Abstract
The concept of city-specific sexual identities and the idea of how cities shape us frame the basis for this sociological ethnography. Through lived experiences, observations, and interviews with approximately 170 individuals in four different cities, Brown-Saracino explores how lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ) women’s experiences and identities are shaped by city-specific nuances. While Ithaca, NY; San Luis Obispo, CA; Portland, ME; and Greenfield, MA are similar in many ways, including being predominantly white, small college towns, and generally politically progressive, Brown-Saracino explores how each possesses a distinctive sexual identity culture. The author argues that place and locale matter in shaping the sexual identities of LBQ individuals who live there.
The book consists of five chapters and a conclusion with implications for future exploration. The first four chapters offer insight into the individual cities and stories of LBQ migrant transformation, while the fifth chapter synthesizes the thesis of how places make us. A methodological appendix following the chapters offers the painstaking details involved in ethnographic data collection and analysis. Themes in the first four chapters include narratives of unique LBQ identities in each city, while each subsequent chapter additionally includes contrast and comparison to prior chapters. The fifth and final chapter explores LBQ culture through three dimensions of city ecology and how those play out differently across cities.
Brown-Saracino claims that beyond sexual identity, other demographics such as race, socioeconomic class, or age/generation “cannot account for the existence of distinctive identity cultures” (p. 197). Furthermore, while demographic information of some of the interviewed individuals was changed to ensure confidentiality, the exclusion of such information from the majority of stories leaves more questions than answers. Historically, the exclusion of intersectional identities from feminist stories has privileged white cisgender women and left out the important stories of women of color and multiple other complexities of LBQ identities. Brown-Saracino, however, argues that individual identities are what change and transform from city to city.
In consideration for the classroom, this book is appropriate for a graduate course exploring sexual identity and place; the book itself covers the central phenomenon representing predominantly white LBQ women and could compliment other books with a more disaggregated data approach. Readers are offered a unique view into the four cities and may be left with curiosity and critical attention of their own city and locale. The book also offers a critical analysis on the interplay of place with identity and provides a framework for students to use while exploring their own locale and city ecology. Finally, the book offers a refreshing response to the dismal critique that LBQ places are dying out, such as bars and clubs, those that are thought to be cornerstones symbolic of queer identity in cities. By contrast, readers are presented with multiple contemporary facets and places and aspects of those cities that offer space and opportunity for LBQ identity transformation.
