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Book Review of Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest

Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest
reviewed on + 55 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2


It's not about being gay, or living on a farm, or growing up in rural areas where your entire life is centered on a small representation of what is available. It's about identity, about what molds some people into the individuals they become. The stories run the gamut from simple and uplifting, to long and angry, representing factions within the gay community without being held back by the knowledge that it's a faction of its own. It's next to impossible not to be moved by them, and even harder not to reach a keener insight into American rural culture throughout the twentieth century. The ambling nature of the prose is a superb reflection of not only the older generations represented within the interviews, but of the environment within which they were raised.