As Matthew Thomas-Reid grew up in the shadows of the Appalachian mountains in North Carolina, the difference between being “queer” and “quar,” as it was pronounced in that thick, Southern dialect, was obvious to him. 

“Older folks would look at me and say, ‘boy, you’re quar,’ and I got that my whole life,” he recalled. “It [meant] eccentric, it was different. But you were still family or you were still community.”

Growing up queer in Appalachia had its challenges, and so did returning to his mountain community when he was older, Thomas-Reid said, but now, as a former public school teacher-turned-professor at Appalachia State University in Boone, North Carolina, he recognizes the importance of not just being a voice for the LGBTQ community in the region, but showing up for its young people who need an advocate, or even just to see someone they identify with succeeding in their rural community. 

In his contribution to the newly released anthology “Storytelling in Queer Appalachia: Imagining and Writing the Unspeakable Other,” Thomas-Reid reflects on his childhood and his family stories of grappling with both queerness and “quar-ness” of his two uncles. He spoke with 100 Days in Appalachia’s Jesse Wright via Zoom call about his writing, his childhood in Appalachia and the impact that lifting up the voices of LGBTQ authors in rural spaces can have on the next generation.

Listen to the interview below.

The interview below has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

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Jesse Wright: I want to talk a little bit about how you came to be represented in this collection.

Matthew Thomas-Reid: Thank you for the question. And, you know, sometimes, answers like this are really glamorous and interesting. This one is a little less interesting. 

But as sometimes happens in the academic world, someone says, “Oh, this sounds like something you’d be interested in.” So I immediately read [the proposal]. And I thought, yes, this is fantastic. 

I hadn’t at the time written anything with that sort of intersection of my Appalachian roots. And I kept gravitating to the phonetic pronunciation of queer in the sort of Southern “quar.” And I kept gravitating to it because I remembered that being a word that was used in some really interesting non-specifically weird ways, but also some specifically queer ways growing up. 

So I started sort of thinking through that. And then I knew that I wanted to collaborate with some of my undergraduate students and the writing of the piece — I wanted to sort of do some triangulation with it. And we put together a little abstract and sent it out to the folks who were putting the collection together. 

And they were really intrigued by the idea of doing some collaborative work with some younger folks and some undergraduate students. So that that was something I think that that really drew them to want to include it in the collection.

JW: You touched on this dialect a little bit between queer and quar. Can you go into a little bit more depth about that distinction between queer and quar? And what those two words represent in a place like Boone, North Carolina?

MTR: Yes. It’s something I grew up with and I knew it as this kind of humorous thing — I mean, as a child, you know, devoid really of sexual expression generally. Or as 7, 8, 9, 10 years old, older folks would look at me and say, “Boy you’re quar,” and I got that my whole life. 

There were a number of interesting intersectionalities growing up in the rural foothills of the Appalachians being both queer, neuro-atypical, I stood out in a lot of ways as a child.

But that moniker, quar, it was always said with some kindness. It was always said with some empathy, it was always said with some community. 

It was the person that you could kind of humorously smile and rib a little bit, but if anyone else said anything bad they were in trouble, right? It was that there was something very familial about the idea of quar and as I reflect on other stories that I didn’t didn’t get to in that piece. 

I remember two older men — and this is probably when I was 12 years old — and they would come to the barn dances on Friday nights at a place called Windsors Crossroads. We would get together and people would bring their instruments and there would be little groups of musicians playing. And these two older men would come — and I say older, they were in their 60s at the time. And they sat together, and often they would hold hands. 

And I remember asking questions, you know my 8 or 9-year-old self, what are they doing, but what I would get — I wouldn’t get, you know, anything (like) oh, stay away from them, or they’re this (kind of person). They’re just quar. 

But there was something safe about the word, there was something safe about the association. But it would depend on who you talked to. 

My father was always like, “Well, they’re good guys. They’re just … they’re friends. They’re just, you know, they just do what they do. But they’re great people. I knew him, I sold him a car 10 years ago,” or something like that. 

But then you’d hear other people say, “Oh, I don’t know what’s going on with those two.” 

But with quar, it was something, it was odd. It was eccentric, it was different. There might be something going on there, but you were still family, or you were still community. And so there wasn’t that hard-edged “other” in the word quar.

JW: When did you learn that distinction between quar and and what it meant to be queer?

MTR: So it was an actual conversation with my father. And we were in the car. And my mother who is from Burlington, North Carolina, which is is still very southern, but also, she was a flatlander, right? 

So, we were having this conversation and he would say quar and she said, “Buddy, don’t say that.” 

My father’s name was Buddy — “Buddy, don’t say that, that’s not a good word.”

He said, “Now quar’s just fine. It’s just fine.” And he said, “Yeah, quar just means a little bit different. It’s just a little bit different. But … now he ain’t queer.”

And the voice changed. 

I was probably still pre-puberty at this point. I was maybe 10, 11, 12 years old. And I heard that edge in the voice change and, and I also heard growing up the same people who would appreciate the quar would make inappropriate gay jokes. These same folks would say, “I would disown a family member if they were gay.” 

And then, of course, there was the shadow of my my uncle Ricky, who I write about in the piece, died in the mid-1990s of circumstances that the family deemed as mysterious, that didn’t want to talk about the fact that he in fact died of AIDS and sort of that that specter sat in the background. 

Because the hard-edge word queer didn’t just mean something that was wrong or bad or against the Bible, it meant something that would kill you.

JW: Your piece sort of sets up a dynamic where you’ve got Ricky, who essentially had to leave to express himself. You talk a little bit about his life in Charlotte and tracking down some of the relationships that he had with people and friends and the community there, which is great. I love that little vignette of what life was like for him and the spaces that he fit into in a city like Charlotte. 

And then you got your older uncle who fit more into this quar space and this tolerated space, and that those seem to be the two dynamics that you have if you’re from a small town in rural south or rural Appalachia — that those are your two choices. 

Do you think that that dynamic still exists? And if not, how do you think it’s changed where we are today?

MTR: I think we’re disrupting it. And I’m very excited. 

I happen to now live in another very, very small town, not too far from where I grew up. And I do see those same sort of archetypes — the quar man who’s good to his mom and I see these people all the time, and I clock them — not in rude ways, not in, “Oh, I bet you’re whatever,” but I clock them and I go, OK, so that thi