Final reflection
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HowtoUseAuto_ethnographytoBridgeDifference-Boylorn.pdf
From Here to There How to Use Auto/ethnography to Bridge Difference
Robin M. Boylorn
Abstract In this reflexive auto/ethnography, the author challenges the
lessons she learned about difference growing up in a small community.
Seeing Johnson’s quare theory as an opportunity to reimagine problematic
conditioning, she reflects on moments of clarity related to sexuality, race,
class, and gender difference and theorizes the possibilities of quare auto/
ethnography as an opportunity to critique and engage difference. She uses
auto/ethnography to introduce the possibilities of bridging (backward) in an
effort to make sense and make meaning from difficult, painful, and com-
plicated experiences.
Keywords: difference, stereotypes, prejudice, embodiment, place-specific expe-
rience, quare theory, quare auto/ethnography, blackened auto/ethnography,
bridge building, black women, reflexivity
Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary
polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic. Only then
does the necessity for interdependency become unthreatening. Only within
that interdependency of different strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the
power to seek new ways of being in the world generate, as well as the courage
and sustenance to act where there are no charters. (Lorde, 2007, p. 111)
My body houses my stories and remembers them sensually. Viscerally.
(Here.) Elbows, knees, chin, lips.
(There.) Ear lobes, nose, eyes, hands.
(Here.) Skin.
(There.) Stretch marks, moles, scars.
My body is a bridge that carries all the places I have lived and all the people I have
known.
International Review of Qualitative Research, Vol. 7, No. 3, Fall 2014, pp. 312–326. ISSN 1940-8447, eISSN 1940-8455. © 2014 International Institute for Qualitative Research, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. All rights reserved. Request permission to photocopy or reproduce article content at the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/irqr.2014.7.3.312.
Auto/ethnography1 is like a bridge on my body, marked in words and scripts that
tell stories and secrets in invisible ink only I can see. When I tell my stories, reading
from the prose on my skin, written in my handwriting between brown lines on my
flesh, they are run-on sentences and fragments, falling off my side like long outgrown
garments. The stories blend in the archways of my body, the bend of my elbow, the
crevices between my fingers and toes, in the dip of my belly button, behind my ears,
on my thighs, and between my lips. I hide my deepest secrets there because no one
looks for bridges between the lines.
* * *
Bridges are passageways from here to there. They fill in gaps and openings, get
crossed over, in both directions, sometimes at the same time. Some people are afraid
of crossing a bridge, out of a fear that it might collapse under the weight of the
unknown. The uncertainty of encountering difference on the other side of ourselves
is a challenge.
Bridges are shoulders.
Bridges get tired.
* * *
Our experiences of difference and place are marked on the body. While places map
onto our identity, we also map and mark the places we live and inhabit (Mingé &
Zimmerman, 2013). Our presence (and absence) in these spaces leads to place-
specific experiences that influence our identity and how we come to know and
understand ourselves in relationship to others. Our positionality and standpoint
dictate difference and how it is performed, experienced, and understood. In the
following autoethnographic excerpt, I expand the metaphor of my body as a bridge
and my story as a bridge, across difference.
A Bridge At Home: Intersections and Dirt Roads
I don’t remember much about the first trailer we lived in other than it sat just beyond
the borders of our family land. We were surrounded on both sides by neighbors far
enough for privacy but close enough to feel welcome. There were well-worn paths in
the woods to get from our house to the babysitters and trees with trunks that looked
like welcoming arms every time I climbed them. My grandmother had a modest
garden in the yard, and there was a patch of sweet dirt near where the cars were
parked and where we kept Blackjack, our Doberman pinscher, tied up to the light
FROM HERE TO THERE 313
pole. The dirt road seemed endlessly long when we rode our bikes, and there were
deep ditches to hide in when we played hide and go seek and went to bury our
treasures (cheap prizes from cereal boxes or happy meals).
When I think of my childhood I remember the sanctity of home. I remember the
deep orange and heavy burgundy of curtains that kept the house dark and warm year-
round. I remember the tattered pictures of relatives in cheap gold foil frames hanging
on the hollow walls with wallet-sized school pictures of unrecognizable children
tucked in the corner. I remember plastic-covered couches in the ‘‘living room,’’ where
we were never allowed to sit, and the hiss of the pressure pot and smell of ham hocks
brewing every time my grandmother cooked.
Home, back then, did not mean the walls around the place you lived but every-
thing around it. Our bedroom community was close-knit with shared histories and
legacies that captured our security and intentional stagnancy. We chose small
churches that our grandparents helped build over megachurches where our names
would be lost. We preferred hometown minimarkets to grocery stores because we
could buy things on credit (reputation), not with credit (cards). We kept our doors
unlocked during the day so that company could ‘‘come on in’’ when we called, and
our phone number was listed in the phone book so that anyone looking could find us.
When we said ‘‘make yourself at home,’’ we meant it, so our guests would take off
their shoes, fix themselves a plate, and sink into the cheap couch like they belonged.
We felt safe and protected because even though crime and violence existed, even
criminals respected the people they grew up with.
On the inside, our lives were all alike because we were four or five generations
deep in the struggle to exist. Generation after generation we had lived there, on land
that was ours, roads named after us, with jobs and talents passed down to hardheaded
children. We lived lives that no one else seemed to care about. From the outside
looking in, nobody distinguished the haves from the have nots; we were all poor to
them, as dirty as the red mud we walked barefoot on. We were invisible to outsiders
and sometimes to each other.
To be invisible was preferable. Invisibility meant hegemony, which translated, in
our community, to harmony. Difference was strictly disciplined.
We saw outsiders, anyone not from where we were from, as other-worldly,
suspicious and not worthy of trust or consideration. We were aware that people
on the outside saw us as good for nothing, uneducated, unsophisticated, retrograde
rural Jesus freaks who would never have anything or amount to anything. These were
both stereotypes and possibilities for some of us, but we concentrated on our realities
instead of other people’s imaginations.
314 ROBIN M. BOYLORN
Our homogenous lives were grounded in redundancy and familiarity. There is
comfort when everybody knows your name (and your business). We learned differ-
ence was dangerous. I was warned to avoid driving down unlit roads alone at night
because Klansmen were known to lie in wait there. I was told, at a certain age, that to
wear provocative clothes would provoke the masked lusts of boys and grown men
alike and that it was my responsibility to not tempt them. I was expected to receive
good grades and to pay attention in school because white people assumed black
children were ‘‘hard learners,’’2 and I would have to prove them wrong by working
twice as hard. When someone pointed out a man in the neighborhood who dressed
like a woman, or a woman who walked like a man, they were called ‘‘funny,’’ and their
parents, especially the mother, were blamed for them turning out ‘‘that way.’’ Women
kept and ran households, but there was an unspoken understanding that men, even
in their absence, were somehow superior to women, so women and blackgirl children
were expected to cook, clean, fix plates, wash clothes and dishes, and otherwise cater
to men and to try with all of their might to deserve a man’s love, affection, or loyalty
when they were grown. These lessons came from the pulpit, the porch, and the
pathway, from aunts, cousins, and strangers.
Auto/ethnography: Here and There
Chang (2013) describes autoethnography as a personal and social process. She says:
It is personal because the personal experiences of researchers themselves are the
foundation of autoethnography. It is also a highly social process.
Autoethnographers carefully examine how they have interacted with other people
within their socio-cultural contexts and how social forces have influenced their
lived experiences. Therefore, in a public light, autoethnographies reveal their
author’s personal, professional, relational, and socio-cultural identities. (p. 107)
While auto/ethnography is traditionally used to encourage reciprocal (inside-out)
and analytical investigations of self and culture, the personal and social significance
make it a useful method for introducing and discussing controversial topics related to
social identity (Boylorn, 2011a, 2011b), especially for marginalized folk. In this article,
I use auto/ethnography to confront my biases, interrupt stubborn narratives that
resist diversity, and make new and revised storylines possible.
As a form of ‘‘doubled storytelling that moves from self to culture and back again’’
(Boylorn, 2013a, p. 174), auto/ethnography values lived experience as data and allows
researchers to be fully conscious as writers and participants in their narratives.
FROM HERE TO THERE 315
Because it privileges the ‘‘I’’ and centers personal experience, auto/ethnography has
the capacity to speak to/from both the margins and hyphens of subjective experi-
ences. I engage reflexive auto/ethnography as a bridge that connects the past with the
future. Engaging auto/ethnography as a way of making meaning and reimagining
moments with new eyes and new insight introduces the possibilities of bridging
(backward) in an effort to make sense and make meaning from difficult, painful, and
complicated experiences.
Auto/ethnography asks that I pay attention to the details and everydayness of my
life, write about and through difficult moments, write to make sense of my self, write
to make sense of the world, and write to alleviate the seeming discomfort that resides
in topics that go unspoken. This call to write as a personal and social endeavor
requires me to interrogate not only how I influence places and culture but how the
places I live, visit, and inhabit influence me. I want to understand how the place I call
home provided security and safety but also instigated prejudices.
Autoethnography requires researchers to ‘‘make personal experiences meaning-
ful for others, and, consequently, say something about cultural experience and/or
motivate cultural change’’ (Adams, 2011, p. 158). Accordingly, I write auto/ethnog-
raphy as a method of inquiry (Richardson, 2000) to resist assumptions (Griffin, 2012),
to demystify difference, to examine how my interior life shapes and is shaped by
larger culture, to implicate and interrogate myself in my prior and present prejudices,
to emphasize intersectional components of identity, and to instigate positive cultural
change by challenging the homogenous groupthink that is often rooted in small rural
communities.
I situate my raced, sexed, and classed consciousness by writing ‘‘blackened’’ auto/
ethnography (Boylorn, 2013a), which helps me negotiate place-specific realities and
find connections in seemingly incongruous spaces. I concentrate on my role as a former
member of a small rural community and how my relationship to that community and
the people who live in it has influenced my perspective of difference. I interrogate
myself as an outsider-within (Collins, 1986) to discuss how my experiences in my home
community inform how I approach and understand difference outside it. I also inter-
rogate difference in the academy, in dorm rooms and classrooms, to explain how auto/
ethnography can be considered alongside theory to help bridge cultural difference.
Theories of Difference
In the opening quote to this article, Audre Lorde (2007) explains the creative poten-
tial of difference. Lorde celebrated diversity in her work and focused on the theory of
316 ROBIN M. BOYLORN
difference that claims black women’s experiences are not only different from white
women but different from each other. In her lectures and essays, she discussed the
impact of race, class, sex, age, ability, and sexual orientation as factors that influence
how oppression is uniquely experienced. She was disinterested in ignoring our dif-
ferences for the sake of solidarity but instead challenged us to think about how our
particular and singular experiences inform and are informed by our standpoints.
Building on Lorde’s work, Crenshaw (1991) introduced the concept of intersection-
ality, which looks at the marginalization experienced when race and gender identity
politics are centralized. While I feel that these issues are important to consider
holistically, it is equally important to think about how difference is constructed and
understood on the margins. Because social identities are sometimes fluid and it is
possible to experience privilege and marginalization simultaneously, or in different
ways and at different moments in time, it is important that all people, including those
who are considered ‘‘different’’ or marginalized, understand how to relate with others
and each other despite tangential and discreet differences.
For example, Johnson (2001) expands the discussion of difference with his inter-
vention and reinterpretation of queer studies, which he found to be too focused on
white experience(s). Johnson defines the term quare from the African American
vernacular for queer as ‘‘sometimes homophobic in usage, but always denot[ing]
excess incapable of being contained within conventional categories of being’’ (p. 2).
He defines quare theory as having the capacity to both critique (‘‘speak across’’) and
locate (‘‘articulate’’) class and race identities. Inspired by his rural roots and his
grandmother, he understands ‘‘quare’’ to be a culture-specific rendering of things
that are unfamiliar. Referring to his grandmother’s use of the word, he says:
Her use of ‘queer’ is almost always nuanced. . . . On the one hand, my
grandmother uses ‘quare’ to denote something or someone who is odd,
irregular or slightly off kilter—definitions in keeping with traditional
understandings and uses of ‘queer.’ On the other hand, she also deploys ‘quare’
to denote something excessive—something that might philosophically translate
into an excess of discursive and epistemological meanings grounded in African
American cultural rituals and lived experience. (p. 2)
Quare theory offers an opportunity to challenge white- and male-centered paradigms
by addressing the absence of diversity and naming the specificity of individual ex-
periences. While Johnson’s intervention of queer theory preceded and is distinct
from the consideration of autoethnography as queer (Adams & Holman Jones,
2008), the concept of quare study (incorporating an intentional race and class
FROM HERE TO THERE 317
critique) can extend to autoethnography, especially in a discussion of speaking across
difference(s). Quare auto/ethnography (in comparison to queer autoethnography)
shifts its focus to culture-specific realities situated in race, rurality, and class. Con-
necting notions of difference to the practice of autoethnography offers the opportu-
nity to bridge moments and experiences across place and time.
A Bridge in the Dorm Room (circa 1998)
When I was 19 years old, I relished ignorance and books. The nightstand in my
cluttered dorm room housed at least three novels I would reread in rotation fea-
turing characters who were rebels and pariahs. I identified with them, I felt for them,
I wanted to be them, but I never experienced the depth of difference they navigated
to survive. I also never considered how my failure to engage people like them in the
real world made me a hypocrite.
When I was 19 years old, I began to question some of the lessons of my childhood
community. The meaning and significance of difference shifted in my new environ-
ment. I was different in every way that mattered. I was black, female, working class,
and from a small town. I failed at attempts to fit in with the popular girls and
befriended another small town blackgirl who stayed in the dorm room next door
to mine. We spent our evenings sitting in the hallway gossiping, doing homework,
sharing snacks, and watching people pass by. It was from our hallway spying that we
decided there was a lesbian living on our hall. Her room was four doors down, and
she disappeared behind the door every night with a girl we had initially mistaken for
a boy. We never spoke to her, other than a quick ‘‘hey’’ when she rushed past us,
trying not to trip over our legs or our paraphernalia, strewn selfishly on the floor
between our rooms. We never admitted the reciprocal fear that existed between our
impersonal exchanges. She was probably afraid of being rejected or judged by us, and
we were afraid of confronting or admitting our biases. We hesitated to befriend our
neighbor out of an ignorant fear that lesbianism was contagious. Because she was
black, like us, we were not repulsed by her different way of loving; we were intrigued.
We were also conflicted because we were taught to believe that homosexuality was
wrong. There were no lesbians (that we knew of) where we were from. And there was
no more despicable difference according to our communities.
We were fascinated by the same-sex couple and assumed that their relationship
was heteronormative because the girl who lived with us was feminine and her part-
ner, who dressed in men’s clothes and wore a short haircut, was presumably mas-
culine. We stared when they walked past us and listened intently from our windows
318 ROBIN M. BOYLORN
when they argued on the front steps of the dormitory, the feminine partner walking
away in tears while the masculine partner stomped away in silence. We were captivated
by them, and as small town blackgirls who had been adequately indoctrinated, we
were torn between judging them (for being different) and admiring them (for being
themselves). It was one of the first times I can remember feeling conflicted and
confused because of my community conditioning, but it was not the last. I felt similar
guilt/shame/confusion when I smoked marijuana for the first time, had sex out of wed-
lock, and got a bad grade. The older I got, the more difficult it was to not be different.
* * *
Sweetwater: Black Women and Narratives of Resilience (Boylorn, 2013b) is a black
girl’s song (Shange, 1997) that chronicles what it was like to grow up poor, rural, and
black in the South. The book is a dance of poetry, prose, and pain punctuated by laugh-
out-loud moments, resonance, and resilience. I wrote the book to respond to the
erasure I felt as a blackgirl in the academy whose lived experiences were inconsistently
represented. Sweetwater is also an expression of my difference and defiance. Embedded
in my small town story are critiques of the internalized racism, sexism, and homopho-
bia I learned as a child. ‘‘Porch Premonitions,’’ a prelude between the first and second
parts of the book, offers the unspoken possibility of a lesbian relationship between
Sweetie Pie and Peewee, a queer couple who gossip about other characters. While
lesbian relationships were not detailed or discussed in my interviews for the book, it
was important to me to make them possible through Sweetie Pie and Peewee’s open-
secret relationship. The ambiguity of the description mimics the ways these women
would have existed in the hostile environment, visible but unnoticed.
Many readers overlook their relationship because it doesn’t fit small town think-
ing and it doesn’t make sense in the heteronormative lens of the larger narrative, but
they are there, in the same ways that queer black women have always existed in small
communities. However, we are socially conditioned to pretend differences don’t
exist, or to minimize them (Lorde, 2007).
A Bridge in the Bedroom (circa 2008)
Elbows, knees, chin, lips.
Ear lobes, nose, eyes, hands.
Skin.
Stretch marks, moles, scars.
FROM HERE TO THERE 319
On mornings after making love I talk to myself. My postcoital conversations keep me
company after lovers leave, careful not to overstay their welcome or invite specula-
tion of relationship or expectation that their interest in me was anything more than
fleeting. Even though I was warned about roaming men, I was also trained to want
them. To want one. To want one to want me. I was taught, inadvertently, that my life
would be meaningless without a man. Women in my community were faithful to
unfaithful men and desperate for happily ever after.
I was told that every woman has needs. Every woman needs a man. These dis-
cussions never included women who are not sexually interested in men. Or women,
like me, who are suspicious, overly cautious, and afraid of commitment. I am told that
women are supposed to be wives and mothers. I am told that my aversion to these
desires is only temporary, that when I meet a good man I will change my mind about
marriage, that when I fall in love I will change my mind about children. These things,
I am told, are my destiny as a black woman.
* * *
If I were a man, patriarchy would protect me from the traditional and hegemonic
expectations of marriage and parenthood. My independence would be celebrated,
and it would make me more, not less, desirable. If I were a black man, my currency
would make me a commodity and I would not be accused of being selfish if I decided
to prioritize my interests, goals, or ambitions. I was conditioned to revere men at the
expense of myself, to downplay my abilities so I don’t intimidate them, and to feel like
a failure if I remained childless and unmarried in adulthood. These decisions were
not seen as choices but rather as disappointments.
My intentional single status is deviant. While many women are without hus-
bands, it is not by choice. I am reminded by older women, whose husbands are rarely
faithful, that I don’t know my proper place and that it is my responsibility to make
a man feel necessary. They also warn me to keep a separate bank account if I ever
marry, just in case.
A Bridge in the Classroom (circa 2013)
I never cease being a rural blackgirl. I enter spaces fully aware that the myths of black
womanhood are embedded on my body, so too, my rurality. I introduce myself as
someone who was born and raised in the South. I know what that means is different
to different people, and I accept the burden and assumptions it carries. Bringing my
whole self, and my backstory, into the classroom sometimes complicates
320 ROBIN M. BOYLORN
conversations because I am so presumably different from most of my students. The
easiest response to ignorance is judgment, but it is not a fair response. When I was
20 years old, I had a distinctly different understanding of what difference meant.
I didn’t recognize the ways that I victimized those who were different from me.
While my judgments were well-intentioned and based on things that I had been
taught to embrace as truth, they inevitably caused harm to people I ignored,
avoided, or judged for being ‘‘not like me.’’ I wasn’t open to getting to know them
or listening to their stories.
I witness the same know-it-all attitude from my students that I felt when I was
their age, and while engaging difference in the classroom can be challenging, I see
difference as a pedagogical possibility rather than a burden. I find that engaging
students with the truth of my personal experiences, through honesty and vulnera-
bility, can help them reconsider their own prejudices.
* * *
Day 1: It is the start of another semester, and I am teaching a class about race, class, and
gender difference. When I enter the room I realize I may be the only black professor
many of the students will have during their tenure at the Southern, predominantly white
university where I teach. I also realize I am one of the few black people in the room. In
the moments before class starts, the students are watching me and wondering if I am in
the right place. My name on their schedules does not offer the slightest hint that I am
black, or a woman, or young enough to be their sister. I stand before them feeling judged
and inadequate, aching for the opportunity to read off my credentials.
Day 2: Teaching about diversity is difficult. Many of my students are from homog-
enous communities that have not prepared them to engage difference. When we
begin discussing the topic of social privileges, several students struggle with admit-
ting they are privileged and become defensive. They are uncomfortable when I
explain that there are structural oppressions that reinforce injustice and disenfran-
chisement for marginalized groups. They realize they are not marginalized, but they
prefer to believe that no one is. They are adamant that we are postracial, that the real
racists are those who want to talk about race, and disadvantage is a preference or
punishment for bad choices. When I tell them that racism is institutionalized, poor
people are not lazy, homosexuality is not a lifestyle choice, and statistically most of
the women on welfare are white, they are skeptical. A raucous student who has
challenged all of my statements sits in the corner and rolls her eyes.
FROM HERE TO THERE 321
Day 3: I introduce an in-class activity that will allow us to silently witness the
diversity represented in the room. I have done this activity many times before, and
it is usually an opportunity for the class to coalesce and bond. I participate along-
side the students and am uncomfortable when I am the only person to ‘‘out’’ herself
as having grown up poor. I wonder how the students, all white except for one black
woman, feel. During the talk-back discussion, a well-meaning white student raises
her hand. ‘‘I really admire rags to riches stories,’’ she says, ‘‘I’m proud of them.’’
I am confused by her comment in the context of our discussion of diversity and
attempt to salvage the conversation by discussing how rags-to-riches myths are
stories of exceptionalism and oftentimes do more harm than good. I later realize
she was talking about me. She considers my ascension from working class to
professor to be admirable. She’s proud of me. I don’t know if I should be offended
or flattered.
Day 4: We read a list of white privileges in class. When I ask if anyone thinks the
statements are outdated or irrelevant, several hands go up. One woman likens red-
headed white women to black women in reference to beauty standard claims. ‘‘Gin-
gers are discriminated against,’’ she says, ‘‘so it’s not just black people.’’ Another
student says that she knows what it is like to be a minority because as a freshman
she took a women’s studies course that had as many black people in it as white
people. I am surprised by the arguments and feel temporarily silenced. When
I attempt to explain that their examples don’t compare to race and ethnic difference,
they become frustrated, with one student saying ‘‘I am just tired of people acting like
white people don’t know what it feels like to be different.’’
Day 5: A black woman student raises her hand during a discussion on social class.
She has expressed anxiety, at times, about participating in class because she speaks
with a Southern dialect and is unfamiliar with the jargon of the discipline. I call her
name and wait for her words. We speak the same language, not just as black women
but as Southern, small town black women. The colloquialisms that she sometimes
uses to punctuate a point are familiar to me. She reminds me of home. She reminds
me of me.
‘‘I have never really understood how social class works,’’ she explains, ‘‘because my
family doesn’t have a lot of money, but we own a lot of land and for us that means
something. We are country folks, farmers, so land and animals is all we need.’’ While
she is talking I am thinking about the family land in my hometown and wonder how
much money it is worth.
322 ROBIN M. BOYLORN
I never understood how folk who are well to do might look down on us, you
know, because we don’t live in big houses or drive fancy cars but what we have is ours.
We don’t have a big house, but the house we have is on several acres of land that is
ours. And we might drive old raggedy cars, but they get us where we need to go, and
they are paid for. And other folk, they have nice things, but they are slaves to it. They
make payments on it. They don’t own it outright. But our stuff, it may not be the best,
but it’s ours’.
* * *
Auto/ethnography helps me to deconstruct difference and stereotypes in the class-
room. I frame discussions of difference in the classroom with auto/ethnographies.
My truth-telling inspires students to tell their truths and consider their biases.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. When I am confronted with prejudices
in the classroom, especially those that are embedded in ignorant statements or non-
verbal reactions to my lecture, I try to remember that arriving at an inclusive ideol-
ogy is a process and many of my students, like me, have to unlearn the prejudices
that have been ingrained in them from childhood. We don’t recognize the ways we
discriminate against others until we hear the story of what it feels like to be the Other.
I am embarrassed about the ways I used to think about difference. Even though
I was never openly hostile, my ambivalence was injurious. Disconfirmation is a form
of discrimination that strips a person of their humanity, and there were countless
times when I pretended the person was not there or that their difference did not
exist. My response is similar to the notion of colorblindness. Well-meaning white
folk believe that racism cannot exist if we pretend to not notice skin color. They
assume that racism is the equivalent of seeing and acknowledging difference. Truth
is, it is not discriminatory to see difference, it is discriminatory to treat someone
badly because they are different. The danger is not in being different, the danger is
in denying it.
From Here to There and Back (Home) Again: A Conclusion
I learned a handful of lessons from my community, and while some of those lessons
were useful, others were limiting. In the same moment I was taught to be cautious of
racism, I was also taught to be homophobic. I received contradictory messages about
being a good woman: independent, capable, and generous, but also subservient to
men. My community taught me that I should know my place (as a black woman), be
seen and not heard (as a child), and conform to community standards at all costs. It
FROM HERE TO THERE 323
was unacceptable to be or act any different. I couldn’t tell the difference between the
difference, but I did not question what I learned. Nobody did.
I look at difference differently now. I don’t see it as something to be challenged,
feared, or hidden. I see difference as beautiful possibility and auto/ethnography as
a creative means by which to build bridges across our differences. I believe auto/
ethnography is an important tool as a self-researcher because it implicates me as
a cultural member but also allows me to confront problematic cultural practices that
I myself have participated in. Marginalized folk tend to prioritize or organize oppres-
sion so their prejudices are overlooked. Auto/ethnography is an accountability check
for me. By looking at myself through an introspective and retrospective lens, I have to
take responsibility for my actions and attempt, through personal narrative, to correct
them.
Johnson (2001) describes homeplace as ‘‘a site which quare praxis must criti-
que . . . we may seek refuge in homeplace as a marginally safe place to critique
oppression outside its confines, but we must also deploy quare theory to address
oppression within homeplace itself’’ (p. 19). I had to be willing to turn my critical lens
back on my home community to identify problematic ideologies that threaten exter-
nal bridge-building. People who are disadvantaged, like those who have privilege, are
oftentimes oblivious to the ways their actions or behaviors further oppresses other
marginalized folk (e.g.,, homophobia in the black community, sexism in the civil
rights movement, and racism in the feminist movement).
As an outsider-within (Collins, 1986), my commitments to my home community
and my politics outside it create an interesting dichotomy. I am committed to making
my homeplace a safe space for those who do not conform to traditional and hege-
monic norms because I am invested in eliminating injustice against all people. As
a teacher, I am interested in challenging how people think about identity. As an ally,
I am offended by homophobia and invested in creating a world that is inclusive of all
people (regardless of their sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender performance, and
myriad identifications and self-expressions). As a feminist, I am determined to not be
held to gender scripts or expectations about my life as a woman. As someone raised
working class, I understand the nuances of social class and its impact on social
identity. As a country, rural black woman, I am interested in dismantling the stereo-
types outsiders have about rurality and the fear rural folk have about difference.
It is easy to demoralize difference when you are never exposed to it or when you
are conditioned to avoid it. The safety and familiarity of home always made me feel
connected, safe, welcome, and cared for. It was, however, also isolating. We do not
live or exist on islands. It is important for me to bridge the different places and spaces
324 ROBIN M. BOYLORN
in my life so that I can navigate my way back and forth. That means that I have to
resist and reject parts of my small town self and challenge the notion that difference,
discrimination, and prejudice only matter when I am personally affected. Auto/eth-
nography (as a way of engaging intersectionality and quare theory) is a powerful and
strategic tool for bridge-building across difference. Our stories, embodied and
embedded within, are opportunities to learn about ourselves and each other. And
that is a bridge worth crossing.
Note
1. The author intentionally uses a slash when referring to her personal auto/ethnographies in an effort to recognize the plurality of her experience as a black woman and to designate an acknowledgment and reverence to other black women whose stories have not/will not/or cannot be told. This is a conscious political choice done in solidarity with other black women auto/ethnographers and is not a typo.
2. To be a hard learner meant you were ‘‘difficult to teach’’ or had a hard time understanding in school.
References
Adams, T. E. (2011). Narrating the closet: An autoethnography of same-sex attraction. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Adams, T. E., & Holman Jones, S. (2008). Autoethnography is queer. In N. K. Denzin, Y. S. Lincoln, & L. T. Smith (Eds.), Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies (pp. 373–390). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Boylorn, R. M. (2011a). Black kids’ (B.K.) stories: Ta(l)king (about) race outside of the classroom. Cultural Studies↔Critical Methodologies, 11, 59–70. doi:10.1177/1532708610386922
Boylorn, R. M. (2011b). Gray or for colored girls who are tired of chasing rainbows: Race and reflexivity, Cultural Studies↔Critical Methodologies, 11, 178–186. doi:10.1177/ 1532708611401336
Boylorn, R. M. (2013a). ‘‘Sit with your legs closed!’’ and other sayin’s from my childhood. In S. Holman Jones, T. E. Adams, & C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of autoethnography (pp. 173–185). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Boylorn, R. M. (2013b). Sweetwater: Black women and narratives of resilience. New York: Peter Lang.
Chang, H. (2013). Individual and collaborative autoethnography as method: A social scientist’s perspective. In S. Holman Jones, T. E. Adams, & C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of autoethno- graphy (pp. 107–122). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Collins, P. H. (1986). Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of Black feminist thought. Social Problems, 33(6), S14–S32. doi:10.2307/800672
Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43, 1241–1299.
FROM HERE TO THERE 325
Griffin, R. A. (2012). I am an angry black woman: Black feminist autoethnography, voice, and resistance. Women’s Studies in Communication, 35, 138–157. doi:10.1080/07491409.2012. 724524
Johnson, E. P. (2001). ‘‘Quare’’ studies, or (almost) everything I know about queer studies I learned from my grandmother. Text and Performance Quarterly, 21, 1–25. doi:10. 1080/10462930128119
Lorde, A. (2007). Sister outsider. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press. (Original work published 1984) Mingé, J. M., & Zimmerman, A. L. (2013). Concrete and dust: Mapping the sexual terrains of
Los Angeles. New York: Routledge. Richardson, L. (2000). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.),
Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 923–948). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Shange, N. (1997). For colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf. New
York: Scribner. (Original work published 1975)
About the Author
Robin M. Boylorn teaches and researches topics related to diversity and social identity with an intentional focus on the lived experiences of black women. She is the author of Sweetwater: Black Women and Narratives of Resilience (Peter Lang) and co-editor of Critical Auto- ethnography: Intersecting Cultural Identities in Everyday Life (Left Coast).
326 ROBIN M. BOYLORN
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