Epistolary Autoethnographies on Loss, Memory, and Resolution : Reflections on Black Motherhood (International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry Icqi Foundations and Futures in Qualitative Inquiry)

This book uses letter writing as a form of engaging autoethnography to address relational histories and dynamics such as race, gender, loss, memory and resolution. It is structured around textual performances, poems, and dialogues in the form of letters. Set within the context of adult Black children and their Black mothers, each author uses their letters to reflect on life with and without mama, and their own sense of coming to know themselves in the absence of their mother. Each entry evidence encounters of pain, possibility, and potentiality collated between the authors for a robust thematic underpinning for the reader. Building upon poetic inquiry and autoethnography narratives, this book seeks to build arguments about privatized struggle, and offers a guide on reflection. In addition to students and researchers partaking in autoethnographical studies, this book is suitable for anyone studying qualitative inquiry, performance studies, gender studies, cultural studies, Black studies, anthropology, and performative writing.