This week in North Philly Notes, a Q&A with James Sears about his new book, Queering Rehoboth Beach. (Part One of Two; and check out the author’s upcoming appearances below the interview!)
What prompted you to write this book?
When my husband and I moved to Rehoboth, DE in 1999, we were struck by the queer friendliness of this small town: gay flags fluttering over shops and restaurants; a local bi-weekly queer magazine, Letters from CAMP; and same-gender couples walking together. I wondered how this southern Delaware town became one of the top East Coast queer beach resorts as well as one with the higher per-capita number of gay couples in the country. Although historical anecdotes had been published over the years, there was little discussion in those accounts of how Rehoboth became so queer friendly.
A couple of months after we arrived in town, we experienced an incident at a restaurant that I later learned was less than queer friendly. I wrote a short essay about it, which I thought would be of interest to readers of Letter from CAMP. The publisher, however, appeared to have little interest in exposing this underside of Rehoboth—despite the town’s name, often connected to a Biblical verse and translated as “room for us all” and promoted as such
This incident further motivated me to investigate Rehoboth’s queer history. Queering Rehoboth Beach examines how inclusive the town really is and how it transformed into what many people see as a gay oasis.
What did your research entail?
In early 2020, when COVID descended upon us, I spent many hours in the library reviewing The Whale, from the 1970s through the 2000s. Similarly, I did online research using a regional newspaper, The Cape Gazette, and state newspapers extending back to the founding of Rehoboth in the early 1870s. I also gained insight from reviewing personal correspondence, board minutes of organizations, photographs, as well as prior interviews housed in the Rehoboth Beach Museum. Naturally, I read books and articles relating to other East Coast beach towns which had undergone changes over the decades (Cherry Grove on Fire Island, Provincetown, Key West, and Atlantic City) as well as classic studies of small-town life such as the twin “Middletown” studies, conducted before and during the Great Depression, and classic novels like Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and Richard Russo’s Empire Falls.
I began interviewing many queer folks who were active during this period. These individuals—queer and straight—form the core of the book’s narrative arch. This took about two years. These audio-video interviews are now housed at the Rehoboth Beach Museum and in my professional papers at the archives of Duke University. This research enabled me to write a narrative history that carries the reader through compelling stories and the evolving lives of diverse individuals, as the town evolved over the decades into the queer resort it is today.
You title your book, Queering Rehoboth Beach. Why use “queering” in the title?
I want to telegraph to readers they will be entering into a world which may appear familiar but will challenge their perspective of the town. I explain how heterosexual spaces were queered, such as parts of the beach as well as restaurants and shops. I also examine taken-for-granted beliefs such as the oft-quoted tale of how a band of queers, in their battle with the Rehoboth Beach Home Owners Association and others, reshaped the town into what it is today. That story appeals to our notion of the “arc of justice,” but it is far more complicated. Another reason for using “queer” in the title is its appropriation by activists during the last several decades as a means of resistance. That is, embracing an epithet—once wielded in playgrounds, police stations, and pulpits—for empowerment. This was certainly done in Rehoboth, from campy drag queen volleyball events to resistance in the so-called “Poodle Beach Riot.”
How does Queering Rehoboth Beach connect with your numerous other books on queer history? Is this your most contemporary work?
People make history, historians interpret it. Understanding a historical event or era not only requires that one identifies pivotal events and examines these within a broader context, but studies individuals—their histories, their motivations, their fears—who were integral to its unfolding. Queering Rehoboth Beach, like other queer histories I have written about the Mattachine Society and the American South, is structured as a narrative. I focus on six very distinctive, different, and dissident people who had arrived in Rehoboth by 1980. They were the major actors in what the Washington Post Magazine called, “The Battle for Rehoboth.” In telling this story, woven through their life histories and the entanglements they forged, this saga is queerly refracted. It calls upon multiple viewpoints, sometimes contradictory and often poignant, shedding light on their arduous journeys.
James Sears will present Queering Rehoboth Beach at:
May 25 at 3:00 pm at Browseabout Books, 133 Rehoboth Avenue in Rehoboth, DE
June 2 at 5:00 pm at CAMP Rehoboth 37 Baltimore Avenue in Rehoboth, DE
June 8 at 5:00 pm at Huxley & Hiro 419 N. Market Street in Wilmington, DE
June 13 at 7:00 pm at Red Emma’s 3128 Greenmount Avenue in Baltimore, MD
June 27 at 7:00 pm at The Ivy Bookshop 5928 Falls Road in Baltimore, MD
June 29 at 5:00 pm at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Avenue, NW, in Washington, DC
July 19 at 6:00 pm at Giovanni’s Room, 345 S. 12th Street in Philadelphia, PA
Filed under: american studies, cultural studies, Education, gender studies, History, LGBT studies, Mass Media and Communications, race and ethnicity, racism, sexuality, sociology, Urban Studies | Tagged: activism, Book, history, queer, Rehoboth Beach, resistance | Leave a comment »