This autoethnography explores West African and French identity in the Southern United States. Seven short poems trace back a journey from West Africa and France to the American South and flesh out the contours of a transient and suspended self. A brown immigrant woman, my text reconstructs the embodied experience of racism and sexism in a small conservative community. Poetic prose helps to capture the elusive nature of a narrative, best expressed through fragmentary impressions. These bits written in half-dream state bring to life the folding and unfolding of identity/ies in a foreign land. They also offer a political and cultural reflection on racism, sexism, and immigration. Finally, because they open many windows to other narratives, they shed light on intertextuality in autoethnographic practice, through what I call the “Russian Dolls” metaphor.
Alexander, B.K. ( 2005). Performance ethnography: The reenacting and inciting of culture. In N. K. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 411-441). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
2.
Anzaldúa, G. ( 2007). Borderlands/La frontera: The new Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.
3.
Balcita, M.A. ( 2005). Raising the mango. In A. J. Fountas (Ed.), Waking up American: First-generation women reflect on identity (pp. 1-10). Emeryville, CA: Seal Press.
4.
Berry, J.W. ( 2006). Contexts of acculturation. In D. L. Sam, & J. W. Berry. (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of acculturation psychology. Cambridge , UK: University Press.
5.
Bhatia, S., & Ram, A. ( 2001). Rethinking "acculturation" in relation to diasporic cultures and postcolonial identities. Human Development , 44(1), 1-18.
6.
Collins, H.P. ( 1990). Black Feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York: Routledge.
7.
Davis, A.Y. ( 1983). Women, race, and class. New York: Random House.
8.
Feagin, J. ( 2006). Systemic racism: A theory of oppression. New York: Routledge.
9.
Harvey Winfield, A. ( 2007). The modern mammy and the angry black man: African American professionals’ experiences with gendered racism in the workplace. Race, Gender & Class, 14, 196-212.
10.
hooks, b. ( 1990). Yearning: Race, gender, and cultural politics. Boston: South End Press.
11.
hooks, b. ( 1995). Killing rage: Ending racism. New York : Henry Holt.
12.
Jones, S.H. ( 2005). Autoethnography: Making the personal political. In N. K Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 763-791). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
13.
Kellor, A.L. ( 2005). Rising and falling. In A. J. Fountas (Ed.), Waking up American: First-generation women reflect on identity (pp. 141-146). Emeryville, CA: Seal Press.
14.
Kiang, L., & Harter, S. ( 2008). Do pieces of the self-puzzle fit? Integrated/fragmented selves in biculturally-identified Chinese Americans. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 1657-1662.
15.
Kramarae, C. ( 1981). Women and men speaking: Frameworks for analysis. Rowley: Newbury House.
16.
Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, L. ( 2002). Browngirlworld: Queergirlofcolor organizing, sistahood, heartbreak. In D. Hernández & B. Rehman (Eds.), Colonize this! Young women of color on today’s feminism (pp. 3-16). New York: Seal Press.
17.
Luna, D., Ringberg, T., & Peracchio, L. ( 2008). One individual, two identities: Frame switching among biculturals. Journal of Consumer Research, 35, 279-293.
18.
Myers, J.P. ( 2007). Dominant-minority relations in America: Convergence in the New World. Boston: Pearson.
19.
Narayan, U. ( 1989). The project of feminist epistemology: Perspectives from a Nonwestern feminist. In A. M. Jaggar & S. Bordo (Eds.), Gender/body/knowledge: Feminist reconstructions of being and knowing (pp. 256-272). New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
20.
Ngo, B. ( 2009). Ambivalent urban, immigrant identities: The incompleteness of Lao American student identities. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 22, 201-220.
21.
Shome, R. ( 1999). Whiteness and the politics of location: Postcolonial reflections. In T. Nakayama & J. Martin (Eds.), Whiteness: The communication of a social identity (pp. 107-128). Thousand Oaks CA: Sage.
22.
Tzintzún, C. ( 2002). Colonize this! In D. Hernández & B. Rehman (Eds.), Colonize this! Young women of color on today’s feminism (pp. 17-28). New York: Seal Press.
23.
Walker, R. ( 2001). Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a shifting self. New York: Riverhead Books .
24.
Woodard, J.B., & Mastin, T. ( 2005). Black womanhood: Essence and its treatment of stereotypical images of Black women. Journal of Black Studies, 36, 264-281.
25.
Zusho, A. ( 2008). Cultural variation in the motivational standards of self-enhancement and self-criticism among bicultural AsianAmerican and Anglo American students. International Journal of Psychology, 43, 904-911.
