Telling stories has been part of my upbringing since birth. My Jamaican immigrant grandparents used stories to shape my identity, build character, and share their histories – stories of arriving in a country that welcomed them on paper but not in practice, of surviving in a place that saw them as outsiders. Their narratives paved the way for my own. It wasn’t until I entered academia that I realised this cherished storytelling had a name: autoethnography, which is, as described, ‘always, first and last, storytelling work’ (Solnit, 2017 in Jones, 2019).

In this blog post, I explore how celebrating personal stories shaped my understanding of self and informed my doctoral research on the identities of distance educators and the experiences of Black mothers raising autistic children in the UK. Personal narratives are important in academic discourse, highlighting methodologies that reflect and respond to the lived experiences of marginalised, racialised and gendered groups.

The disruptive power of storytelling

In my doctoral research, I use autoethnography as both a research method and a lens to explore the intersections of personal and professional identities in educators, and how these intersections influence teaching practices. Jones and Harris (2020) argue that academia often undervalues autoethnography due to its reliance on personal experience and the perceived lack of objectivity. As a result, storytelling is frequently dismissed as unscientific, lacking rigor, and not genuine research. However, storytelling is not merely a pursuit of knowledge; it is a quest for representation. Autoethnography holds disruptive power, offering an ‘understanding of how experiences within cultures are enlarged and/or constrained by relations of power, oppression, and privilege’ (Jones & Harris, 2020, p. 197). It challenges the conventional and supposedly objective stance of traditional research by making ‘plain the impossibility of narrating a coherent sense of self in and through time’ (Jones & Harris, 2020, p. 197). Storytelling is an act of freedom, and lived experience is valid knowledge.

‘Storytelling is frequently dismissed as unscientific, lacking rigor, and not genuine research. However, storytelling is not merely a pursuit of knowledge; it is a quest for representation.’

In my research, reflecting on personal experiences has been both cathartic and essential in making sense of my life. However, my narratives, alongside those of my participants, are not seen as isolated reflections but as critical tools for examining educational identities and the structures that shape them.

Collaborative autoethnography

Building on the success of incorporating stories in my doctoral research, I adopted the same approach in Mothering at the Margins with Dr Claire Malcolm. This project aims to address an under-researched area by foregrounding the lived experiences of Black mothers of autistic children.

We use Collaborative Autoethnography (CAE) to explore experiences by examining personal stories within a broader sociopolitical context. As Zora Neale Hurston illustrated, our ‘I’ is inherently linked to the ‘we’ (Marino, 2011), highlighting the interconnectedness of individual and collective narratives and enriching our analysis.

CAE empowers researchers and participants to co-construct narratives, linking personal experiences to broader cultural and social contexts. Like autoethnography, CAE challenges traditional research-participant boundaries by positioning the researcher as both the subject and the author (Malorni et al., 2023). It is significant because our research aims to amplify the experiences of Black mothers of autistic children – a community often overlooked and dismissed. By highlighting these voices, CAE challenges the research community that marginalises subcultures like ours, asserting that our stories are valid, even if they cannot be easily measured or quantified.

Yet, storytelling is not just about knowledge but a quest for representation. Boylorn (2016) highlights black girl autoethnography as a praxis of self-construction, urging engagement with vulnerability, complexity and self-definition. Our work underscores that lived experiences are not mere anecdotes but essential for understanding diverse voices and experiences.

As Jones (2021, p. 217) articulates:

‘We are living in a time and space in which the personal – our sense of selves, safety, health, and well-being, and our relationships with others and the planet and our work – is urgently and globally political.’

In this context, I will continue to use autoethnography, contributing to broader conversations involving Black British women, female academics, mothers, and other identity groups I belong to.

References

Boylorn, R. M. (2016). On being at home with myself. International Review of Qualitative Research, 9(1), 44–58. https://doi.org/10.1525/irqr.2016.9.1.44

Jones, S. H. (2019). Living an autoethnographic activist life. Qualitative Inquiry, 25(6), 527–528. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418800755

Jones, S. H. (2021). Autoethnography and the importance of working collectively. International Review of Qualitative Research, 14(2), 217–220. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940844720978765

Jones, S. H. & Harris, A. (2020). Critical autoethnography and mental health research. In P. M. W. Hackett & C. M. Hayre (Eds.), Handbook of ethnography in healthcare research (pp. 197–209). Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.

Malorni, A., Diaz, A., Spencer, M. S., & Jones, T. (2023). Collaborative autoethnography as a tool for research–practice partnerships: Facilitating self and school transformation. Qualitative Social Work, 22(4), 643–662. https://doi.org/10.1177/14733250221088211

Marino, M. (2011, December 15). Multimedia Hurston: Zora Neale Hurston’s auto-ethnographic projects of sound, image, movement, and text. Explorations: The Twentieth Century. https://explorations20th.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/multimedia-hurston-zora-neale-hurstons-auto-ethnographic-projects-of-sound-image-movement-and-text/

Solnit, R. (2017, March 13). Protest and persist: Why giving up hope is not an option. Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/13/protest-persist-hope-trump-activism-anti-nuclear-movement