ABSTRACT
This essay uses the power of personal narrative, poetic inquiry, and performative writing as supportive methods to enhance autoethnographic practice. It proceeds by putting into play the methods it discusses to demonstrate their efficacy for autoethnographers. In the first section, “Positioning the Personal,” the author shares his story of coming to autoethnography and discusses how the personal might figure into writing autoethnographic texts. In the second section, “Positioning the Poetic,” the author strives for a poetic voice to demonstrate the power of the lyric utterance for constructing autoethnography. Included are a series of poems based upon newspaper accounts under the title, “Our Children.” In the last section, “Positioning the Performative,” the author writes performatively to show how performance practices might be tapped for doing autoethnographic work. The essay completes its argument with a series of personal claims that point toward good autoethnographic writing.
