An Autoethnography of my Journey Through Autoethnography

Abstract

Autoethnography is a qualitative method which allows the researcher to incorporate one’s professional and personal identities to share an aspect of their everyday experiences. Upon examining my experience of parental divorce, I discovered that my personal voice, one of a Chinese-Canadian woman, was missing from the dominant discourse within the divorce literature. Due to the incongruence between the literature and my experiences, I was drawn to autoethnography as a method which would allow me to add a personal voice to the body of literature on divorce. This project did not unfold as expected. My journey through autoethnography led me to re-engage with the emotional experience that originally inspired my research. This shifted the focus to how autoethnography can be used as a transformative tool which reconnects researchers to the personal and emotional experiences that initially motivated their interest in a specific topic.