About The Strange Familiar

The Strange Familiar brings pragmatically hopeful dispatches from a troubled planet. Subscribe for observations, analysis, and insights at unlikely junctions, all through an intersectional transfeminist sociological lens. Join me as we seek and discuss the strange amidst familiar aspects of 21st century life.

A Project from Iris Soleil

I am so glad you are here. My name is Iris Soleil (they/she/ella).

I am taking sociology courses on a post-bacc basis in preparation to start a doctoral program in sociology in the fall of 2025. I have a master of science degree in Postsecondary Adult and Continuing Education, where I immersed myself in the theory and practice of how adults learn. Before that, I graduated with a bachelor of arts with a double major in Sexuality, Gender & Queer Studies, with a minor in Spanish. Throughout my undergraduate years, I worked for our Disability Resource Center, and was on our Queer Resource Center advisory board, and also volunteered there. I am a first-generation, non-traditional transfer student, and am proud to be a working class scholar and public intellectual.

I grew up poor in a small, conservative, high desert town in the inland Pacific Northwest. The word college was rarely mentioned in my tumultuous, conservative home and certainly never as anything within reach for anyone in my large family. Being a proto-queer, gender-expansive mama's child in that environment without any concept or vocabulary with which to self identify, let alone self actualize, took its toll.

I didn't know until my late teens that anyone in the world openly identified as queer and I didn't discover the concept of being genderqueer or trans for many years after that. Only much (much) later, after having lived in larger cities for many years, did I find the courage and means to leave the corporate tech world, come out, volunteer at the area LGBTQ community center for several months, and then decide to seriously pursue a college degree.

I’m an educator, scholar, academic professional, public intellectual, photographer, writer, editor, community organizer, activist, event producer, poet and I love to travel, read, and listen to music (and occasionally DJ).

I rent an apartment in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, in the United States. This area rests on traditional village sites of an array of Indigenous peoples who have cherished and cared for the lands throughout this region and beyond for more than 11,000 years. They live here still, despite centuries of genocide, land theft, and oppression, and I respect and honor them and their ancestors.

I hope you’ll connect with my work here and that I’ll have the opportunity to connect with yours.

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