C&W for the Rest of Us
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QUEER COUNTRY
by Shana Goldin-Perschbacher
University of Illinois Press. 288 pages, $24.95

USUALLY when one thinks about country music, what comes to mind is rural life or small-town America: cowboy hats and boots, beat-up pick-up trucks, God and country, conservative politics, heartbreak hotels, and honkytonks. What the world of country music is not known for is inclusive-ness of people (the urban, the nonwhite, the gay) who don’t possess these traits. In Queer Country, author Shana Goldin-Perschbacher, assistant professor of music studies at Temple University, discusses how this perception of intolerance has often made LGBT country-and-western fans feel unwelcome in the C&W scene (at least until recently).

            That said,

 Terri Schlichenmeyer is a freelance writer based in Wisconsin.