Constructing identity by writing roots into life: a poetic-narrative autoethnography

Abstract

ABSTRACT This poetic narrative autoethnographic inquiry explores lived experiences of a transracial adoptee Asian American coming to terms with his identity through the examination of the complexities of his inaccessible familial roots. As a method of qualitative research, poetic inquiry is interested in creative language-based processes of constraint, synthesis, crystallization, image, and lyrical form exercised as a phenomenological and existential choice that extends beyond the use of poetic methods to a way of being in the world [Prendergast, M., Leggo, C., & Sameshima, P. (2009). Poetic inquiry: Vibrant voices in the social sciences. Sense Publishing]. Supported by this theoretical underpinning, this piece employs poetic narrative autoethnography to explore notions identity development through expressive reflection. Working from Hanauer’s (2012. Growing up in the unseen shadow of the Kindertransport. Qualitative Inquiry, 18(10), 845–851. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800412456960) model, the author selected four of his previously written poems and then wrote narrative reflections on each poem in order to use the poems as a transcript for analysis. This study provides insights into how transracial adoptees may construct their identities through poetry.