Queer Florida: Speculative Southern Oral Histories

Han Powell

Queer Florida is a multimedia oral history project documenting the stories of LGBTQ+ people who are making efforts to organize, create, and build community in the diverse, politically-fraught landscape of Florida. Each interview is conducted in a physical space that is meaningful to the narrator—a rural gay bar that closed during the pandemic, the front porch of a beloved late grandfather, a local park that was the site of a first queer kiss, and more. The narratives that emerge explore our connection to nature, the queerness of the environment, and ask how our stories of self are rooted in the swamplands of home. Most of all, these stories seek to answer the question of why we stay, why we fight, and exactly what/whom we are fighting for.