The will to exist: Stories of violence and resistance in a community of trans women

Abstract

The will to exist: Stories of violence and resistance in a community of trans women
This article analyzes different forms of violence faced by a community of trans women (sex workers and former sex workers), in the city of San José, Costa Rica; as well as their collective strategies for resisting and defending their lives and their identities. Using a discontinuous narratives technique, in this text, I seek to interconnect stories registered during the three years of militant research and ethnographical process I developed with this community. This approach pursues to knit the narrations of multiple participants, in order to reconstruct the history of this community from their own perspective: as survivals, as victims, as rebels.