This is a love letter to my people, my family and a version of me trying to overcome the trauma of almost seeing their mother die.
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.
This autoethnographic account explores the complex relationship between language and identity.
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.
"My Old Kentucky Homo," highlights my failure to assimilate into the community in which I still live, fourteen years later.
"From dancing at New York’s Metropolitan Opera to the Cow Palace in San Francisco, every venue taught me valuable lessons."
This lighthearted essay illustrates an experience I had in Singapore while doing research for a book I was writing about spirituality.
The process of seeking pregnancy alone (by necessity, not choice) showed me how limited reproductive rights in the U.S. truly are—even before the recent loss of Roe vs. Wade, that policy that had so shaped my generation’s belief in our bodily autonomy.
There are multiple approaches to find one's poetic voice depending on the lens one chooses as a part of the author’s creative process.
This particular piece, "What is Human, Remains" looks back at my first year as a teacher, and the unexpected activism in my students.
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.
I wrote a study of my own faith, bankrupt as it may be, using story of my father, through the lens of Jewishness as I define it for myself.
Zona. I have always thought that names of diseases sound so beautiful. This is the story of a disease that lives with me.
