This introduction situates queer trauma as a critical and underexamined category within literary trauma studies, arguing for its distinct affective, narrative, and theoretical dimensions. The chapter traces the overlapping intellectual genealogies of queer theory and trauma theory—particularly their shared roots in deconstruction and poststructuralism—and critiques the tendency to treat queer trauma as either an aestheticised motif or a reparative project. While such framings have often positioned trauma as legible, transformative, or politically productive, this volume interrogates that impulse. Instead, it draws on the work of scholars such as Ann Cvetkovich, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Jack Halberstam, and others to explore how queer trauma frequently manifests as incoherent, non-generative, and resistant to redemptive frameworks. Through an overview of the eight essays included in the volume, the chapter highlights how queer trauma disrupts subjectivity, destabilises narrative, and challenges epistemological norms. It proposes that trauma should not only be viewed as a contingent social wound but also as a structural element of queer subjectivity. One of the volume’s central contributions lies in the breadth of its archive: adopting a genuinely comparative literary approach, the collection foregrounds queer trauma in contexts that extend beyond the predominantly white, Western, and North American focus of existing scholarship. In doing so, it reframes trauma not merely as a theme, but as a constitutive force that conditions queer legibility, aesthetics, and politics. The volume ultimately challenges literary trauma studies to expand its paradigms and invites readers to consider what queer trauma does—not just what it means.