It Takes a Village to Raise a Researcher: Narrative Interviewing as Intervention, Reconciliation, and Growth

Abstract

The “narrative revolution” in psychology emphasizes that individuals are storytellers and that narratives can provide rich data about people’s identities and the meanings given to life-altering experiences. The “griot” or storyteller is revered among people of African descent, thus, narrative interviewing can be a culturally appealing method for gathering the life stories of African Americans in identity research. However, narrative interviewing can be linked to philosophical paradigms such as logical positivism, critical theory, or other philosophies of science. This article tells a story about how the authors’ research moved from one set of assumptions (logical positivism) to another (critical theory with Afrocentric and feminist values)—using the same method but applying it in the interest of an optimal Black feminist psychology. Details are provided from the lives of the authors as well as from the lives of the African American men they interviewed. Such details elucidate the way in which the authors’ “subjectivity” added positively to the research experience and highlight how the research experience constituted a larger story of narrative interviewing as intervention, reconciliation, and personal growth.