'Do You Know What I Mean?’: Rhizomatic Biographies and Unbelievable Stories in Trauma Narratives

People experiencing homelessness are commonly required to recount their life stories when accessing services. These biographies, often replete with trauma, disruption and the pains of survival, can be difficult to recount in linear narratives, which can engender feelings of epistemic injustice and self-stigmatisation, with assumptions of disbelief stemming from both the ‘unbelievability’ of the trauma and they ways in which the stories are told. This paper analyses the research interviews of 23 people who have experienced homelessness, not for the events recounted, but for the ways in which storytelling devices may illuminate meaning. Four storytelling devices – described as evental, cyclical, metaphorical and ‘messy’ storytelling were identified. We argue that, while these devices and tropes may complexify understanding, the fractured and idiosyncratic ways in which the stories are told hold as much potential to understand the participants as the lived experiences they share. Fractured narratives and sense checking in stories of trauma reflect and illuminate the meaning and ongoing impacts of trauma itself. Conceptualising fractured narratives as rhizomatic biographies allows for new ways of listening that may facilitate deeper understandings of trauma in people who have experienced homelessness.