Public librarian and community organizer Alyx Kim-Yohn says LGBTQ+ people are an important part of the fabric of the Southern United States: “People think of the South and don’t think of us, but we live here, too.”
Alyx calls Huntsville, Alabama home, but it didn’t always feel that way. They first came out in middle school, and the first hurdle was being honest with their mother, a Korean immigrant: “There was a certain amount of expectation of meeting the American dream that I felt I would fail by coming out as queer. She had a white-picket-fence dream for us on top of generational expectations: marry well, have kids, get perfect grades and a perfect job.”
That didn’t stop them from trying to find community with other LGBTQ+ people and starting a Gay Straight Alliance at their high school. After gathering the paperwork, Alyx went to the principal of the school asking for a faculty sponsor. The principal refused: “He didn’t think parents would be comfortable with a GSA club. He said he had to draw the line somewhere; ‘if I let you do this, I gotta let the next kid start a Nazi club.”
The comparison left Alyx feeling confused, bewildered. They started a petition in response and packed over 40 students in the principal’s office, asking again for the sponsorship to start a Gay Straight Alliance. This time, the principal referenced an out-of-date and clearly anti-LGBTQ+ law.
“We were just asking for a space to safely come together at school. Most of us were too young to drive, don’t have cars. If we have a club at school, it becomes easy for us to find each other and hang out. We were also clear that straight people were allowed in the club—it’s in the name,” Alyx explains. “So I tried, and failed.”
“My teachers always told me that the South was like a prison, that eventually I’d escape and get out of there. I felt like I can’t be queer here. The bullying was incessant.” Alyx left high school in Huntsville for college in Ohio, eventually coming out again as nonbinary (a term describing gender identities outside of exclusively man or woman). But even if they felt settled with their identity, something felt off.
“I spent ten years in Ohio wondering why I was so miserable even though I figured out my gender and sexuality. I realized eventually that it was because I was so far from my family. Even though I felt I needed the distance from my mother and her overbearingness, I realized I wanted to be near her, just as my own person.”
Once Alyx got to Nashville and eventually back home to Huntsville, everything started to change. “Being back in the South, with Southern queers, is where I really found myself and my people. I learned how to act locally.”
“Community work is hard but working at a public library has given me a purpose that I didn’t have.” At the library Alyx works, they make a concerted effort to make sure everyone has access to the resources they deserve. Alyx also works to build allyship for LGBTQ+ people in Huntsville, because as they say, “the real change happens at the local level.” But even if the work is meaningful, it’s still tough emotionally, which is why aftercare and building community is so important.
Within their community, that looks like a lot of things: “We get dinner, debrief, check-in. That’s made the work of being here a lot more bearable.”
“There are real people in this state that this impacts. Especially as a queer and trans public librarian, a lot of this legislation impacts my livelihood. It’s tough—these people are trying to legislate me and my loved ones out of existence.”
Even if the path to equality is long, Alyx has no plans to move out of Huntsville, especially when many do not have the resources to leave home for a safer environment. This is their way of fulfilling the American dream: making the place they call home safer for everyone.
“People ask me why I don’t just leave. I know a lot of queer people who are fleeing the South, and I don’t blame them. But when people ask me that, I tell them I have tremendous privilege. I have a home and a full-time job with insurance, a car, I’m food stable. I have the flexibility to do all of this work.”
“If all of us who have the privilege to leave go ahead and leave, then who is left? I cannot in good conscience leave my people when I have the chance to do something about it. And I also have the same right as anyone else to live here. Why should someone else decide if I have to leave where I grew up?”
“Queer folks have always existed, even in the South, and this won’t drive us out.”