"This is my childhood memory of realizing the power of laughter when everything interior and exterior makes me scared."
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.
Through these reflections on heritage, I delve into being a child of parents who immigrated from the Bronx to a suburban lifestyle.
"At friends’ homes and the inexpensive trattorias where I usually ate, there was always wine and water on the table, but often only one glass."
"My parents drank wine with dinner every night. There’s nothing remarkable about that, but to a kid growing up in Mid-Missouri it was weird."
This story explores childbirth-related trauma and postpartum mental health through the lens of a ‘good birth.’
This piece on hair describes how ideas of what is and is not fashionable, as depicted in popular media, can indelibly affect one’s self-perception and identity.
"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."
J. Sumerau·
All ContentAutoethnographic Flash NonfictionAutoethnographic Literary FictionVolume 3, Issue 4 (2023)
··19 min readThis short story about a night in a shed is an attempt to encourage any reader to think about the stories that circulate within communities.
"Horse, Therapy is a story of my own experience and is a commentary on trauma, both in animals and humans."
Ulla-Maija Matikainen·
All ContentAutoethnographic EssaysAutoethnographic PoetryEducationFrom the EditorsVolume 3, Issue 2 (2023)
··4 min read A tsunami of words, images, learned and pushed feelings and thoughts go through us every day. Poetry is a way to find our own voice.
Nothing prepared me for the xenophobia and homophobia I would encounter in Italy. No one warned me how to avoid becoming their victim
However, this autoethnographic piece helped me recognize the importance of levity even when the intellectual content is heavy.