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98 Soc. F. 1 (2019-2020)
How Places Make Us: Novel LGB Identities in Four Small Cities

handle is hein.journals/josf98 and id is 995 raw text is: Book Review: 1 Book Review How Places Make Us: Novel LGB Identities in Four Small Cities By Japonica Brown-Saracino University of Chicago Press, 2018, 326 pages, http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/ book/chicago/H/bo24945929.html Reviewer: Julie R. Enszer wenty-five years ago, Arlene Stein's edited collection Sisters, Sexperts, Queers: Beyond the Lesbian Nation (Plume) captured in its title and pages the contours of changing lesbian identities from the lesbian-feminist vi- sions of sisterhood to the radical, sex-positive, Susie Bright Sexperts to burgeon- ing queers, less concerned with gender and engaged in radical activism for a queer future. Stein's book is one of many in the past fifty years that map the con- tours of lesbian, bisexual, trans, and queer women's identities. Understanding identities has been a subject of interest to women themselves and to scholars- sociologists, historians, literary critics, and many others. Japonica Brown- Saracino's new book, How Places Make Us enters this vibrant dialogue. How Places Make Us explores in depth lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ) women's identities in four communities across the United States: Ithaca, New York; San Luis Obispo, California; Portland, Maine; and Greenfield, Massachusetts. Brown-Saracino's close attention to LBQ women and their identity formation in communities reveals new information about identity formation, the relationship between place and identity, and LBQ women generally. Using interviews and participant observation complemented by census data, Brown-Saracino assembles for each community a profile and case study that highlights women's lived experiences with identity. Her observations about LBQ women in Ithaca, New York echo broader narratives about lesbian and queer identities, particularly that they are relics of the past as a new post-lesbian and post-identity world emerges. While mindful of these broader narratives, Brown- Saracino stays with her subjects, diving deeply into their own community dynamics for answer to emerge from the subjects and the places rather than from national overlays. The Ithaca case study, in particular, explores the lack of salience of the identity of lesbian in a community with a relatively large popula- tion of lesbians and queer women, high levels of LBQ acceptance, and low levels of homophobia. These conditions result in greater integration of lesbians, bisex- ual, and queer women within the community and lower identification with cate- gory labels. In this case study, Brown-Saracino carefully maps the nuances of ©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the University of Social Forces 98(2) e12 North Carolina at Chapel Hill. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals. doi: 10.1093/sf/sozO81 permissions@oup.com. Advance Access publication on 11 June 2019

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