Just Trash

Abstract

Just Trash is a creative dissertation comprised of four personal essays that take on various questions of identity and empathy that arise when a non-binary bisexual woman grows up in a Southern evangelical, working-class home, an environment that is politically, religiously, regionally, and culturally so different from the one I currently inhabit. It also contains a scholarly introduction that explores the purpose of the memoir as a whole, as well as its origins; the functions and import of each chapter and the place of my memoir within the larger genre through looking at four key types of memoir with which it is in conversation: Southern memoir, trauma memoir, religious memoir, and queer memoir.