Suchergebnisse

AbstractTraces of trans feminine pasts are scattered all across the colonial archive. In New Spain, glimpses of Indigenous trans women's lives can be found in the records of conquistadors as early as the sixteenth century. While such early colonial representations of trans femininity span myriad religious, imperial and literary contexts, they are all underpinned by one harrowing reality: the widespread, colonial pursuit of trans feminine death. To 're‐member' – á la Saylesh Wesley – trans feminine pasts in the colonial archive, this article traces structures of, and resistance to, colonial trans misogyny in the sodomy criminal trials of Mexico (1604–1771) and the Catholic missions of California (1769–1821). Pushing against an extant 'cistoriography' that has simply archived these stories within the history of sexuality, I ask: What may be gleaned by centring trans femininity and womanhood as core to not only the lives of historical subjects, but the reason many of their lives were so violently taken? By re‐membering trans misogyny in this way, we may finally name and centre the long‐erased trans feminine historical subject, illuminate the complex, changing structures of her past worlds and trace the oft‐forgotten lineages of not just trans feminine death, but trans feminine survivance in its face.

Abstract
In 2014, then doctoral student Saylesh Wesley published the now canonical TSQ article, "Twin-Spirited Woman: Sts'iyóye smestíyexw slhá:li," gifting her story of "coming in" as a Stó:lō trans woman to all Two-Spirit people. Using similar "storywork" methods, the following oral history biography expands the written record of Saylesh's life before, during, and after her well-known narrative, as told by Saylesh to Jamey Jesperson, a trans historian who spent the summer of 2022 recording Saylesh's oral stories for the Stó:lō Library and Archives. Tracing Saylesh's multiplex life in seven parts, this biography provides a bird's-eye view of her birth, her complicated childhood and teen years, her early-twenties transition and foray into 1990s Vancouver nightlife, her infamous reception of the title Sts'iyóye smestíyexw slhá:li in 2012, and then her groundbreaking renaming ceremony four years later. The biography concludes with Saylesh's story today, as she is amid yet another grand transition: crystallizing into the Two-Spirit Elder she was always meant to be.