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Heartlands: A Gay Man's Odyssey Across America
The open road has long been at the heart of the American spirit. From Alexis de Tocqueville to Jack Kerouac and William Least Heat Moon, writers in search of America have taken to the road. Journalist and gay activist Darrell Yates Rist is just such a pioneer, and Heartlands records his unique journey of exploration, a quest for the real gay America beyond the stereotypes of the popular media. In his hundred-thousand-mile odyssey down the "blue highways" of gay life, Rist seeks out America's rural communities, urban neighborhoods, farms, bars, clubs, and churches to record the lives of the nation's gay people. While this is richly detailed and wonderfully appealing travel writing on one level, his portrait of gay America takes twists and turns into memories and desires, and into the deepest regions of the human heart. From a drag queen in Mississippi to a rough-hewn cowboy at the Denver Gay Rodeo, from an alligator trapper in Louisiana to an oil worker on Alaska's pipeline, Rist describes the lives of gay men from every walk of life. These are ordinary men leading ordinary lives, yet constantly having to face everything from mild discrimination to outright bigotry and violence, as well as one of history's most devastating diseases. The stories of such heroic people easily defy all preconceived notions of what constitutes gay life in America. An important social and political work, Heartlands reveals gay life as it really is: the hopes and the dreams, the disappointments and the triumphs, the pains and the joys of a varied yet always vital culture. A keen observer and a consummate writer, Rist paints a deeply personal, often wrenching portrait of a group of individuals as diverse as the vast topography of America itself.
- GenresNonfictionQueerLGBTGay
485 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1992
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 19, 2014
I got to page 100, then stopped.
The challenge of a project like this is putting it together in some meaningful way. In the first 100 pages we met I think three men, the rest was rambling and driving and really more rambling. Some of the sentences didn't make sense:
"Never had I visited San Francisco that I didn't leave feeling I'd been to no place real."
Triple negative. Smart.
The value of something like this is a document of what life was like at that time, but so much of the book is timeless rambling about driving and highways and life that it doesn't feel like a period piece. It just feels boring and confusing.
I chose to read this first over White's States of Desire: Travels in Gay America as I thought White would be less concise, more flowery. I was wrong.
It also bothered me that on the inside cover is a quote from White praising the book and on the opposite page is a quote slamming White's book and praising this one over it, which must have made White livid.
The challenge of a project like this is putting it together in some meaningful way. In the first 100 pages we met I think three men, the rest was rambling and driving and really more rambling. Some of the sentences didn't make sense:
"Never had I visited San Francisco that I didn't leave feeling I'd been to no place real."
Triple negative. Smart.
The value of something like this is a document of what life was like at that time, but so much of the book is timeless rambling about driving and highways and life that it doesn't feel like a period piece. It just feels boring and confusing.
I chose to read this first over White's States of Desire: Travels in Gay America as I thought White would be less concise, more flowery. I was wrong.
It also bothered me that on the inside cover is a quote from White praising the book and on the opposite page is a quote slamming White's book and praising this one over it, which must have made White livid.
April 14, 2022
“MY GAY JOURNEY”
Edmund White’s States of Desire: Travels in Gay America and Darrell Yates Rist’s Heartlands: A Gay Man’s Odyssey across America were published in 1980 and 1992, respectively. While White flies from city to city and immerses himself in the gay cultures he finds there, Rist drives rental cars and seeks out men who live in less urban, more rural, and obscure places, where he finds that men who love men may not even identify as gay.
Rist is a superb and powerful writer. His descriptions of the landscapes through which he travels are lush and lyrical. Of the Southwest, he writes: “Pale sagebrush lay strewn across the desert like doomed battalions.” Rist observes of the South: “Everything stood gruesomely festooned by a deep green strangling beauty.” He gives full descriptions of the men he meets: their physical appearances, clothing, gestures, and voices. The dialogue between men is superbly captured. I had to stop and catch my breath between the chapters of Heartlands.
My favorite chapter is “Bayou Blood,” which relates Rist’s visit with the Prudhomme family in the marshlands of Louisiana. Rist vividly evokes a unique culture and way of life. Jacques Prudhomme and Michelle, his twenty-six-year-old son, make a living trapping alligators. Michelle tells Rist about his limited sex life and his dreams. Rist writes: “At first it seemed to me that I’d never met a man whose sexuality—whose life itself—was as trapped as Michelle’s. But as I drove away the next day thinking about the lives of the men I’d met in my travels—of all the men I’d ever known—his life seemed true of all of us.”
When Rist is driving through southern Texas he sees five Mexican men hiding in the cactus by the roadside. Two of them are sick. They are trying to get to San Antonio. Rist helps them get food and then, after some hesitation and “angry at American laws that foster inhumanity,” bravely gives them a ride in his truck hoping that they won’t encounter a roadblock. Jesús, the youngest of the men, rides in the cab. Rist touchingly says, “I felt Jesús’ hand, small and nervous, cover mine. His rough fingers reached beneath my palm and, like a lover’s, closed softly.”
The subtitle to Heartlands is A Gay Man’s Odyssey across America. When Rist returns to his home in New York City, his friend Gregory Kolovakis is dying of AIDS. “Gregory’s disease brought my gay journey to an end.” Rist’s wanderings now turn inward. In the last line of Heartlands he says: “I have gone on other journeys now.”
Throughout Heartlands, Rist makes no mention of his HIV-positive status. According to his obituary in the New York Times, he “died from an AIDS-related illness” in December 1993, a year after Heartlands, his only book, was published.
Edmund White’s States of Desire: Travels in Gay America and Darrell Yates Rist’s Heartlands: A Gay Man’s Odyssey across America were published in 1980 and 1992, respectively. While White flies from city to city and immerses himself in the gay cultures he finds there, Rist drives rental cars and seeks out men who live in less urban, more rural, and obscure places, where he finds that men who love men may not even identify as gay.
Rist is a superb and powerful writer. His descriptions of the landscapes through which he travels are lush and lyrical. Of the Southwest, he writes: “Pale sagebrush lay strewn across the desert like doomed battalions.” Rist observes of the South: “Everything stood gruesomely festooned by a deep green strangling beauty.” He gives full descriptions of the men he meets: their physical appearances, clothing, gestures, and voices. The dialogue between men is superbly captured. I had to stop and catch my breath between the chapters of Heartlands.
My favorite chapter is “Bayou Blood,” which relates Rist’s visit with the Prudhomme family in the marshlands of Louisiana. Rist vividly evokes a unique culture and way of life. Jacques Prudhomme and Michelle, his twenty-six-year-old son, make a living trapping alligators. Michelle tells Rist about his limited sex life and his dreams. Rist writes: “At first it seemed to me that I’d never met a man whose sexuality—whose life itself—was as trapped as Michelle’s. But as I drove away the next day thinking about the lives of the men I’d met in my travels—of all the men I’d ever known—his life seemed true of all of us.”
When Rist is driving through southern Texas he sees five Mexican men hiding in the cactus by the roadside. Two of them are sick. They are trying to get to San Antonio. Rist helps them get food and then, after some hesitation and “angry at American laws that foster inhumanity,” bravely gives them a ride in his truck hoping that they won’t encounter a roadblock. Jesús, the youngest of the men, rides in the cab. Rist touchingly says, “I felt Jesús’ hand, small and nervous, cover mine. His rough fingers reached beneath my palm and, like a lover’s, closed softly.”
The subtitle to Heartlands is A Gay Man’s Odyssey across America. When Rist returns to his home in New York City, his friend Gregory Kolovakis is dying of AIDS. “Gregory’s disease brought my gay journey to an end.” Rist’s wanderings now turn inward. In the last line of Heartlands he says: “I have gone on other journeys now.”
Throughout Heartlands, Rist makes no mention of his HIV-positive status. According to his obituary in the New York Times, he “died from an AIDS-related illness” in December 1993, a year after Heartlands, his only book, was published.
March 19, 2019
Interesting in parts but not much here for me
June 1, 2024
I admire the author’s goal with this, but it’s only half-successful. I also question the authenticity of some of his encounters over the course of his travels.
August 10, 2016
Sadly long out of print, Heartlands is a compelling portrait of gay America outside the coastal cities as it was in the late 1980s. It's a travelogue which a provides an intimate, affectionate view of the people Rist encountered in places where, at the time, being gay was regarded as nearly impossible.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews