This assignment uses some of Boylorn’s writing as a model. In her introduction, she talks about auto (slash) ethnography—the slash has symbolic meaning for her—our stories never begin and end with us. For this writing assignment, you will conduct an interview with another person and then work to weave your stories together into one cohesive piece that represents something about the topic, place, story, object, identity, etc that you have chosen to center.
As you approach this assignment, think of it in a few waves, conceptualization, data collection, review, and creation.
1) Conceptualization: You should choose a topic and an interviewee. This is pretty wide open. Think about what you want to write about, stories that you have and perhaps share, and things that connect to cultural norms or public discourses. Maybe you choose to write about a specific location (like Robin and Sweetwater), maybe you write about a particular identity (like Harris and adoptees), maybe you interview a family member about a family story that has been passed down. Your choice in topic should inform who you interview. As you choose this, remember, if you’d like you can use these writings in our final projects.
2) Conceptualization: You should develop some questions that you would like to ask your interviewee. As you develop, try to avoid yes or no questions—a good interview, here, is dialogic and invites your interviewee to (re)live stories with you. Think of phrases like, “Tell me about a time…” or “Have you ever…”—additionally, think of ending with prompts like, “and why?” or “how did that feel?”
3) Data: Before the interview, draft a version of your story related to this topic.
4) Data: Interview your person. With their permission, I would audio or video record this. I would recommend an approx. 30 minute interview. 10 mins is too short, and an hour is likely to become very long as you work with it. Shoot in that 25-35 minute range.
5) Review: Review their responses. Make notes. Find where the story lives, where they give evocative details, where their experience “touch” yours and where they differ. Look for recurrent themes or phrases that reveal something—similar to coding in qualitative research.
6) Review: Re-read the short version of what you wrote. Workshop it with yourself. Ask similar questions that you did as you reviewed the interview.
7) Creation: Now that you have data and you’ve spent time thinking about all of this, it’s time to put it together in a final product. I want you to think about communicating what you learned about either A) Your topic and/or B) the notion of telling stories through your process and present that to the reader. What’s this about? What does it say to us? Why does it matter?
You should create a 3-5 page autoethnographic piece that includes both your stories and those of your interviewee and at least 3 citations (MLA or APA) to relevant literature. One can come from our course readings. Think of how Boylorn writes Sweetwater, look for other examples, or see examples in the additional readings folder. You will have two things to turn in: 1) A representation, recording, and/or notes from your interview and 2) Your complete piece.