Trans and White Trash: An Ethnography of Trans People in the Deep South

Abstract

In this article, I use queer ethnographic and autoethnographic methods to tell a story of how white trash trans people in the Deep South imagine futures amid a haunted colonial landscape. In conversation with feminist and decolonial theoretical frameworks of haunting and potential history, I show that trauma narratives haunt trans people in Louisiana and that trans trauma narratives are an artifact of settler colonialism. In contrast, I situate stories of trans people in the Deep South as multifaceted radical potential histories. [trans, autoethnographies, imagined futures, decolonial feminism, white trash] "At no point did my therapist ask me what I liked about being trans. This sent me into a really negative, haunted state. I was constantly thinking about and haunted by my trauma." -Stephanie