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Cover -- Half Title -- Series Information -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of contents -- Endorsement -- Preface to the Classic Edition -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Reflecting on Meta- Autoethnography -- Writing a Simple Book -- Adding Meta- Autoethnography -- Storying the "I" -- Revisioning the "I" -- PART I Growing Up in a Rural Community, Getting an Education, and Finding My Place in Community Ethnography -- 1 Goin' to the Store, Sittin' on the Street, and Runnin' the Roads: Growing Up in a Rural Southern Neighborhood -- Fairview: The Neighborhood -- The Store

This essay responds to Laurel Richardson's book, A Story of a Marriage through Dementia and Beyond: Love in a Whirlwind, and to her poetry, "For Better or Worse," which is included in this issue of International Review of Qualitative Research. The author describes how she is affected by the poetic and story forms of telling. Through reading and rereading, analyzing and interpreting these texts, she notes parallels between her and Laurel's experiences of loss and how they story their sorrow. Laurel's descriptions resonate with her, reminding her of her own grief and providing a feeling of companionship--that we are all in this together. She suggests that reading and writing about loss as well as "being with" others in their sorrows can move us to incorporate grief and suffering into our lives without falling into an abyss of sadness, depression, and meaninglessness.

This manifesto addresses how an autoethnographic perspective can be applied directly to the experiences of others in compassionate research. Compassionate research connects us with others, emphasizes what we can do for participants, and contributes to social justice. This article describes collaborative and compassionate research with a survivor of the Holocaust, outlines guiding premises, and suggests ways to think about and do this work.

This story describes the procrastination and work practices of an autoethnographer as she observes herself on the blank computer screen.

This ethnographic story seeks to reveal the complexity in talking across the urban/rural and Black/White divide in the 2008 Presidential Election.The story shows the tensions between feeling that an attempt to understand the other might help perpetuate the very intolerance we want to break through and feeling a responsibility to reach out and try to fashion a way out of prejudices and values with which we disagree. Is there a possibility for transformative dialogue and appreciative inquiry, where the four participants in this story might envision and generate a new, coconstructed reality, that all of them could believe in? Should that be our goal?

The author lays out critiques of autoethnography from social science, post-structuralist, and aesthetic perspectives. She responds to these critiques emotionally as well as rationally, through stories that show as well as prose that tries to convince. She takes a stance yet remains open to what she can learn from others' responses. In the end, she tells a story about significant moments in her life in which her work has seemed especially meaningful to her and opens up the possibility that we are all in this together, trying to live life well and do research that matters.

Focusing on the ethics of writing about others in ethnographic and autoethnographic tales, this article provides excerpts from stories about neighbors in a mountain community that show differences and conflicts about religion, gender, ethnicity, and race. The author provides a dialogic representation of the debates that occurred in her mind about the process and ethics of writing these stories. These introspective conversations reveal the vulnerable, muddy, and ambivalent process of making ethical decisions in qualitative research. These complex decisions require integrating our own moral positions with society's call for scholarship that contributes to social justice; readers' demands for truthful and multifaceted accounts; and research participants' and characters' desire for privacy, positive representation, and control over the stories of their lives. The author encourages open dialogue about the ethical quandaries experienced in doing qualitative research.

Diese autoethnographische Erzählung beschäftigt sich mit dem Prozess der Grabpflege für Familienangehörige: In der Vergangenheit hatte die Autorin eher widerstrebend ihre Mutter bei deren Besuchen an Familiengräbern begleitet. Als die Mutter dies nicht mehr selbst tun konnte, kümmerte die Autorin sich um die Blumenarrangements auf den Gräbern. Erst durch diese Tätigkeit begann sie, sich mit der Bedeutung des Friedhofbesuches zu beschäftigen, sie fühlte (ihre Verbundenheit und) die erlittenen Verluste, und sie befasste sich mit den Bräuchen, die sie sich für ihren eigenen Tod wünschte. Als ihre Mutter starb, übernahm die nächste Frauengeneration – die Autorin, ihre Schwester, ihre Schwägerin – die Grabpflege, verbunden durch ihre Liebe und ihren Respekt für ihre (Schwieger-) Mutter, durch ihre Familiengefühle und durch ihre familiäre Verantwortung. Mit dieser Erzählung soll die Bedeutung familiärer Todesrituale und deren Weitergabe über Generationen nachvollziehbar werden.