Mims, La Shonda

OUR SYNOPSIS: La Shonda Mims “introduces the lesbian voice to southern urban history by ushering in new southern women, exposing different New South experiences, and queering the southern historical landscape.” (2) Focusing on the two cities of Atlanta and Charlotte, she shows how “specific women who sometimes identified as lesbians, or who engaged other women sexually, or who loved other women, or who sought the company of women in queer venues” shaped southern urban spaces. (8-9) Relying on oral histories and other sources, she foregrounds sexuality, race, and complex identity formation in and between these rival cities from the 1940s into the twenty-first century. Her piecing together of mid-century letters and literary analysis with recollections illuminates histories of southern white lesbian living in the period before substantial lesbian visibility. Much of southern lesbian public expression in the 1950s and 1960s took place in queer bars and diners. While white lesbians carved out these public spaces, segregation often led Black lesbians to host private house parties instead. In the 1970s and 1980s, queer communities in Atlanta and Charlotte built visibility through publications, Pride events, and lesbian feminist organizing. In the late twentieth century and into twenty-first, mainstream public institutions in both cities became contested terrain for navigating queer identities.