Sarah Wall Autoethnography Summary

Jeannette Walls changes over the course of the the story because at first she always believed in her father but now she knows her father isn't reliable. In the beginning of the story, Jeannette was being taught how to swim. Rex was letting her drown and then after some time taking her out the water. Soon she finally learned how to swim by her dad’s method. Instead of thinking he was crazy she believed in him. She taught that the way her dad taught her was the only right way and her dad had done this only for her sake. A quote to prove this, ‘“If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim." What other reason, he asked, would possibly make him do this? Once I got my breath back, I figured he must be right. There was no other way to explain it” (Walls 67).

Ethnographic research is the scientific description of specific human cultures, foreign to the ethnographer. Each ethnographer has his or her own way of conducting research and all of these different ideas can be transmitted and understood in a number of different ways. Because there is no one set idea of how an ethnographer should go about his or her research, conflicts arise. In Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco, Paul Rabinow uses a story like process to discuss his experiences during his research in Morocco. This makes it easier for the reader to understand his ideas then just having a technical book about the many different aspects of Moroccan life that he may have discovered. In Writing Culture: the Poetics and Politics of

The IDEA lists 13 different disability categories which children and young adults aged 3-year-olds to 21-year-olds may be eligible for services. Emotional disturbance is one of the 13 disability categories under the IDEA and is the label Sarah was served under. Under the IDEA, emotional disturbance means a condition revealing inability to learn which cannot be clarified by other factors; difficulty building or maintaining reasonable interpersonal relationships with classmates and teachers; unsuitable types of conduct or emotions under ordinary conditions; and general persistent mood of unhappiness or depression.). Sarah met three criteria to be served under the ED label which included her 4 years of behaviors out of the norm, the severity of

As she discusses her various observation she goes on to include research and other studies that serve to validate the observations to an even greater extent. Generally, when she makes conclusions based on her own observations it has been vetted by a number of other scholarly journals and articles. As an example, when she discusses the “tendency to place the onus of students’ underachievement on themselves” parenthetically she cites six separate ethnographies that support her observation (Valenzuela 1999 pg. 74). Weaving research into her field notes allows the reader to view Valenzuela’s observations as being authentic and

In this section, Jeannette Walls starts off, in the present time by telling the readers about her seeing her mom on the street, that she hasn’t seen in a long time. Jeannette uses emotional words like blustering and fretted to show that seeing her mom was an emotional time. Later in the section, she goes way back into her life to when she was three years old and when her family and her was living in the desert. She started off telling a story of when she was on fire. This story was intense, it was really dramatic on her parents part, her dad was screaming at her and the doctor a lot. Then she talked about when they moved to Las Vegas, her family lived in a motel room, which didn’t last long, they had to leave Vegas in a rush, because her dad was cheating in blackjack and the dealer found out. The last story in the section is where her family drove to San Francisco and stayed in another motel. One night her dad was at the bar, across the street. He left Jeannette and her three other siblings in the room. Jeannette got bored so she decided to play with fire and that let to a big disaster resulting in the whole hotel burning down.

“He [Jeannette’s father, Rex] will not keep me out of harm’s way, he will put me in harm’s way and I have to find a way to remove myself from the situation.” (Diversity Connection). I feel like this quote, from Jeannette, came t directly from the situation where Rex took her out to the bar to help him earn money for alcohol, but yet she still doesn’t see herself as a victim. Even though Jeannette Walls was the victim of sexual abuse at a very young age, she tries to recreate the freedom from her childhood into her adult life, But in her younger years where she has no occupational activities, no nurturing, no money and no friends to turn to, it proves to be very hard to maintain.

‘Employing a qualitative methodology, underpinned by a constructivist world view, has provided the means to generate rich, deep and contextualised understandings of the research issue, and an appreciation of the socially constructed and experienced realities of the participants.’ (Highfield 2012)

This memoir focuses on the development and growing maturity of Jeannette Walls who is an intelligent, dynamic protagonist. The novel begins when she is only three years old and continues into her adulthood, providing insight into her mind. Jeannette shows the reader her opinions on her impoverished life style, which forces her to constantly move from one location to another and meet all the people who surround her. Throughout the novel her family consists of her Father and Mother, Rex and Rose Mary, sisters, Lori and Maureen, and brother Brian. Jeannette, a middle sibling, is closer to younger brother Brian than her older sister Lori: Brian shares Jeannette's love of the outdoors, while Lori is more a bookworm. As a child

Journaling, as Burney takes up in her first entry, is an inherently private act. Burney’s attentive writing style and care for specific details, like

The methodology used in both the research and the writing deviates from a typical ethnographic structure

According to Mary Louise Pratt’s Arts of the Contact Zone, an autoethnographic text can be defined as a text where the author describes himself or his people using mechanisms provided by others. Such texts are almost always the product of a “contact zone” or a place where cultures meet and clash. In other words, autoethnographic texts are those in

The “Arts of the Contact Zone”, an article written by Stanford professor Mary Louise Pratt, discusses many different ideas about culture and communication by utilizing what she calls the literate arts. Pratt explains many terms that she believes are beneficial in gaining a further understanding of a literary piece. Key terms such as, contact zone, autoethnography and transculturation are introduced in her essay. She describes contact zones as “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power”(Pratt 487). The contact zone can be summarized as a space where two groups with different beliefs or ideas intermingle. In the essay, Pratt also describes the literate arts that come out of the contact zone. Literary arts are ways of addressing problems in the contact zone and sometimes make an attempt to resolve the issue that is happening or has happened. Two terms heavily discussed in the essay are autoethnography and transculturation. These are only two of the many literate arts that precipitate out of the contact zone. Pratt defines autoethnography as a “text in which people undertake to describe themselves in ways that engage with representations others have made of them”(Pratt 487). The culture often takes on those stereotypes in some form of literary work and presents it to the dominant culture often trying to change their views or perspectives. Autoethnography is often used as an effective method

Epistemological criticism argues that all approaches are unlikely to produce consistent evidence because of the inherent property. It will generate a new viewpoint. However, through abundant reading, triangulation will enlarge width and depth in qualitative research and provide an analysis with security- a overall perspective. Participants can improve the validity of research. Bloor (1978) argues that sociologists can establish a correspondence with participants, in which participants can identify, give assent and judgement to sociologists.

Qualitative research is conducted in a natural setting and attempts to understand a human problem by developing a holistic narrative and reporting detailed views of informants about the culture of a problem. It forms a report with pictures and words. One of the most important distinctions that sets qualitative research apart from more traditional types of research is that qualitative research is holistic in that researchers study phenomena in their entirety rather than narrowing the focus to specific defined variables” (p. 93). Similarly, Cresswell (1984) indicated that qualitative research “is defined as an inquiry process of understanding a social or human problem, based on building a holistic picture, formed with words, reporting detailed views of informants, and conducted in a natural setting” (p. 2). Cresswell’s definition clearly delineates the major characteristics of qualitative research. Pg. 50 (Smith & Davis, 2010).

“The expropriation and appropriation of Sarah Baartman by the colonial and capitalist gaze has lasted long enough. It is not a good idea to create new images of her, because each new image repeats and continues the past exploitation and humiliation of her body.”