An Evocative Autoethnography: What I Thought I Learned about Culture, Power, and Communication as a Hospital Patient: Then, a Surprise Epiphany!

Like all truthful autoethnographies, this is not just a simple story I tell here. Originally, I wrote this narrative describing what I thought was a good example of a relatively new but expanding genre of research and writing entitled evocative autoethnography. However, although I did not know it at the time, some information was missing from my story – even worse- many of my initial perceptions were incorrect. Through additional reading, self-reflection, and interviews of family, colleagues, and friends I discovered “autoethnographic writing does not merely tell stories about yourself garnished with details but actively interprets your stories to make sense of how they are connected to others’ stories. Through this method you gain new knowledge and insights about yourself and others and become transformed. In this sense autoethnographic writing is a constructive interpreted process” (Chang, 2008, p. 49). Thus, I learned that further information relative to my representations of my hospital “internment” helped me better comprehend what was closer to the “real truth.”