It is actually perfect that our autoethnography projects are finishing up around Thanksgiving. As I was thinking about what to write this blog post on, I began to think about Thanksgiving and time spent with family. Family is a large factor that contributes to shaping the identity of each individual. That is one of the main themes of my autoethnographic project in all honesty: the power parents have to shape children. I don’t know about you, but when I think of who I am and how I came to be the person I am, I immediately think of my family and my childhood. 

Thanksgiving is a time dedicated to feasting and community with family and friends. This holiday is one I typically spend at my aunt and uncle’s house with my grandparents and all of the family from my mom’s side. This year, my dad’s parents will also be joining us. My favorite memories of Thanksgiving are ones where we are eating sweet potato casserole and strawberry pretzel salad, then laying around watching movies and football. My family is really close and for that I am extremely thankful. I have felt so much love and support my entire life from not only my parents, but my aunts and uncles as well. 

My familial experiences have helped me understand compassion and empathy. I have experienced selfless love and am now able to show that to others  because it was first modelled for me. In addition, my family helped give me a positive outlook on life as well as a good work ethic. My parents are big believers in working for everything you have. They have both worked extremely hard in school, as well as at their jobs, in order to provide a comfortable life for our family. My parents do not work “glamorous” jobs, but they are good at what they do, and they put more effort in than most. While my family is not the only factor that influences me, they are one of the most profound and these are just a few examples of how they have impacted my identity.

Self-writing is a strange concept. In my mind self-writing was always just that, writing about the self – and it still is. I had just never taken the time to analyze what writing about the self truly means. Self-writing is not only a way to communicate fact-based stories about an individual, but it is also a means of expression. This type of writing does not conform to the fact-based, black-and-white world I always thought that it did. I mean, consider the definition of “self”: “self” is everything that makes you who you are – your experiences, beliefs, dreams, relationships, group memberships, and so on. Not all of these entities can be neatly described with facts alone. You would lose the emotion, the meaning, and the power of the “self” being confined to facts, especially when trying to describe a group. 

People identify with various groups whether that is ethnicity, religion, gender, nationality, political party, geographic location, etc. If I were to write about myself, I would have to include that I am a follower of Christ, an American, a woman, and an Ohioan as a few examples. These group memberships have played a crucial role in shaping me into the person I am, and I feel strongly attached to the other people of these groups and their experiences. For example, I may not know any Christians from the Middle East, but my heart hurts for those who face persecution because I feel connected to them based on our beliefs and, therefore, group status. My experiences in said groups do not represent the experiences of all people, however, that does not mean I cannot write about these groups and the overarching experience of myself as well as other people. It is here that you can stray from the facts and write about the experiences of others in order to tell us something about who you are. This can take many forms including a fictional piece that represents how someone that belongs to the same group as you might experience life.  

Before, self-writing was not all that exciting. I had always stuck it in a box labeled “Facts About You” and when that is the content you are pulling from the writing is not exactly exciting. It feels limited and constrained. As we have moved through this class, I have come to see self-writing more as a freedom of expression in which you can pull from a wide range of areas in order to create a message you want to relay to others about who you are. This self-writing is exciting. It’s lifegiving. It’s you – even when it’s not actually you.

One of my favorite pictures is of me and my aunt. I am about three years old in the picture – my hair still in mini-fro form. In the picture we are standing in my kitchen with our family room in the background. I’m wearing a yellow t-shirt and extremely fashionable hot pink shorts with white sandals. My aunt is in jeans, white Keds, and a striped shirt. On our heads are random patterned leggings and shirts, as well as mismatched slippers on our hands. I have the biggest smile on my face and so does my aunt; it is a picture of pure goofiness and joy! 

This image is imprinted in my memory and I can recall this time I spent with my aunt dressing up in silly outfits – I think. Like Kincaid, this memory is partially fact and partially fiction. In her piece, “Biography of a Dress”, she recalls her second birthday in great detail that she clearly could not actually remember on her own. Kincaid uses this image of her in a dress to tell a somewhat True narrative in order to explain and process her relationship with her mother and her experience as a child. She could have told us about her second or third or tenth birthday for all it matters – the point is that she is analyzing her childhood spent with her mother from the perspective of adulthood. 

While I do not actually remember playing with my aunt that exact day, this image and experience speak to my relationship with her as a whole. I was very fortunate that I had a close relationship with my aunt as I grew up (I was her first niece). She and my uncle lived in Chicago for a short period of time, but they decided to move back to Ohio after I was born. I was the flower girl in their wedding and spent quite a bit of time with them as a kid. Throughout middle and high school, they would come to my tennis matches and were still very involved in my life even after having kids of their own. After seeing the whole picture, it is a bit easier to understand how I can “remember” this playdate with my aunt in which we dressed in goofy clothing. I “remember” it because I have so many other great memories of having fun with my aunt that I can imagine what happened that day. This imagined remembrance makes this experience as real to me as if it truly happened. It is a testament to my relationship with my aunt and who she is as a person, so in a way it is true (maybe not True, though).

It is interesting looking at the way in which gender expectations are constructed by society and the culture we live in. In the example of The Woman Warrior, we were able to see the experience of Kingston’s aunt through a number of different lenses; each lens represents a different plausible narrative for what truly happened to her aunt. Nevertheless, all of the narratives speak to the same expectations that society had for her as a woman. They expected her to be submissive, while still upholding her virtue, and to live free of mistakes, so as not to bring shame to her family. Kingston’s aunt was unable to meet these expectations and drowned in them. 

            While I have not felt this same intensity of expectation, I have still felt pressure to be a certain person because I am a woman. All throughout high school, I excelled in my math and science courses; I enjoyed calculus, chemistry, and physics. For years I heard from all different people that I should clearly pursue a career in engineering. I mean, why would I even question or dare to doubt this notion? I am a girl. I am good at math. I am good at science. Therefore, engineering. Engineering is a very respectable field and one in which I would make quite a bit of money. Moreover, companies are looking to hire female engineers since women are not nearly as represented in the field as men. The thing is… I totally bought into it. The idea of going into a “smart” career, making a lot of money, having job security, and doing work I thought I would love made sense to me. 

            It was not until after I decided that engineering was not what I actually wanted to do that I felt as if I had failed these expectations that had been laid upon me. It got to the point where it felt as if I was disgracing women because I “settled” for a career in counseling. Yes, this is the opposite of what culture has told women in the past since counseling is a career that is focused on helping others and that fits with women’s traditional role as caretakers. Today, we are in an age of empowerment for women which is amazing, but I felt pressure to be this superwoman, essentially, who did not conform to “old” roles. While I am all for empowering women, there is not anything wrong with wanting to help and serve others – a  misconceived notion I had adopted. I have now come to peace with my decision and know it is the right path for me, even if it’s not the most progressive.  

            Kingston’s aunt became pregnant by a man who was not her husband which caused her to trip over the cultural expectations in place for women. While my experience is far less traumatic, I felt as if I was failing to meet expectations society had created for me by not pursing a STEM career. 

“Take on Me” by a-ha holds more meaning than most songs in my life. On my sister’s thirteenth birthday a few years ago, my family spent the day at a national park. We brought food for a picnic, we hiked, played Kan Jam, and honestly just had a really nice time. We simply enjoyed each other’s company and spent the afternoon drama-free. Afterwards, we went to a local hot dog shop called for dinner. As we were getting ready to leave, “Take on Me” began playing in the restaurant. My dad is six-foot-seven, reserved, and a fairly intimidating person if you do not know him. However, he just started singing along and dancing around the restaurant like a complete weirdo. My entire family joined in on the silliness and made fools of ourselves in front of the other customers. Even the entire restaurant staff all started singing and dancing behind the counter. To this day, that experience is one of my very favorite memories of my entire nineteen-year existence. That sweet time was pure joy. Pure and joy. 

            Reflecting back, this three-minute experience communicates a lot about my personal values as well as values we hold as Americans. Thankfully, I have a family who loves and supports me in everything I do; they are not perfect, but they are about as close as you get. I could not imagine not having this support, so naturally, I value familial relationships. Similarly, American culture also values the family unit. The “American Dream” includes a husband, or wife, along with two-and-a-half kids – give or take a half. American culture sees the family as a place for developing moral and knowledgeable citizens. This is only an ideal and is more often than not untrue of most families. However, this notion is still an important part of American culture and ideology. My experience is more than just a personal story – it relates how American culture, as well as myself, values family. 

I feel as though so often in our search for Truth and understanding we kick the idea of self and personability to the curb. We label it illegitimate; it is as if subjectivity is the plague. Our brains are trained to automatically reject any personal anecdotes or experiences when in an academic setting. This is due to years of being preached to about factual evidence and the importance of objective truth which has caused us to devalue the truth found in the people around us. We have come to believe objectivity is more important than subjectivity, when in reality they are both important, just in separate settings. How are we to learn about ourselves as a people through a purely objective lens? 

            I believe stories are essential in this process. Stories are how we communicate who we are, what we believe, and what we want our lives to look like. It is hearing from other people that helps us to alter our world view, lifestyle, attitude, etc. Everyone has those moments when another human being shares something that causes one’s mind to stop and think, Wow I can’t look at [fill in the blank] the same again. It didn’t require facts; it didn’t require a presentation with fancy graphs and data points that no one understands; all it took was a simple story in order to radically change another person. What better way is there to learn about human beings than by hearing from human beings about human beings?  

            Autoethnography is just one vehicle that allows us human beings to educate one another about ourselves. We can learn truth (with a little “t”) from autoethnographic work and it is still Truth regardless of whether there is science behind it. It is through autoethnography that we can relearn how to value personability and educate ourselves based on the self. 

We all have to trust in things we cannot see simply due to the fact that we will never be able to see everything. I feel as though most people understand this whether or not it is explicitly stated – it is the only way to cope with living in a world that is full of the unexpected. Some people trust that you end up where you are supposed to by a force of the universe; other people, like me,  believe in a God in which we can place our trust despite not being able to see Him physically. Chee, author of “The Querent”, had to take a windy road in order to end up at the same conclusion most of us accept for fear that we will drive ourselves crazy if we don’t. For most people, the thought of trying to determine how every possible event in their life is going to play out is enough to suffocate them. 

            Chee’s path to this conclusion is marked by his experience with trauma as a teenager. With the death of his dad, Chee’s world was stripped of things he thought to be certainties – things he never imagined being temporary. He lost his father as well as his security. As control was taken out of Chee’s hands, he reached out to grasp it and his hands came back with Tarot cards. It is through the cards that Chee felt the control he had lost with the loss of his father. He used the cards as a way to try and see into the future – to try and feel some sense of power. Chee allowed the Tarot cards to consume him until they became his crutch and fed into his addiction for knowledge of the future. 

            Chee was finally able to realize that knowing the future only binds you. His focus on the future forced him to neglect the present and ruin several relationships. How can you enjoy life when you aren’t ever present for it? Chee finally learned that you just have to trust in the things you can’t see. 

            That phrase does seem a little ridiculous, but we actually practice it every day. Take friendship, for example: there is no tangible item labeled “friendship” and you can’t see it. However, we know it exists by the word our friends say, their desire to spend time with us, and the way they show up when it all hits the fan. There are a lot of things we believe in that we can’t see: freedom, loyalty, truth. As humans we have to put our trust in something other than ourselves in order to survive a life littered with uncertainty. Chee now understands that instead of trying to control the uncertainty one has to run with it.

            One thing I struggled to understand at first was the idea of “subjective truth”. When it was first brought up in class, I immediately thought, “That does not make any sense; it is a contradiction.” However, the more we unpacked what subjective truth truly is, it opened my eyes to better understand autobiographics as a whole. 

I am a pretty black-and-white thinker since I look at most things as either right or wrong. I understand there is grey area, but I still err on the side of there being things that are true or not true. Subjective truth is the definition of “grey area”. It encases things that are true for the subject, regardless of whether they actually happened or can be proven. If the subject believes something to be “true”, then it is technically true for that subject. No, subjective truth cannot be scientifically validated, but it is still just as real for the subject as if one could scientifically prove it. An example of subjective truth would be someone stating, “I was born near the ocean, so that is why I am a good swimmer.” That person could have been born near the ocean and moved to the mountains when they were a month old, but that does not make that statement any less true for the person who said it. They believe it to be true whether or not one can prove it.

 I am not kidding – the night after we discussed subjective truth in class, a friend of mine was talking about how her mom almost died giving birth to her and how that explains why their relationship is so rocky. Knowing there were issues at the time she was born, my friend was able to come to the conclusion that her relationship with her mom is not great because they got off to a bad start. Whether that is actually the reason or not, it makes sense to my friend and is, therefore, true for her. 

When looking at the study of autobiographics, it is not about determining if the things that are recorded actually happened the way they are described. The focus is not on whether the statements made are true for everyone; the focus is why the statements are true for the subject and what importance that has to understanding the subject. I feel as though this adjustment in mindset will help me going forward as we read other texts. I will no longer read with the intent of determining the factual validity of the text, but rather the significance of the way the information is communicated and what that says about the communicator.