ABSTRACT
I was an autoethnographer long before I had the language to describe the self-reflexive, autobiographical stories I wrote about my lived experiences. Curious, insecure, and a natural storyteller, I wrote “stories” in spiral bound notebooks that I later hid under my mattress, afraid that they would be discovered and read by family members who would resent my characterizations and selective memory. My cursive handwriting was legible and neat but refused to conform to the college rule bound blue lines of my composition notebook. Ignoring pink margins, each right-handed leaning word scribbled on each age stained page held secret testaments, testimonies, tantrums, broken promises, and elaborate lies.
