The Un-Natural State

About

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 1930s 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.

Author

Brock Thompson received his PhD in American studies at King’s College, University of London. A native Arkansan, he now lives in Washington, DC, and works at the Library of Congress.

Reviews

“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. … what Thompson gives us with The Un-Natural State is a bird’s eye view of the queer South in all its contrariness, complexity, and irreverence.”
—E. Patrick Johnson, Teachers College Record, July 2011

“Thompson’s book is a readable, informative, and thoroughly researched addition to scholarship about LGBT life in the South.”
—Jeff Mann, Appalachian Journal, Fall 2011 / Winter 2012

“Unlike most queer histories, this book is notable for its discussion of lesbians alongside gay men and drag. Thompson’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. … Thompson’s book is of vital importance for all historians and queer scholars alike.”
—Michael P. Bibler, Journal of American History, September 2011

“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.”
—David K. Johnson, Journal of Southern History, Nov. 2012

“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. … A must-read for anyone interested in the history of southern culture and sexuality.”
—David B. McRae, Southern Historian, May 2012

“Ultimately, what Thompson’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.”
—American Historical Review, Feb. 2012

“There is no doubt that Thompson has written a ground-breaking work. … The Un-Natural State may be the most important recent study of the state’s past.”
—Joseph P. Key, Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Autumn 2011

Praise

“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.”
—Leila Rupp, author of A Desired Past: A Short History of Same-Sex Love in America

“A valuable and unique contribution to the history of sexuality as well as to cultural and historical studies of the American South.”
—Pippa Holloway, author of Sexuality, Politics, and Social Control in Virginia, 1920–1945

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Outing Opal, Outing Arkansas

PART ONE – The Diamond State
1. Powder-Puff
2. Drag and the Politics of Performance
3. Drag in the Daylight
4. Rags to Drag Riches
5. The Current Reigning Symbol of Excellence

PART TWO – The Natural State
6. A Crime Unfit to Be Named
7. The Ingredients of Offense
8. Race, Sex, and Queer Renegotiated
9. Redefinition
10. Public and Private Prejudice
11. Constructing a Gay Life

PART THREE – The Land of Opportunity
12. Creating Space, Separating the Self
13. Losing Space, Separating Identities
14. Mansion on the Hill
15. Economic Opportunity and the Queer Community
16. And Then She Came

Epilogue: Queer Comes Home
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Adoption

Adopted at: University of Arkansas
Course: GNST 3103 The Queer US South
Course Description: Presents queer perspectives on the U.S. South. Focuses on autobiographical, historical, and critical-qualitative analyses that attest to the innovative or inventive ways LGBTQ+ communities have survived and thrived in southern areas often deemed antithetical to a liberatory gender/sexual political agenda.
Professor: Arley Ward
Term: Spring 2023

Adopted at: University of Central Arkansas
Course: HIST 4307 Queer History of the United States
Course Description: By “queering” US History, from late pre-contact to the present, the course presents American History from a different perspective that asks how queer folks contributed to the development of the US and American identities and how hegemonic American culture was influenced by queer folks that were simultaneously marginalized by that culture. We will examine how individual, collective, and national identities form and the roles that space and place play in the formation of queer identities in the US over time. Lecture, discussion, presentation, document analysis, writing.
Professor: Hillary Anderson
Term: Spring 2023