Queer Youth Articulating Wellbeing Through Reading and Writing Groups

Abstract

In media, policy and research in Australia, queer youth have often been positioned as victims. This subject position has emerged in response to their very real disproportionate vulnerability, but tends to limit how these subjects are represented, by themselves and others. While alternative frameworks for understanding queer youth subjectivity, such as ‘queer thriving’, move beyond the victim, these can create new exclusions around what counts as an authentic, successful, or liveable queer life.

This article explores the context for a mixed-methods research project with queer youth who participated in a reading and writing group. Using ethnography, semi-structured interviews and an action research approach, I investigate whether such groups offer practical possibilities for queer youth to make sense of and articulate their lives. Written while the field work is still underway, this article begins to reflect on how queer youth, through reading and writing together, might imagine, embody, and make visible under-explored modes of living ‘well’.