The colossal impact of Brokeback Mountain, both as a short story and as a film, has aroused gay interests in all things related to what might be called “frontier”, “cowboy” and “western” culture. Citified gays are expressing a newly found interest in heartland life. Country-born gays are re-exploring their rural roots. Although the literary story of Brokeback has risen to become our most powerful and popular “gay frontier” tale to date, it was not the first.

AfterElton.com takes a look at three previously published “gay frontier” books that are not simply “western” or “cowboy,” but cover a wide range of themes, times, and geography.

Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest
Collected and edited by Will Fellows

So much of our modern gay existence is based in bustling, self-important cosmopolitan centers. Be it music, media, entertainment, or fashion, much of big city lifestyle and culture revolves around a glamorization of pop superficiality. It can get jaded.

Farm Boys paints another picture. It tells of rural lives lived by gay men who don't often find themselves in the media spotlight. The book is comprised of a series of autobiographical narratives by more than three dozen gay men (he oldest was born in 1909, the youngest in 1967) who grew up in farm families in the Midwestern United States.

Set against the backdrop of life in rural communities, each contributor in Farm Boys reveals his own coming-of-age and coming-out story.

These are, simply put, accounts of basic rural life, strong work ethics, family values, love of nature and a deeply grounded sense of place, tradition and origin. There is a humble, “salt-of-the-earth” quality to the gay life stories in Farm Boys that is difficult to intellectualize upon. Its richness cannot easily be summed up in a review.

As stated by the book's publishers,

“Looking back on boyhood, these men recall how they experienced and responded to a variety of limiting conditions common to rural life: rigid gender roles, social isolation, ethnic homogeneity and racism, suspicion of the unfamiliar, sexual prudishness, religious conservatism, and scant access to information. At the same time, many speak with pleasure of their accomplishments in farm and home activities, their love for the rural landscape and its elbowroom, and their appreciation of strong ties to family, church, and community.”

Many urban-based gays complain of not being able to find a boyfriend even while surrounded by thousands of kindred spirits. In Farm Boys we read of gays who had to discover their sexual identity in virtual isolation; or who had to live closeted for decades, or who simply had no other gay contacts for hundreds of miles. Yet they rarely let the pain, sadness, or loneliness of their often unbearably estranged gay lives triumph over their inner-strength, self-reliance and will to live.

Additionally, nearly ever contributor to farm boys retains close feelings for straight friends, family and community, as well a close spiritual and emotional attachment to the farmlands of their birth.

Farm Boys is a must for institutions that offer gay history studies. It effectively documents for posterity the gay experience in our quickly fading American farm landscape.

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