ABSTRACT
We create ourselves and our world through stories. From our lived experiences, each of us constructs an autobiographical self, a narrative identity that confers a sense of coherence and meaning to our individual lives. From a developmental perspective early beginnings of the autobiographical self and the formation of a narrative identity in young adulthood. Through telling and retelling stories among ourselves and across the generations, autobiographical selves constitute, create, and recreate human culture. Perhaps most important, a sociocultural approach demands attention to how individual differences are shaped by and help shape social and cultural interactions and systems. Family storytelling helps us think about gender as a process of evaluating lived experiences within culturally provided tropes and frameworks, such that gender becomes a dialogue between the individual and cultural stereotypes. All good stories end with a coda, a pithy summing up of the point of the narrative.
