Drawing trans ageing in Malaysia: River of Life Polytextual Thematic Analysis as a creative and reflexive method

Creative and participatory methods can offer valuable ways to explore ageing and life course experience, yet their analytic frameworks remain underdeveloped, particularly in research with older trans people in global majority contexts. This article develops River of Life Polytextual Thematic Analysis (RoL-PTA), a creative and reflexive approach for analysing participant-produced River of Life (RoL) drawings as visual and textual materials. Drawing on fieldwork with 30 older trans women in Malaysia, including 27 RoL drawings, the article demonstrates a six-stage analytic workflow that brings together visual features, participant explanations, interview transcripts, field notes and reflexive memos. The article uses polytemporal reading, through which biographical, narrative and historical temporal dimensions are traced within and across drawings. Three theoretically salient RoL drawings illustrate how contrasting visual forms can generate different ways of organising meaning in later life. The analysis also generates the concept of the queer temporal continuum, which captures how past, present and future may become entangled under conditions of stigma, constrained recognition and managed visibility. The article argues that RoL-PTA offers a flexible methodological framework for creative ageing research while demonstrating the importance of participant explanation, cultural context and researcher reflexivity when interpreting visual life course materials.