me cry. I figured I was pansexual, but the label I would identify more with later would be bisexual. I was terrified. I had seen all the hate online for queer identities. That Vacation Bible School that I attended each summer didn’t seem very nice anymore. In fact, the pastor, who had spoken at my Granddaddy’s funeral two years prior, was telling a church full of children ages ranging 4-17 that we will be told by everyone around us being gay is fine, but we should know that those people were very, very wrong. That was the closing night. And each closing night, every year, the pastor would open the floor up for people to come bow to the step and pray for forgiveness. I prayed for forgiveness that night.
During that same summer I asked for forgiveness when I went to my first ever concert. It was a Twenty One Pilots concert in Columbus, Ohio. As soon as we reached the Nationwide Arena, and my whole family can attest to this, I said “this is my home” in a bustling city with queer people all over. No mountains, no accents, no comfort food, no family.
But it did have “acceptance.”
I'd say that about any city I would go to after that. “This city is my new home”, I'd say, because queer people were out and proud. I thought I would have to go somewhere else when I was older, somewhere out of Appalachia, to be truly seen for my identity.
Now I know that simply isn’t true.
I was scared to come out to my family. I had heard all the stories about queer kids from small Appalachian towns being kicked out. I came out to my sister first since I knew she would be cool with it. I mean, she watched “Larry Stylinson proof” videos when she was my age, how could she hate me?
I then came out to my dad. It was after a fight I had with my then girlfriend, and he had no idea why I was so upset. I just finally had to tell him on the way home. I was crying, but he held my hand the rest of the way and hugged me when we got out of the car.
I told my mom last. She said she figured and told me that my half-brother, 15 years older than me and who I hadn’t seen in a long time, was also gay. 13-year-old me was baffled. Here I was, worrying myself to death about coming out when my own brother was gay himself. Though I should’ve known since we somehow liked the same exact things 15 years apart. My queer people love My Chemical Romance and The Sims franchise.
My brother, however, did leave. He went to Chicago and is still there to this day. He had that same thought as I did as a teenager. He’s heard all the stereotypes I have:
“Queer people don’t belong in Appalachia!”
“No one will accept you here!“
“All the Appalachian people are ignorant hillbillies who vote for Trump, are homophobic, transphobic, racist, and misogynistic!”
I, however, have since seen through those untrue stereotypes. My sister, parents, and Grandmother have always voted blue. My Grandmother wants abortion rights. My mother constantly argues with ignorant people online who, guess what, aren’t from Appalachia. My sister took me to my first pride event at Pikeville Pride. Ironically, it was Pikeville’s first pride as well. She then took me to my second pride event, a Drag Brunch in Huntington, West Virginia, and then a third pride event at Pikeville Pride with my boyfriend, who is also queer. My dad is even coming out of his own shell and quietly expresses his own beliefs to our conservative family on the outside. That is something I think he learned from me.
My own family defies the stereotypes. So why in the world would I leave such a beautiful, rich place where my family resides to a city with less nature, no ancestry, and probably a similar amount of conservatives that I'd encounter in my real home of Appalachia?
Some people still can’t see this beauty in Appalachia. They’re plagued by these horrible stereotypes in media and real life. My personal opinion is the quiet minority should be the louder minority. That louder minority is the multiple organizations like Pikeville Pride, MoreLove, Queer Kentucky, etc. who are bravely on the frontlines of the cause. It’s beautiful to be part of queer Appalachia, and we belong exactly where we are.