ABSTRACT
In Chapter 7 of the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, Thomas offers a performative autoethnography that uses oral history, memory, and reflection to unpack the delicate intricacies of marginalized ecocultural voices. Thomas shows how oral histories can help access ecocultural identity by highlighting ways race, class, gender, ability, and orientations to the more-than-human world are multiple, layered, and performed in interlocking webs of privileges and disadvantages. This chapter exhibits ways autoethnographic methodology can help make sense of ways certain orientations to the more-than-human world are disseminated through narratives and experiences that take place within families. The author proposes that studies in ecoculture could benefit from increased attention to stories that interrogate previous generations’ environmental conceptualizations and experiences and that present unique, historically marginalized voices. Additionally, Thomas posits that the reflective act of working through one’s own family stories helps make sense of ways ecocultural identity is formed, performed, and accepted or rejected within imbrications of multiple cultural identities and generations.
