"When I came out": coming out and personal experience narratives of LGBTQ persons in Newfoundland and Labrador

Moore, Sarah Janette (2017) "When I came out": coming out and personal experience narratives of LGBTQ persons in Newfoundland and Labrador. Doctoral (PhD) thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

This thesis examines narratives that LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) persons in Newfoundland and Labrador tell, and looks at how these narratives fit into broader patterns of narratology, context, and performance. Within the discipline of folkloristics, it examines narratives collected from thirty-two participants to show what types of narratives are most important to LGBTQ persons, with a focus on the coming-out story as a core narrative to their repertoires. The coming-out story is a recognizable and traditional narrative among this folk group, and is compared to both the memorate and fabulate. The story itself is a personal experience narrative, and is performed with specific markers of teller ownership and group membership. Various themes are highlighted in its telling, and these themes speak to issues faced by LGBTQs while coming out. This corpus of narratives, highlighted using such concepts as legend, disclosure, and untellability, gives folklorists a new way of looking at traditional narratives by a contemporary folk group and allows scholars to examine how disclosure narratives of this sort are performed for various audience contexts and for various reasons. By looking at the stories that LGBTQs tell, readers can move toward a better understanding of LGBTQs in Newfoundland and Labrador and other regions, and how they narrate their lives.

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