• “The memoir is, at its core, an act of resurrection. Memoirists re-create the past, reconstruct dialogue. They summon meaning from events that have long been dormant. They braid the clays of memory and essay and fact and perception together, smash them into a hall, roll them flat. They manipulate time; resuscitate the dead. They put themselves, and others, into necessary context” -Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

• “I hold one thickly braided cord as story"  -Cherrie Moraga, Native Country of the Heart

• “If biography is peering through the windows of someone’s house and describing what you see…memoir is peeking into the windows of your own life. A voyeurism of the self. An interior looting” -Jenn Shapland, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers

The “X” in the title of this project — Queer x Trans Memoir: In Sight of an Embodied History — stands for the multiplicity of queer identity: the "x" a multiplication sign that indicates an action in itself. It stands for the continuous movement of queer identity, an identity always in motion.

Reading and writing on these memoirs has changed the way that I understand queerness, and therefore the way I view my self. In My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, memoirist Jenn Shapland similarly writes, "Carson is changing as I write about her, and so am I" (119). Queerness shows us that the self is always up for revision and modes of thinking need not be stagnant. I hope that viewing this project will help redirect you toward new creative paths of thinking, just like creating it did mine. 

Welcome to the exhibit.