ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes autoethnography as a qualitative methodological approach to advance social justice. I illustrate the explicit connection between selfhood and broader culture through attention to the inherent politicization of individual experiences, which operates as the core defining feature of autoethnography and differentiates it from other forms of narrative writing involving personal experience. Social-justice-oriented scholars across a multitude of fields have long advocated for the utility of using individual experiences to both illustrate the daily realities of encountering systemic oppression as well as to advocate for opportunities for personal interventions into such systems. I demonstrate this using autoethnographic vignettes alongside a review of the historical roots of autoethnography and the feminist, queer, and interdisciplinary hallmarks of the method. I conclude the chapter by articulating that the power of autoethnographies is to bring us powerfully face-to-face with others’ experiences, particularly experiences of marginalization and encounters with trauma that may be systematically erased from normative cultural awareness, representation, and acceptance.
