Weaving the Personal and Political

This chapter is both a glimpse into my use of critical autoethnography to weave together my and my Aunt Eloise’s stories and encouragement for writers and teachers of writing to use autoethnography for research and writing about the self. The first section discusses the challenge of telling “truth” in stories about ours and others’ pasts. Looking at the lack of narrative writing instruction in U.S. secondary and post-secondary schools, I examine and critique the use of family stories and expound on how autoethnographic methods, whether with someone related or not, allow us to see our story in others. Finally, I offer two activities for producing narrative data to use either alone or in sequence.