Autoethnographic poetic inquiry: writing poems as dialogic healing responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

As the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the whole world, every aspect of people’s daily life has been turned topsy-turvy. In an effort to stem the spread of the virus, most people in the U.S. are living under relatively restrictive conditions of quarantine. This autoethnographic poetic inquiry presents a series of poems written within quarantine as dialogic healing responses to the pandemic. I aim to connect my personal responses to the media mediated pandemic in both Chinese and English channels to broader sociocultural issues, and contribute to the understanding of Asian Americans’ lived experiences amid the COVID-19 pandemic.