This readable and thought-provoking volume makes an important contribution to the emerging body of research on queer working-class America. Drawing from several scholarly fields, Nadine Hubbs explores links between working-class folks and country music, and between working-class culture and queers. Her central historical argument is that until the 1970s, sexual and gender-role variance were linked to working-class culture and devalued, while since the 1970s, they have been linked to middle-class culture and tolerated or valued. What has remained constant is that whatever is linked to working-class folks is scorned. Her central sociological argument is that working-class codes and values go unrecognized by what she calls “the narrator class” (meaning middle-class academics, media, etc.), partly because the middle class defines itself by imagining itself as separate from the working class, which then must be stigmatized in order for status to accrue to the middle class. Since the middle class thus gets...
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