Dolly's Kingdom: How a Barefoot Girl from Appalachia Became America's Queer Icon
Dolly Parton was born in a one-room cabin in Locust Ridge, Tennessee, in 1946. No electricity. No running water. Four kids to a bed. By every measure of her time and place, she was supposed to become someone who kept her head down, went to church, and stayed inside the lines.
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5 Questions to Reflect On
- 1. Dolly famously said, "I'm not in charge of the judgment day, honey. That's God's job, not mine." Have you had people in your life, religious or otherwise, who held a version of that philosophy?
- 2. Dollywood sits in one of the most politically conservative regions of Tennessee , yet it has maintained LGBTQ-inclusive policies for decades.
- 3. Queer people have long found their own meaning in songs like "Jolene" and "Coat of Many Colors" that weren't explicitly written for them.
- 4. Dolly is beloved by both LGBTQ people and many conservative, churchgoing Southerners who may hold very different views on queer rights How do you think about loving artists whose fanbases include people who oppose your rights? Does Dolly's case feel different to you than other examples?
- 5. Dolly has spoken about modeling her look on a woman her community called "trash" and seeing beauty where everyone else saw shame Where did you learn to see beauty or worth in something or someone the world around you dismissed? Who taught you that? For book clubs, classrooms & community circles thisweekinqueerhistory.com History as inheritance, not trivia. Agency over tragedy. Anger into action.
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