Hello, everyone! My name is Hunter Golder (he/him), and I’m a brand new intern at the Rainbow Rose Center!
I am a rising senior at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA. At Dickinson, I double-major in English and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies. I also double-minor in Creative Writing and Film & Media Studies. My research mainly focuses on post-1800s British and American literature, with a concentration on the Victorian novel, modernist poetry, and the lasting legacy of postmodernism. I’m particularly interested in analyzing these texts using queer theoretical concepts such as heteronormativity, gender performativity, and queer time. All of this to say, I love to read, and I love to write even more!
When my nose isn’t in a Brontë novel or an X-Men comic book, you can find me behind the counter of the Dover Starbucks, where I moonlight as a barista. In the year I have worked at Starbucks, I’ve had the privilege of meeting a wide array of individuals from different walks of life. Hearing these people’s stories, I’ve come to learn how much I love getting to know the people in my community. It’s an incredible privilege getting to put names to faces, and then stories to names. I’ve learned about customers’ alma maters, occupations, hobbies—even the names of their grandchildren. One sweet old man comes into our cafe each day to draw birds in his sketchbook. When he sees me, he smiles, greets me by name, and asks me what I’ve been writing lately. This kind of intimacy sustains and nourishes me, even after making twenty matcha lattes in the span of one hour.
This is precisely what I seek to find during my internship at the RRC: more stories and more ways to forge meaningful connections. This is why I’m especially looking forward to participating in Teen Tuesdays and Teen Support Groups. As a queer person who grew up in the area myself, I know South Central PA can sometimes feel stifling and isolating. Whether in the winding streets of the city or the vast plains of Pennsyltucky, you can feel like the only queer person west of Philadelphia. I hope to show teens that it does, in fact, get better, and that they always have someone to lean on. I also hope to demonstrate how revolutionary community-making can be in times of political unrest. When democracy is under attack, community is the most powerful tool we have at our disposal. Now, it is up to us to use it!
I look forward to getting to know you all more in the coming months. Please keep an eye out for more blog posts from me in the near future! Here’s to the beginning of a wonderful summer! 
Talk more soon,
Hunter
