The voices of Central Pennsylvania’s LGBT community will be amplified in a new book exploring the region’s LGBT history.
Contracts were signed last week for the tentatively named “Out in the Hinterland: Creating a LGBT Community in Rural Pennsylvania,” being published by Penn State Press. Philadelphia-based author and historian William Burton is writing the book, working with Barry Loveland, chair of the LGBT Center of Central Pennsylvania’s History Project, who is serving as researcher and editor.
The project grew out of serendipitous circumstances.
Burton happened upon information about Loveland’s History Project and contacted him to volunteer his services as a researcher. The pair met and Burton started reviewing the 50 oral histories Loveland had collected from LGBT Central Pennsylvania residents.
“I said, ‘Wow, this would make a great book, these stories of what people went through,’” Burton recalled. “The only problem is I would need a publisher.”
That problem was addressed just a week later.
Loveland received an email from the acquisitions editor at Penn State Press who had seen an article he wrote for Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine about the History Project.
“It was actually something I had written about a year before she emailed me, but it popped up in her inbox and she read it and thought it sounded like an interesting project,” Loveland described. “She contacted me and said, ‘I think there might be a book here,’ and I said, ‘As a matter of fact, I think there is.’”
The conversations continued and Loveland and Burton developed a proposal for the project, which was ultimately accepted by Penn State Press.
Since the initial idea, more than 50 more oral histories have been conducted for the History Project.
“We looked at what were the most important stories, who are the people we should be talking about and we narrowed it down that way,” Burton said about determining the book’s focus. “We couldn’t feature all 107 people, so we identified what were the most important things that happened in each decade, the most important groups and how that shaped the story.”
The chapters will be presented chronologically, starting around the 1950s up through the present.
The book will present information on a range of areas, including Harrisburg, York, Lancaster, State College, Williamsport and beyond.
In addition to drawing on the oral histories, there will be information weaved in from independent research, including from the History Project’s other initiatives.
“We have 70 linear feet of archival materials: artifacts, documents, photos, etc.,” Loveland explained. “So we’ve been able to draw on the archival collection in doing our research for the book, as well as research in newspapers, records and archives from around the Central Pennsylvania area. We’ve just found some extraordinary stories. It’s rewarding to be able to not only find and discover these stories, but now to be able to tell them.”
While previous books have traced LGBT history, including in rural communities, “Out in the Hinterland” will take a unique approach to the topic.
“What makes this book so different is that it’s about how an LGBT community develops in a rural area, how those social networks form,” Burton said. “Gay life has largely been centered in large cities — New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles. It was easier to form a gay community in those areas, but it’s more difficult in a rural area where there aren’t neighborhoods, there aren’t usually progressive attitudes, especially in Pennsylvania, where there still aren’t anti-discrimination laws. So how this community came together against all odds is really quite remarkable. This is the story of those people that made it happen, those unsung heroes.”
Loveland and Burton envision a number of target audiences for the book, including students of American history, queer studies and gender studies, as well as locals interested in the state’s LGBT history.
“I went back to school later in life to get my master’s and was amazed at younger gay students at UMass who weren’t familiar with gay history in general,” Burton noted. “So many students didn’t know their own gay history, so I think it’s important that we continue to write about gay history, both urban and rural. It’s all part of our history.”
The manuscript is about half-written, and the pair is slated to turn in the finished product before the end of this year; the book is expected to be released in late 2018 or early 2019.
For more information about the LGBT Center of Central PA’s LGBT History Project, visit www.centralpalgbtcenter.org/lgbt-history-project.