"Unspeakable is a consideration of the silencing effects of stuttering, political censorship, unspeakable wartime atrocities, and the silent communication within virtual relationships."
Autoethnographic Writing
Whether short-form or long-form, personal memoir or speculative fiction, The AutoEthnographer seeks to publish your evocative expressions of the cultural made personal.
"When a favorite perfume ceases to exist, it is another kind of death. Having been created, it leaves a special sort of emptiness," from Eulogy for a Perfume.
"I had no idea what the repercussions would be should I disclose my identity to my students. Would I be fired? Would I be questioned? Would I be told not to talk of such things? This reticence is a sad reflection on my internalized homophobia, my being still uncomfortable enough with my identity such that I had to worry about keeping it secret."
"Ongoing horrific events painstakingly filled my mind when I submerged into Dante’s Commedia Divina. Our tragedy with nature revealed itself to me in its deepest form."
Terry Graff·
All ContentAutoethnographic Art & MultimediaAutoethnographic EssaysAutoethnographic WritingClimate Change Special Issue, 2022
··15 min read"As the world’s bird populations decline precipitously, will the many winged creatures we knew as children live only in the mists of memory?"
"And these are the things I carry: the memories of those gone before us; the names of those entrusted to me to care for."
"Have you ever crossed the desert in a circus train? I took such a detour—by choice— in 1978 when I hung up my pointe shoes to ride an elephant named Peggy."
"Ami Tau Ami (I Am Who I Am), is a story about a mother letting go of her own dreams but passing it to her daughter, as my mother did for me."
”I still aim to engage in the process of life, commit to a meaningful purpose, and structure my life around an intrinsically satisfying activity. For me, I will continue writing as a way to make sense of what it means to be alive.”
Terry Graff·
All ContentAutoethnographic Art & MultimediaAutoethnographic EssaysClimate Change Special Issue, 2022
··13 min read"In retrospect, it was inevitable that birds and machines would converge in my work as a life-long exploration and expression of the relationship between nature and technology through the creation of avian cyborgs, the genesis of which can be traced back to my early drawings of robots and of the bygone birds of my childhood."
Autoethnographic Literary Nonfiction: I Just Want to Go Home – Moving, Loss and Unacknowledged Grief
"Moving away from a beloved home at a tender age was traumatizing, in part, because that home was the only place in which I felt safe."
"The words we use and how we say them are much more than sounds, they tell a story that gives us away, revealing a history about and behind us, a place and a people that we have come from."
