"Born Backwards," Tanya Olson’s third poetry collection, reports from inside butch culture in the 1980s American South as it traces how geography, family, experiences, and popular culture shape one queer life. Like much of Olson’s other work, these poems locate the extraordinary within the commonplace—hearing the songs of the Carter Family, discovering k.d. lang, and watching soap operas with a grandmother become the building blocks of becoming an individual.