| Abstrakt: |
This article draws from my research with the older queer Filipinos where I used kuwento during data collection. Kuwento is the cultural mode of communication among Filipinos in the diaspora. As a first-generation Filipino, I am fluent in kuwento. Kuwento enables genuine connection with the older queers in my community. This article provides an example of how I applied kuwento in participant observation and in individual face-to-face interviews. Kuwento enabled both myself and the participants to explicitly embody our social locations, thereby disengaging with the dominant positivist Western values of neutrality, objectivity, and non-emotionality. Through kuwento, participants' intimate stories of queer sexualities were expressed rather than concealed by expectations of respectability and civility. Consequently, the interaction became an intergenerational queer conversation: it created an intimate space of connection among diasporic queers of varying generations. I consider this intergenerational queer conversation as a decolonial move because it challenges the normative epistemologies embedded in doing interviews and participant observation, allowing racialized queer stories to counter the dominant narratives of aging and migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
