Her book shares stories of queer life in N.L. The public's reaction has blown her away

After years of research and over 100 interviews, author and journalist Rhea Rollmann's bookA Queer History of Newfoundlandwasofficially launched last Saturday, and she couldn't be happier with its reception.

The novel, which shares stories of the province's queer history through the 20th century, has been available since the fall but got an official release at Memorial University's Breezeway last Saturday.

Rollmann spoke with St. John's Morning Show host Krissy Holmes about why the book's reception has left her awestruckand how she hopes to share parts of Newfoundland's history that often go untold through the eyes of the people who experienced it.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: I know the book has been out there for some time. How have people reacted?

The reaction has been incredibly overwhelming, actually. The book popped up physically at the tail end of October. We'd hoped to have a launch before Christmas, but we actually sold out so quickly they had to do another print run and actually sold that before Christmas as well. So we're just getting around to doing the launch now. But the response from folks has been really incredible.

A lot of folks wanted to get it for Christmas, give out as Christmas gifts, and I got some really heartwarming messages from total strangers, just responding to the book, telling me stories of how, you know, they sat around with family at Christmas, you know, poking through the book and reading stories, sharing stories. It really seemed to strike a chord with a lot of folks.

When people were sharing their personal stories with it what were they saying specifically?

I approached the book journalistically, so I wanted to tell a lot of stories tell stories of, you know, smaller communities, folks who grew up in there. We had, you know, folks poking through the book, seeing mention of their home community, seeing mention of people they knew, and really reminiscing. The book is a history of Newfoundland in the 20th century but it's told through this queer lens that we haven't really seen before.

So how were all of these things from commission of governments to the fisheries to denominational education, how was all that experienced from the perspective of, you know, 2SLGBTQ folks growing up in rural communities as well as St. John's?So a lot of people were recognizing, you know, things they remembered from growing up. I got messages from folks who've moved outside the province, and it really resonated with them, seeing names and communities and stories that they remembered from their youth.

How does the history in this province compare to other places in Canada? Was there more or less freedom? What do you notice when you look across the board?

Well, one of the things I really try to emphasize in the book is, I guess, the uniqueness of responses in this place. Newfoundland and Labrador is a unique place in so many respects. You know, large geographically, sparsely populated. Until fairly recently, communities were really worlds unto themselves. Soyou have such a variation you had incredible tolerance in some small communities. You had horrific violent discrimination in others.

One of the unique dynamics, I think, in this province, of course, was the denominational education system. When Newfoundland joined Canada, the education system, the K-12 system, was effectively given over to the churches. And there, you know, it was removed from human rights protections. A lot of experts talk about how Newfoundland and Labrador's, our province's human rights regime, really lagged behind the rest of Canada.

LISTEN | Rhea Rollmann on why it's important to share queer stories in today's political climate:

St John's Morning Show10:06A Queer History of Newfoundland: A new book exploring the long-ignored history and activism of queer people in the province

A Queer History of Newfoundland is being officially launched into the world. Writer and journalist Rhea Rollman explores the largely ignored history of the 20th century queer community in the province. She joined us in studio this morning to talk about the release.

So you already had a human rights kind of milieu that was at the tail end of the country. But then you also had an education system where teachers, students had no human rights, no protections. So folks told me stories of how they might have been activists in university as undergradsbut once they got hired into the school system, they had to go back in the closet. You know, stories of teachers being, you know, transferred if their sexuality was under suspect, people were afraid of being fired.

There was a lot of discrimination in the school system and also the students growing up through that system. There's never really been, I think, a reckoning of how that impacted generations of students. But speaking to people, interviewing them for this book, I really got a sense of just how widespread the impact was of people growing up through this repressive system and how that really traumatized and impacted them in their later lives as well.

When you're even looking at the news and you're seeing new policies that are affecting transgender youth in Alberta, given the history and what you know, and where the communities come from, I mean, how are you reconciling all of this in the now?

It's interesting because things have changed so rapidly in the last few months. At the tail end of the publication process, you know, I threw in an afterword just when we were starting to see some of these debates swirl up. Because I think it underscores the importance of talking about our history, of sharing our history and looking at that history.

When you look at the grand scope, you realize that so many of the arguments, the slogans, the exact messages used by a lot of far right, right-wing politicians in the country, they're recycled almost word for word from the 1980s. We've heard these myths and tropes put out there, we've had them debunked, you know, we went through that in the '70s, the '80s, the '90s.

So to hear it recycled again now in the 2020s, you know, when you look at the history, you realize that we've been through this before. And I think that's an important thing for people to understand, to see how, you know, this has played out in the past.But also to realize the impact. You know, again, when you look at the impact of the denominational education system, you look at AIDS and HIV, you know, hundreds, probably thousands of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians died because of the types of policies that politicians are now looking to bring back, for right-wing politicians.

So the understandings we have in schools, the supports, the policies. They were a response to the tragedies of the past. And it's really important to understand that. And so it's important to learn about this history. It's important to share it and to talk about it openly.

When you have that book in your hand, do you feel proud? Do you have a sense that you've accomplished something through your journalism?

I do. I certainly feel proud, but I feel especially proud of the community because it really I mean, I was blown away. I was in tears on multiple occasions as I was writing it, because just hearing the stories of courage and determination, you know, the people who really deserve the spotlight are the people who stood up in the '70s and '80s and ... some of them lost jobs, lost family, friends. You know, their courage was what needs to be celebrated.

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