Journal Article — Autoethnographic Cultural Criticism as Method: Toward Sociological Imaginations of Race, Memory and Identity — by Sandra J. Song

This article represents a growing body of literature that fuse creative modes of writing with the academic discourse using an autoethnographic approach to cultural analysis. Shuttling between theory and practice, I situate my research preoccupations in relation to the growing body of literature on Asian American cultural production, memory, and identity. Influenced by diverse writers such as bell hooks, Gloria Anzaldúa, Elaine H. Kim, and Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés, who have discussed or practiced autobiographical writing/autobiographical cultural criticism, I highlight key moments in my life as an aspiring scholar and in spheres outside of the academy to engage the theoretical literature. I weave these different moments as part of a larger critical enterprise to trace the gradual rise in consciousness around issues of race, memory and identity as they have touched my life, and to demonstrate the power of writing with the ‘sociological imagination’ through autoethnography.