Going Along with Trans, Queer, and Non-Binary Youth

Engaging, self-reflective stories of conducting research on and with transgender, queer, and non-binary youth as they go about their everyday lives in New York City. Honorable Mention, for the 2025 Outstanding Book Award presented by the Qualitative Research SIG of the American Educational Research Association This book recounts a series of mobile interviews-or "go-alongs"-with eleven transgender, queer, and non-binary youth to examine the everyday ways they navigated and made their lives in New York City. By telling the stories of how the go-alongs transpired and using detailed narrative description, Sam Stiegler shifts methodological attention to those parts of scholarly studies that often get left on the cutting room floor. Going Along with Trans, Queer, and Non-Binary Youth foregrounds process, not just findings, reflecting on the complexities of embodying the position of researcher and what it was like to do research with these participants. We, as readers, are compelled not only to see how these young people express knowledge about their worlds and their understandings of race, gender, sexuality, class, and age but also to appraise how we make sense of them in the course of our reading.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction: Before We Go Along 1. A Researcher's Escape from New York 2. Library Time with Brian 3. La Princess Doesn't Have Time to Have a Bad Day 4. Scarlet and Popeye Work Up a Sweat 5. Shopping for Stripper Heels with Anna 6. Foxxy and the Shoes of Many Colors 7. Taking the D Train with Yetfounded 8. Warby's Lost Tapes 9. Scarlet Wishes She Was a Flat-Chested Lesbian 10. To Grandmother's House John Goes 11. Under the Trees at Lincoln Center with Elliod and Dan 12. Meeting Axel's Posse 13. John's Grandmother Has Some Questions 14. You Breaking Up with Me, Sam? Coda: Landing at LaGuardia Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Sam Stiegler is an incoming McKenzie Fellow at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne.

Review :
"Going Along with Trans, Queer, and Non-Binary Youth offers new contributions to education and youth studies, gender and sexuality studies, and qualitative methods. Throughout, Stiegler grapples with the limits of contemporary research methods in recognizing and depicting the lives of young people, particularly those at the margins of oppressive social and cultural regimes: queer youth, trans youth of color, and those without economic privilege, housing security, and/or supportive and resourced families. Recognizing these limits, Stiegler asks us to consider how research might be done differently—more richly, thoughtfully, and generatively. What unfolds is an invitation for readers to consider the sophisticated knowledge and capabilities of these young people as they navigate their urban world. The go-alongs are the heart of this book, generating fascinating and important data that would not be possible without the clearly articulated methodological choices that Stiegler has made." — Victoria Rawlings, coeditor of Community-Led Research: Walking New Pathways Together