February 17, 2021
My trilogy of texts SOUTHERN COMFORT is published today in Donald Barthelme and Phillip Lopate’s legendary Gulf Coast Journal and “invokes a rich, evolving and intergenerational legacy of obscured drag, ballroom, trans, mixed-race and gender queer fissures of deep southern and southwest American Culture…the queer US/Mexico border complexity of solidarity and joy in the face of bigotry, violence, hate crimes and the AIDS crisis.” This work was created during a fellowship at Yaddo and with the support of a Creative Capital grant in Emerging Fields. It’s a cornerstone section from my book-in-progress (that’s also a series of performances, films, texts, photographs…) called THE SLAUGHTER PARTIES: OUT HERE DEATH IS NO BIG DEAL.
This series in Gulf Coast looks at the drinking culture amidst the queerness and BIPOC cultures of resistance to the oilfield workers and frackers, from the early 1990s to today. It also speaks to the underground railroad of which I was a small part over many decades of helping anonymous gender-violence refugees – including myself – find sanctuary, safe houses, shelter, and when necessary, exodus out of the United States.
READ THE STORY/MEMOIR/TEXT HERE!
EXCERPT FROM “SOUTHERN COMFORT”:
They tell me to look for an oilman, and I do. Almost. He’s an arms dealer on his way to Austin. He thinks it’s his lucky best day. He tells my hot pink lips and my false lashes all about the anti-tank mines and the RPGs. He thinks maybe my tiger striped pussy should come with him to Austin where Bush is going to finalize the contract for supplying our boys heading for the Gulf.
The arms dealer talks about surface to air missiles and he inserts an index finger into the cleavage between my first and second toes, and draws a sloppy heart in the sweet Texas dust accumulating on my patent pleather stilettos. This is how I learn to be a woman.
(c) Quintan Ana Wikswo 2020 “Southern Comfort, first published in Gulf Coast Journal
ABOUT GULF COAST
Begun by Donald Barthelme and Phillip Lopate, Gulf Coast is the nationally-distributed journal housed within the University of Houston’s English Department, home to one of the US’s top ranked creative writing programs. The journal has since moved beyond the student body of the University of Houston and into the larger world. Our readership of the print journal currently exceeds 3,000, with more and more coming to our ever-expanding website. The print journal comes out each April and October.In addition, Gulf Coast differs from many other literary journals in its commitment to exploring visual art and critical art writing. The journal has always featured portfolios by two artists, along with short introductions from critics familiar with their work. Since October 2013, Gulf Coast commits sixteen pages to full-color visual art features and twenty-four pages to critical art writing in each issue. This expansion was made possible by Gulf Coast’s merger with Texas art journal Art Lies, a publication with a respected history of putting artists, curators, scholars, and critics in dialogue with their colleagues around the world.
The journal has enhanced its community presence thanks to the Gulf Coast Reading Series, a monthly gathering at Rudyard’s Pub in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston, as well as with its annual Spring Issue Release Party. Gulf Coast’s Indie Book Fair, held in collaboration with MenilFest, attracts more than 75 local and national exhibitors and over 2,500 visitors each April. These three events continue to bring esteemed writers, editors, publishers and, of course, readers to the Houston area.
Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, generously funded by grants from the Brown Foundation, Inc.; theThe Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts; Inprint, Inc.; Houston Endowment, Inc.; the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance; theTexas Commission on the Arts; the University of Houston English Department; and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as through the support of individual contributions.