Resisting Erasure Through Transnational Digital Queer Literacies

This study examines how a transnational queer learner from Japan, “Amy,” mobilizes transnational queer digital literacies (TQDL) to navigate and resist cisheteronormative and raciolinguistic discourses across Japanese and U.S. contexts. Drawing on interviews, journals, and Instagram posts, this instrumental case study brings queer literacies, transnational literacies, and raciolinguistic inquiry into conversation to conceptualize TQDL as multimodal, affective, and critical meaning-making practices. The findings reveal three interrelated themes: negotiating queer illegibility across contexts, developing critical resistance through reflection and self-representation, and restorying belonging through digital visibility, critique, and solidarity. Together, these findings show how digital platforms function as affective, translingual, and political spaces where queer learners make themselves visible, process exclusion, and seek recognition across uneven transnational conditions. This study contributes to queer literacies scholarship by showing how digital self-representation is shaped by multilingual movement, cross-border audience negotiation, and raciolinguistic legibility, and it positions TQDL as a framework for understanding how queer individuals use digital practices to contest erasure and imagine more livable futures.