Heartland: A Queer Youth Collective arose from chats we had about growing up queer at the turn of the 21st century. This project began as a series of conversations between us about how coming of age as a queer person in the Midwest felt like a distinct experience, set apart from the politics and culture of queerness on the coasts. Although we’re from two different areas of the Midwestern United States, we found in these discussions a lot of parallels between our experiences. As we watched the battle for gay marriage on the coasts and read about San Francisco Pride, these notions of queer culture seemed so far away. We came to realize that queer histories often leave out large swaths of the country. We conceived of this project in hopes of understanding what distinguishes queerness in the Midwest and what community looked like for young LGBTQ folks in the Heartland.
[he/him/his]
ckohs@email.arizona.edu
I grew up right at the edge of Saint Paul, Minnesota, just off Highway 36. My queer community–my whole queer world–was achingly small, but it was fierce. As a Catholic family, queerness wasn’t something we really acknowledged, even though no one in my family was outwardly homophobic. My first experiences with other people like me weren’t until middle school, when I joined the nearby larger middle school’s Gay-Straight Alliance with my only other openly queer friend after school. It was amazing how much more than me these kids knew. Through them, I found anti-prom, youth-friendly gay bars, drag shows, Pride, and community activism; a world that I had limited access to until later, but spent much of my time daydreaming about.
I am currently a graduate student and writing teacher at the University of Arizona, where I met Kelli. My interests led me to researching space and place, and particularly how queer people move and represent themselves in the world at large. My hopes for this collective are to shine light on the places that made me feel whole, that offered me a vision of my life that was so much brighter than I could imagine on my own.
[any pronouns are fine]
kellilycke@email.arizona.edu
I grew up in and around Kansas City, Missouri in a surprisingly thriving queer community. Although I went to school in a small town about an hour from the city, my friends and I would drive into Kansas City every Friday night for queer club night at Passages, a non-profit devoted to creating a space for queer youth. We smoked our cigarettes and watched our friends perform drag, and we prayed our parents didn’t find out where we were. During the week, we kept our head down at school, though eventually, I dropped out–it’s hard to be one of the only ‘out’ gay kids in a town with less than 4,000 people.
Today, I am a graduate student and teacher at the University of Arizona. My research interests revolve around collective memory within communities, and film’s ability to capture & create memory. I hope this collective helps to create a kind of queer memory, but one that honors the more joyful vision of growing up.