Paving Pathways Through the Pain: A Grounded Theory of Resilience Among Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer Youth

Asakura, Kenta

doi:10.1111/jora.12291

Cited by 44 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…Provided that LGBTQ youth might experience their everyday realities differently from their cisgender, heterosexual peers, it might be premature to conclude that what we know about youth resilience in general can be transferred to LGBTQ youth in its entirety. This article used data from a larger study about resilience processes among LGBTQ youth in Toronto (Asakura, 2015) to address the paucity of robust conceptualization of resilience and its related constructs (i.e., adversity, positive adaptation). Research questions for this article were as follows:…”

Section: Study Purposementioning

confidence: 99%

Extraordinary Acts to “Show Up”: Conceptualizing Resilience of LGBTQ Youth

Asakura

2016

Youth & Society

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Sexual and gender diversity is an overlooked subject in resilience research. This study seeks to advance the conceptualization of resilience among lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) youth. Informed by social ecological theory of resilience, grounded theory analysis of interviews with service providers (n = 16) and LGBTQ youth (n = 19) yielded the following categories: (a) facing adversities across contexts, and (b) “doing well” while still in pain. LGBTQ youth face both general and LGBTQ-specific adversities. LGBTQ youth, even in a so-called “post-gay” era, remain challenged to navigate marginalization to maintain their well-being. Participants endorsed a context-dependent understanding of “doing well,” rather than using normative criteria of health (e.g., absence of psychopathologies). Although resilience is known as “ordinary magic,” this article alternatively proposes that resilience is LGBTQ youths’ extraordinary acts to “show up” every day to battle through adversities.

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Section: Study Purposementioning

confidence: 99%

Extraordinary Acts to “Show Up”: Conceptualizing Resilience of LGBTQ Youth

Asakura

2016

Youth & Society

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“…Although some scholars have written about resilience from a much more nuanced and holistic view (e.g. Asakura, 2016bAsakura, , 2017Ungar, 2011), social work appears to uncritically embrace a strengths perspective (Saleebey, 1996). Often used interchangeably with resilience, the strengths perspective signals social workers' attention to one's existing internal capacities, traits, and resources (e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In order to counter risk-focused discourse about trans* youth, a growing body of research now focuses on resilience (Asakura, 2016a(Asakura, , 2016b(Asakura, , 2017Mustanski et al, 2011), generally defined as "the dynamic process encompassing positive adaptation within the context of significant adversity" (Luthar et al, 2000: 543). Research focused on resilience is designed to counter the "risk and deficit"-focused discourse about trans* youth and highlights how they may navigate adversities by using internal and external resources.…”

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confidence: 99%

Art as a transformative practice: A participatory action research project with trans* youth

Asakura¹,

Lundy

Black

et al. 2019

Qualitative Social Work

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Given that promoting social justice is one of the central organizing principles of social work, it comes as no surprise that participatory action research (PAR) has gained much attention among social work researchers. While much has been written about promising practices of PAR with various marginalized communities, there remains a dearth of PAR literature that focuses on trans* people, a population often under attack in current socio-political climates. In this paper, we report on a PAR project in which a trans* artist worked closely with trans* youth participants (n = 5) to assist them through a creative project. Using a queer theoretical lens and drawing from the concept of "queer world-making," the participants recast cultural representations about what it means to be trans* in their chosen artistic medium. This paper suggests that art can serve as a transformative research practice with trans* youth. Our findings suggest that the rhetorical binary of trans* vulnerability and resilience does not adequately represent lived experience. We make this argument by demonstrating the following processes through which youths engaged art in this PAR project: 1) countering normative discourses of what it means to be trans*, 2) promoting self-reflection and expression, and 3) facilitating 'queer counterpublics.' In so doing, we make an argument for art as a qualitative research process that holds much promise in uncovering and challenging the normative discourse and developing a much more complex and nuanced understanding of what it means to be trans* youth.

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“…Experiencing rage prompts one to consider how best to move through it and encourages the seeking out and invention of spaces and subjects who might make experiences of rage easier to survive and recover from. Considering literature on the cultivation of resilience among trans and queer subjects, it is quickly apparent that all indicators of resilience—for instance, ability to access safer spaces, opportunity to narrativize experiences of pain and trauma, the support of kith and kin who understand, dignify, and respect the complexities of queer and trans experiences, the ability to enact agency than can go beyond protective forms of closeting, and the cultivation of forms of political and infrapolitical communal healing (Asakura )—rely on navigating negative affect in ways that enable living differently. Learning to live with and through ostensibly negative affects drives the co‐production of trans‐ and queer‐affirming connections and spaces; again, anger is a transformative energy.…”

Section: Toward An Infrapolitical Ethics Of Carementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Learning to live with and through ostensibly negative affects drives the co‐production of trans‐ and queer‐affirming connections and spaces; again, anger is a transformative energy. Kenta Asakura, a professor of social work specializing in queer and trans community‐based research, calls this “paving pathways through pain” (Asakura , 1), and his phrasing suggests that paving such pathways is less about restoring the self to an unharmed state and more about utilizing negative affect to drive world‐making projects. Resilience is thus not about bouncing back, nor about moving forward, but rather a communal alchemical mutation of pain into possibility.…”

Section: Toward An Infrapolitical Ethics Of Carementioning

confidence: 99%

Tough Breaks: Trans Rage and the Cultivation of Resilience

Malatino¹

2019

Hypatia

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Countering hegemonic understandings of rage as a deleterious emotion, this article examines rage across specific sites of trans cultural production—the prison letters of CeCe McDonald and the durational performance art of Cassils—in order to argue that it is integral to trans survival and flourishing. Theorizing rage as a justified response to unlivable circumstances, a response that plays a key role in enabling trans subjects to detach from toxic relational dynamics in order to transition toward other forms of gendered subjectivity and intimate communality, I develop an account of what I call an “infrapolitical ethics of care” that indexes a web of communal practices that empathetically witness and amplify rage, as well as support subjects during and after moments of grappling with overwhelming negative affect. I draw on the work of trans, queer, and feminist theorists who have theorized the productivities of so‐called “negative” affects, particularly Sara Ahmed's work on willfulness and killing joy (), María Lugones's writing on anger (2003), Judith Butler's Spinozan reassessment of the vexed relations between self‐preservation and self‐destruction (2015), and the rich account of trans rage provided by Susan Stryker ().

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Paving Pathways Through the Pain: A Grounded Theory of Resilience Among Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer Youth

Cited by 44 publications

References 60 publications

Extraordinary Acts to “Show Up”: Conceptualizing Resilience of LGBTQ Youth

Extraordinary Acts to “Show Up”: Conceptualizing Resilience of LGBTQ Youth

Art as a transformative practice: A participatory action research project with trans* youth

Tough Breaks: Trans Rage and the Cultivation of Resilience

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