Introduction

We came to autoethnography for similar reasons, but our journeys were different. Robin’s introduction to autoethnography came when she was a student at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where she studied English (Creative Writing) and Communication Studies. During the first semester of her master’s program, starstruck and in awe, she listened to her soon-to-be mentor, Bud Goodall, read a story he had written about his mentor, Gerald Phillips. ¹ Goodall referred to his storied scholarship as autoethnography, or narrative ethnography, a bridge between his cultural curiosities and personal lived experience. The work was beautiful and accessible, and Robin fell in love with the possibilities of storytelling and/as research.