Tag: excerpts

When Sabrina Orah Mark began to delve into the world of fairy tales, it was Geppetto—who carves his own son from a block of wood—whom she connected with most. “Pinocchio lies to him, steals from him, runs away from him, comes back, saves him, and breaks his heart,” Mark says. It’s a tale as old as time: The things that we create—that lie to us, steal from us, and break our hearts—might be the things that save us in the end.

Samantha Allen, a transgender senior reporter for the Daily Beast covering LGBT issues, has a new book, Real Queer America, where she takes a six-week road trip through multiple red states, showing that red states are full of people who care about equality and LGBT rights. Here, an excerpt from her book and a Q&A about the state of LGBTQ culture in Atlanta and America.

You have to go back almost ten years before December 9, 1938, to get to the beginning of this story. Ed Rivers was an up-and-coming politician then, serving as a state senator from Lakeland. It would be another eight years before Rivers would be elected governor, but he was trying to make a name for himself statewide, trying to lay a foundation.