ABSTRACT
“Fox: An Opera-Comique” is a snapshot of campus life at Persimmon University. Fox’s story takes shape as an opera libretto and focuses, near exclusively, on Fox’s life as a Persimmon administrator. Fox’s story is juxtaposed to regional and national events that affected queer people in education; this juxtaposition illuminates the traumas and triumphs available to queer individuals within a particular context while emphasizing that queer exclusion is pervasive across many regional contexts (though exclusion may take different forms). The chapter depicts the overlap between race and gender as co-conspirators in creating hostile climates, even by and among people who view themselves as social-justice-oriented. Part history, part comedy, part tragedy, and part confession, “Fox: An Opera-Comique” serves as an immersion into queer life and an indictment of queer exclusion in the rural South.
