This book is a fictionalized version of Ellis teaching a class about autoethnographic methods. Most of the characters are real (well, fictional versions of themselves), and two are composite characters. This book made me realize how diverse autoethnography can be, that it’s easier in some ways and harder in other ways than I thought, and that counterstory seems to be a kind of autoethnography with a particular theoretical framework (CRT). That answers the main question I had from counterstory— whether it can be done about oppressions other than race. The answer seems to be no, but you can use similar methods with similar “outcome” creations for other oppressions.. But counterstory is a word that belongs to CRT writing and research.
I liked it a lot! It answered a bunch of questions I had and taught me a lot. I like that she used the method she was writing about in order to write about it. I like the hard conversations depicted, and I like the syllabus and other supplementary materials at the back. Another thing I enjoyed was the chapters that are based on her interviews with her students after she had them read an earlier draft of the book, and they discussed her construction of the book and her portrayals of each of them.
Ellis frequently co-writes with her husband Art, a communications professor. They’ve written autoethnographic pieces about some very personal things— such as an abortion that took place early in their relationship. This seems very very hard to do and I’m impressed. I wonder if their dynamic is accurately represented in the book or if they have more fights and hard times related to their shared work than depicted. Although if they did, I guess they wouldn’t keep co-writing together. It’s also wild to me that they each teach the story of their own abortion in their classes. I could never.
I particularly valued the discussions over ethics in autoethnography, particularly with getting permission from people in your life that you wish to write about. Your story is always also their story, and vice versa. I disagree with some of the choices the characters made. I’ve hurt people in the past by writing about them without taking proper ethical measures (like asking and discussing in advance), and I regret it a lot. Ellis talks about how she published a piece about caring for her mom in the hospital. The story includes some very intimate details/moments between them. She didn’t ask her mom in advance if it would be okay to write that, although years later she did share the piece with her mom and her mom was okay with it. What if she wasn’t? There’s another story in which Penny, a student who wrote about her abusive relationship, gave a performance of her piece for volunteers at a domestic violence support shelter. The event did not go well— the volunteers were super uncomfortable by what they saw as her blaming herself for the abuse and Ellis encouraging it/not supporting her. The fascinating and hard part is, afterwards, the researchers and the volunteers had a series of meetings and conversations together in which they unpacked what went wrong and why it went wrong, so Ellis is able to present a nuanced view of many different perspectives in her book, based on the conversations.
I was also left feeling very frustrated, though. We never learned anything about autoethnography during my anthropology degree! And it turns out there’s a whole ton of scholarship about issues of writing anthropology, and I didn’t know about it! I struggled with finding ways to straddle English and anthropology, my two majors, and it felt like none of the faculty knew what to do with me. But all of this was here all along! If someone had known about it, they could have told me. My whole research trajectory could have been very different. I probably would have done something different for my BA thesis. And definitely might have ended up doing something different for my PhD— going for a different discipline or a different school, maybe. It’s hard to say.
Stuff I Marked
p.22- “for evocation in addition to representation as a goal for social science research, for generalization through the resonance of readers, and for opening up rather than closing down conversation.”
p.30 - paragraph on key features of autoethnography
p.39- examples of anthropologists and publishing venues that do autoethnography/anthroliterary things. Stanley Diamond, Sapir and Benedict (published poetry), Anthropology and Humanism (journal), Laurel Richardson
p.39- discussion of factors that affect whether something is called autoethnography or ethnography, autoethnography of memoir
p.64-66- note about interactive interviewing and how it’s a good strategy when everyone involved has personal experience with the topic at hand (good for me and bi research!)
p.89- Ellis’s advice on what to do if you’re anxious about biasing your data/if people will accuse you of biasing your data
p.116— on truth vs. accuracy and the unreliability of field notes
p.117— difference between field notes and a first draft of a story
p.122- one character lists the different genres she used to write up interviews— she was just experimenting to see which ones worked best for her
p.123-126 more on truth vs. accuracy and the issue of validity in autoethnography
p.125- discussion of guy who wrote fiction based on his fieldwork bc his participants were part of an especially vulnerable population and he wanted to protect their identities extra well
p.240- Hector’s project on bicultural identity is kinda similar to my project! Reference this!
p.252- discussion of how to evaluate autoethnographic projects
p.309- how a student’s experience of pain in her body affects her writing
Sources To Look Up
Geertz, Clifford and Marcus, Marcus and Fischer (p.17) - mentioned as anthropologists dealing with issues on the intersections of anthropology and literature
Ruth Behar, The Vulnerable Observer
“Assessing Alternative Modes of Qualitative and Ethnographic Research: How Do We Judge? Who Judges?” special section in Qualitative Inquiry (journal)