How places make us: novel LBQ identities in four small cities

We like to think of ourselves as possessing an essential self, a core identity that is who we really are, regardless of where we live, work, or play.

But places actually make us much more than we might think, argues Japonica Brown-Saracino in this novel ethnographic study of lesbian, bisexual, and queer individuals in four small cities across the United States.

Taking us into communities in Ithaca, New York; San Luis Obispo, California; Greenfield, Massachusetts; and Portland, Maine; Brown-Saracino shows how LBQ migrants craft a unique sense of self that corresponds to their new homes.

This title demonstrates that sexual identities are responsive to city ecology.