As I read it, I thought, “This is gay, right? I’m pretty sure this is gay. Can this please be gay?” When I reached the scene where Celie and Shug were sexually intimate, I remember my jaw dropping and looking around the empty room where I was reading to see if anyone else was seeing this.Īt the time, I wasn’t out to myself or others, although I had many queer friends.
Seeing Celie and Shug’s ending-even if it wasn’t a fully happy one, and they experienced significant amounts of pain and trauma along the way-felt like a revelation.
Queer love was shown as something healing, a bright spot among the darkest moments in Celie’s life.Ī few years later, I came out as a lesbian. I went to college in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the buckle of the Bible Belt. Our relationship felt like uncharted territory. Is that how all relationships feel? Perhaps. I didn’t have any models of successful, long-term lesbian relationships.īut it seemed impossible to envision a happy ending for us. While I was thrilled they existed, these rom-coms all seemed to take place in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or other coastal cities known for their liberal politics. I desperately wanted to see a love story like mine. I wanted to read about a couple whose conservative surroundings made their love seem all but impossible, but it blossomed anyway.
