Connecting With Older Queer Filipinos Through Kuwento: Toward an Intergenerational Queer and Decolonial Qualitative Research Methods

Abstract

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. I am capable of using kuwento since I identify with the queer and trans Filipino community as well. Kuwento enables genuine connection with the older queers in my community. This article shows an example of how I applied kuwento in participant observation and in individual face-to-face interviews. Kuwento enables 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 queer subjects 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 to allow racialized queer stories to counter the dominant narratives of aging and migration. Ultimately, this article highlights racialized queers’ resistance against dominant research epistemologies via a diasporic queer sociolinguistic practice.