Abstract
In this autoethnographic short story, the author seeks to reflect and advance Norman K. Denzin’s (2001) legacy of interpretive, critical, feminist, and communitarian inquiry by bearing witness to intimacies and fractures of a multi-decade friendship and chosen family. Through “friendship as method,” narrative evocation, and cultural critique, the essay illuminates how structural forces (e.g., heterosexism, homophobia, and sexism) infuse lives and relationships. Honoring Denzin’s call for scholarship that interweaves the personal and political, “Love Letter” traces the author’s investments as friend and co-conspirator while situating the dissolution of a same-sex partnership in broader histories of exclusion. In doing so, the piece invites us to imagine and build more loving and just futures.
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