“Sit With Your Legs Closed!” And Other Sayin’s From My Childhood

The author revisits and revises childhood memories to theorize the notion of sayin’s in southern vernacular as performative autoethnography. She introduces seven sayin’s through seven stories to explain “blackened autoethnography,” a concept she describes as stories steeped in the black experience. She engages in critical self-reflection to problematize the ways her experiences were informed by (internalized) racism, sexism, and classism while reframing them as stories of coping, resilience, and celebration.