ABSTRACT
In this chapter I apply “Remix Theory,” a postmodern creative process of cut/copy paste, to “Re-vision,” an article I wrote 24 years ago entitled “My Mother is Mentally Retarded” for Composing Ethnography. I “sample,” shuffle, and remix materials from the original article, other articles, and incorporate other stories to chronicle the consequences of writing about my mother and myself. In this piece, I speak at two conferences on parents with intellectual disability, one in Staten Island, New York, one in Sydney, Australia, and I make a less than glorious appearance on Bryant Gumbel’s Public Eye on America. The resulting meta-autoethnographic layered account is both reflexive and regenerative; where the whole, once taken in, is something different, and perhaps greater, than the sum of its parts. In the final analysis, I realize the need to be mindful regarding what I write. My words had larger implications for myself and others than I foresaw.
