First-person Stories Research Articles

Success Story or Traumatic Experience? An Attempt to Integrate Trauma Theory with Oral History Research for the Interpretation of First-Person Stories

This article focuses on the following issues: (1) how a narrator describes life under political repression in a retrospective first-person story; (2) the extent to which such a story can be analysed from the perspective of trauma theory; (3) what the use of trauma theory in combination with the methods of folk narrative and oral history research can offer for a more diverse interpretation of such a story. The story selected for observation was written in 2001, focusing on events in Soviet Estonia (1940–1941, 1944–1991). At the time of telling this story, the Soviet era was publicly interpreted as a period of interruption of Estonian cultural and political continuity. Social scientists observed the Soviet period from the perspective of cultural trauma. In this way, the narrator presented complex past events in a framework that points to the restoration of historical justice. Although this story represents a positive attitude towards historical and cultural developments in Estonia, the analysis of this story indicates that traces of trauma can be found at the levels of the story that reflect the formation of the narrator’s identity.

What I Can Do with the Right Version of You: The Impact of Narrative Perspective on Reader Immersion, and How (in)Formal Address Pronouns Influence Immersion Reports

Previous research has shown that readers experience stronger immersion while reading first-person narratives than third-person narratives, but whether this difference in processing is time-sensitive remains unclear. We report on a self-paced reading experiment in which French participants read short stories in first and in third person. Additionally, participants were directly addressed with either formal or informal second-person pronouns in the final sentence of the narrative, as well as in a subsequent (off-line) questionnaire soliciting post-story immersion reports. The suitability of a particular pronoun of address depends on the social context, and misplaced use can impact the way in which people perceive and assess a particular situation. We did not find significant differences between reading times with first- or third-person pronouns, but participants reported higher immersion and emotional engagement after reading first-person stories than third-person stories. Moreover, the effect of story perspective on reported immersion only occurred when participants were addressed with formal second-person pronouns. We take these findings as evidence for an effect of first- versus third-person pronouns on immersion via perspective shifts. Moreover, we argue that the effect of being addressed with an unexpected (in this case, informal) pronoun can overrule such an effect, while being addressed with an expected (in this case, formal) pronoun can be conducive of it. This finding highlights the importance of research into the impact of pronouns of address.

From Threatening Chaos to Temporary Order through a Complex Process of Adaptation: A Grounded Theory Study of the Escalation of Intensive Care during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

To ensure high-quality care, operationalize resilience and fill the knowledge gap regarding how to improve the prerequisites for resilient performance, it is necessary to understand how adaptive capacity unfolds in practice. The main aim of this research was to explain the escalation process of intensive care during the first wave of the pandemic from a microlevel perspective, including expressions of resilient performance, intervening conditions at the micro-meso-macrolevels and short- and long-term consequences. A secondary aim was to provide recommendations regarding how to optimize the prerequisites for resilient performance in intensive care. A grounded theory methodology was used. First-person stories from different healthcare professionals (n70) in two Swedish regions were analyzed using the constant comparative method. This resulted in a novel conceptual model (including 6 main categories and 24 subcategories), and 41 recommendations. The conclusion of these findings is that the escalation of intensive care can be conceptualized as a transition from threatening chaos to temporary order through a complex process of adaptation. To prepare for the future, the components of space, stuff, staff, system and science, with associated continuity plans, must be implemented, anchored and communicated to actors at all levels of the system.

Who is a lost wilderness tourist?

This article proposes a working definition for the term ‘lost wilderness tourist’ and uses this definition to examine lost wilderness tourist events through the lenses of tourism literature, lost person behaviour literature, search and rescue literature and wilderness tourists in Australia. A tool was developed using existing literature to recruit self-identifying lost wilderness tourists. First-person stories were collected through open ended, one-on-one qualitative interviews. Interview data were analysed using 3-step coding. The findings propose a definition for the term ‘lost wilderness tourist’, establish that lost wilderness tourist events can be categorised as ‘disorientated’ or ‘stuck’ and that these 2 meta categories can be further divided into subcategories. The findings offer insights into the lived experiences of lost wilderness tourists. These insights are useful for anyone with an interest in lost wilderness events and the safety of people in Australia’s wilderness areas.

Mysteries, Battles, and Games: Exploring Agency in Metaphors About Sexual Harassment

Given the personal nature of sexual harassment and the typically confidential, bureaucratic reporting processes in organizations, first-person stories about sexual harassment reporting are somewhat rare. In fact, targets of harassment are routinely silenced by the reporting process, with confidentiality rules protecting harassers, organizations, and only occasionally, harassment targets. Consequently, we know little about how those who experience sexual harassment from coworkers make sense of their experiences, what their experience reporting is like, and how they navigate the stigma of sexual harassment after they report. In this study, we draw upon in-depth interviews with a diverse group of workers to understand how they metaphorically frame their experiences as mysteries, battles, and games. We argue that these metaphors direct attention to the ways people make sense of harassment in wholly negative symbolic frames, with diminished agency, and implicate organizations as agents in the harassment process.

From Fire, Love Rises: Stories Shared from the Artist Community

ABSTRACT In this essay the author recalls the process of organizing and interpreting an exhibition of art and language made in response to a catastrophic fire that devastated California’s Sonoma and Napa counties in late 2017. The Sonoma Valley Museum of Art invited a group of artists and writers to be part of its small exhibition planning team to help establish the exhibition’s focus, compile the checklist of artworks and writing, compose the interpretive labels, and participate as presenters in the public programs. What follows is a reflection on the process that resulted in unique approaches to organizing, presenting, and interpretation as the artists, writers, and museum staff collaborated to engage the audience directly through first-person stories, with the intention of honoring their shared experience and healing their community.

Love and Duty: Confederate Widows and the Emotional Politics of Loss by Angela Esco Elder

Reviewed by: Love and Duty: Confederate Widows and the Emotional Politics of Loss by Angela Esco Elder Libra R. Hilde (bio) Love and Duty: Confederate Widows and the Emotional Politics of Loss. By Angela Esco Elder. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2022. Pp. 224. $95.00 cloth; $27.95 paper; $21.99 ebook) The Civil War created 200,000 Confederate widows. Angela Esco Elder uses personal narratives, print, and popular-culture sources to explore the social vision and expectations of widows, their heightened political clout, and their diverse responses to loss. "Because society invested widowhood with so much significance, it inadvertently created the stage upon which an unforeseen and unprecedented number of young Confederate women could be seen and heard," Elder writes (p. 2). While Elder includes working-class women, the sources favor elite white women. Love and Duty traces the emotional contours of widow's lives and the political significance of their mourning rituals, which took on increased salience as leaders sought legitimacy for the Confederacy. Widows had a public role to play, and they expected reciprocal rewards. The staggering level of male death in a highly patriarchal society makes this an important study. As wives became widows, they displayed a range of reactions, with some upholding social ideals and others falling short. A selfless widow wore proper mourning attire, found refuge in motherhood and religion, and devoted herself to her husband's memory and to the Confederacy. Widows' behavior mattered, and they "became walking embodiments of sacrifice for their communities" (p. 81). Elder probes the variety of lived experience as these women navigated financial, material, and emotional distress. She interweaves moving individual narratives throughout the book. Chapter two contains an especially strong section on written intimacy as letters became increasingly important and unguarded amidst prolonged separations. This book poses intriguing questions, though Elder's answers sometimes remain unsubstantiated. Elder notes that some wives in abusive marriages likely felt relief when a husband died but [End Page 82] provides no evidence to back up this statement. In addition, the historiography is incomplete. Elder cites Confederate Reckoning (2010) but should explicitly note that she is building on Stephanie McCurry's argument about the unintended ramifications of symbolically including women in the framing of the Confederate experiment. Contrary to Elder's claim, historians have not portrayed southern women as a monolith. She shows tensions within families and across generations, but misses the opportunity to fully address the historiography on class divides and shifting gender roles even as the patriarchy survived. As they reconstructed their lives, widows wielded their social capital to petition the government for aid. Widows who visibly endorsed the Confederacy were more successful, meaning that those in the border states faced added hardships. Because they had "political power," mounting deaths amplified concern over the "sexually promiscuous widow" (pp. 107, 103). Most of the lengthy examples present model widows or those who grieved too deeply rather than in a politically problematic way. The book would benefit from extended first-person stories of those who upended expectations. In the postwar period, widows continued to invoke their special status to seek support. Elite widows could become celebrities devoted to memorializing their deceased husbands. However, Elder suggests that many impoverished widows had little time or energy for memorial work. Those most active in memorial associations were married or widowed after the war, and thus Elder contends that "white women did not seamlessly work together to create a Lost Cause ideology" (p. 132). She raises astute questions about widows' anemic participation, but the evidence is thin. Moreover, not working for something is not the same as working against it. Did these women speak out against the Lost Cause, even privately? Once again, the detailed stories highlight publicly active widows. If "grief, and grieving rituals, could be simultaneously compliant and oppositional," Elder needs examples of oppositional behavior from real women and [End Page 83] not just the fictional Scarlett O'Hara. Was this open opposition or an inability or refusal to actively engage? Libra R. Hilde LIBRA R. HILDE teaches history at San José State University. She is the author of Worth a Dozen Men: Women and Nursing in the Civil War South...

Truth and Autobiography in Stand-up Comedy and the Genius of Doug Stanhope

Abstract It is common for stand-up comedians to tell stories as well as, or instead of, jokes. Stories bring something extra to the performance, and when presented as true add a further layer of appeal. However, most stories told as if true by comedians are not true. A categorizing of forms of comedic story is presented involving the dimensions of grammatical person and truthfulness. Some advantages of comedians’ employing true first-person stories are discussed, and these considerations are then explored through the role of autobiography in the work of Doug Stanhope. Many aspects of Stanhope’s (highly unusual) life find their way into his shows, and true stories and his personality more broadly are folded into other elements of his act (such as his political views). Links are made with Søren Kierkegaard’s notion of “inwardness,” and it’s argued that authenticity is a prerequisite for the quality of self-disclosure that is basic to Stanhope’s excellence.

The Forward Operating Base as Heterotopia

The Forward Operating Base as Heterotopia Peter Molin (bio) Utopias and dystopias are well understood, but not many people outside academia have heard of heterotopias. French philosopher Michel Foucault introduced the term in his 1966 work The Order of Things, but his most well-known explanation of the term came in a talk to an audience of architects in 1967. Foucault described heterotopias in "Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias" as "certain [spaces] that have the curious property of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invent the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror or reflect." Wikipedia helpfully refines Foucault's definition: "certain cultural, institutional and discursive spaces that are somehow 'other': disturbing, intense, incompatible, contradictory or transforming. Heterotopias are worlds within worlds, mirroring and yet upsetting what is outside." In heterotopias, then, dominant societal values and structures, along with familiar patterns of human cognition and relationship, are either intensified or transformed, or both. Foucault gives a list of examples of heterotopias—ships, gardens, fairs, cemeteries, bars, brothels, prisons, hospitals—and since his time critics have applied the term to many other human-made locations. The question here is whether the forward operating bases (FOBs) built by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan to house soldiers and from which to stage operations might be considered heterotopias. And if so, what explanatory power does the concept possess to tell us about how soldiers' lives were transformed by living on FOBs? My thoughts on the matter were inspired by reading the graphic-memoir first-person stories recounted in True War Stories: Tales of Deployment from Vietnam to Today (2020), edited by Alex de Campi and Khai Krumbhaar. Several of the tales in True War Stories recount their authors' deployments in Vietnam, the Philippines, and Okinawa. Most, though, are set on FOBs associated with Iraq and Afghanistan, with Camp Victory in Iraq and Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan being the most prominent. Actions "outside the wire" or on smaller combat outposts provide a contrast to FOBs in several stories, but for the majority of the narrators a large FOB was the setting for their most intensely felt events and impressions of war, the military, and deployment. [End Page 39] Foucault tells us that heterotopias come in different flavors, with different functions. "Deviant" heterotopias, such as prisons and hospitals, house individuals who fall outside of the society's mainstream. Another category is "heterotopias of ritual or purification"—public spaces such as churches that serve spiritual purposes. "Heterotopias of time," such as museums, impart heightened alertness to historical and cultural difference. The different kinds of heterotopias overlap, and many heterotopias serve multiple purposes, but the salient point is that heterotopias are charged spaces—occupants of heterotopias know they are being affected by them, even if they are not sure how. Of particular interest are "crisis heterotopias," which are places where individuals go through intensive but short-lived transitional experiences. Foucault mentions as examples boarding schools and military service, and it is hard not to think that the military training bases and FOBs are also crisis heterotopias. Young men and women are socialized as soldiers, airmen, marines, and sailors on stateside bases, and the process intensifies on FOBs during deployment. Much of this socialization, with its concomitant alteration of outlook and thought, is a result of training, the military's hierarchical structure, and the demands of military missions, but the physical geography of the FOB also contributes much to the process. The stories related by the narrators in True War Stories are ones that could only have taken place on an FOB; the authors carry minor and major dramas of their FOB experience forward with them in life, and the tales they tell reflect their effort to understand and narrate them. The vivid, fulsome, and detailed graphic-art panels accompanying the stories artistically reinforce the prominence of the FOB as the stage for the human drama described. The artwork illustrates how the FOB as a heterotopia alters familiar spatial sensibilities and rearranges apperceptions of time. "Merry Christmas, Khaareji," written by Jonathan Bratten and illustrated by Edin Marron and Dee Cuniffe, takes...

Review: Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century

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An Aging Nursing Workforce: Thematic Analysis from the Nurstory Project

Background: Nursing in the United States of America is an aging workforce. This study sought to better understand the lived experience of aging nurses. Because nurses work in systems where other forms of interpersonal power dynamics may influence internalized and external stereotype an approach based on intersectional theory was applied. Methods: A qualitative thematic narrative analysis of an existing data set of first-person digital stories in the Nurstory project, authored by a group of nurses, was the data source. An emergent coding method was applied. The collection of five digital stories were analyzed. Results: All stories were first person accounts of experiences that represented their internalized reflections and elements of ageism in how their age interacted with their work environment. Dominant themes included: 1) Role constriction 2) Strength 3) Tired and (re)Tired 4) Age perceived and 5)Loneliness. Conclusions: These aging nursing stories add to the contextual layers of the aging healthcare workplace and aging nursing workforce. These individual experiences offer a nuanced understanding of the internalized responses to aging and ageism. These stories highlight socially constructed and socially reinforced attitudes that are complicated by the personal and occupational expectations of nurse’s work, their role and embedded hierarchies in healthcare. Stories such as these are important individual and collective indicators of lived experiences that offer a deeper understanding into the intersections of social identity and aging, that when listened to, can offer insight and a way forward in addressing the stereotype, discrimination and social inequities of ageism.

Resilient performance in healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic (ResCOV): study protocol for a multilevel grounded theory study on adaptations, working conditions, ethics and patient safety

IntroductionSince early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged societies and revealed the built-in fragility and dependencies in complex adaptive systems, such as healthcare. The pandemic has placed healthcare providers and...

Hear, Here: Oral History, Gentrification, and Memory Politics

Abstract Hear, Here is a critical oral history project developed in two gentrifying urban neighborhoods in Canada and the United States. Recorded by our university students, residents and visitors can listen to short first-person stories on their cell phones, the location of which is marked by orange street signs with a toll-free phone number. The process of gentrification results in community groups staking claims to their version of history embodied in the built heritage and cultural landscapes under threat by neglect and demolition. Hear, Here seeks to amplify the voices of those who typically go unheard, and advocates that oral history can be used to challenge policy, preserve diversity, and reveal that gentrification is not inherent in urban change.

Review of Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the 21st Century edited by Alice Wong

No abstract available.

Continuum of sexual and gender-based violence risks among Syrian refugee women and girls in Lebanon

BackgroundA myriad of factors including socio-economic hardships impact refugees, with females being additionally exposed to various forms of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). The aim of this qualitative analysis was to understand and to provide new insight into the experiences of SGBV among Syrian refugee women and girls in Lebanon.MethodsThe data are gained from a larger mixed-methods study, investigating the experiences of Syrian refugee girls in Lebanon, using an iPad and the data collection tool, SenseMaker®. The SenseMaker survey intentionally did not ask direct questions about experiences of SGBV but instead enabled stories about SGBV to become apparent from a wide range of experiences in the daily lives of Syrian girls. For this analysis, all first-person stories by female respondents about experiences of SGBV were included in a thematic analysis as well as a random selection of male respondents who provided stories about the experiences of Syrian girls in Lebanon.ResultsIn total, 70 of the 327 first person stories from female respondents and 42 of the 159 stories shared by male respondents included dialogue on SGBV. While experiences of sexual harassment were mainly reported by women and girls, male respondents were much more likely to talk explicitly about sexual exploitation. Due to different forms of SGBV risks in public, unmarried girls were at high risk of child marriage, whereas married girls more often experienced some form of IPV and/or DV. In abusive relationships, some girls and women continued to face violence as they sought divorces and attempted to flee unhealthy situations.ConclusionsThis study contributes to existing literature by examining SGBV risks and experiences for refugees integrated into their host community, and also by incorporating the perceptions of men. Our findings shed light on the importance of recognizing the impact of SGBV on the family as a whole, in addition to each of the individual members and supports considering the cycle of SGBV not only across the woman’s lifespan but also across generations. Gendered differences in how SGBV was discussed may have implications for the design of future research focused on SGBV.

Cultivating a Culture of Reflection Among Pharmacy Students Through Storytelling

Objective. To hold a storytelling event and assess its effect on Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) students' perspectives on and attitudes toward reflection. Methods. Story Slam, a four-hour storytelling competition, was incorporated into the spring semester of the first professional year of a PharmD program. The event featured short first-person stories told by faculty members as well as students. Students were invited to participate in a pre- and post-intervention survey and focus group. An inductive qualitative analysis of the resulting data was conducted using textual and audio artifacts. Results. All 136 first professional year (P1) students participated in the 2019 Story Slam. Eleven students submitted qualitative pre- and post-intervention survey instruments and participated in a semi-structured recorded focus group. Thematic analysis revealed nine themes. Students' perspectives regarding the importance of self-reflection changed after participating in Story Slam, with students expressing a greater willingness to engage in self-reflection in the context of professional practice following the event. Students believed Story Slam created an environment conducive to reflection and engagement, resulting in strengthened relationships with peers and faculty members. Students expressed feeling a wide range of emotions as they shared their story and listened to the stories of others. Conclusion. Story Slam is an effective strategy for introducing P1 students to reflection, while also strengthening the school's reflective culture. Additionally, sharing stories may foster positive relationships and cultivate trust and respect between students and faculty members.

Getting lost in a story: how narrative engagement emerges from narrative perspective and individual differences in alexithymia

ABSTRACT The present research examines how narrative engagement, or the extent to which people immerse themselves into the world of a story, varies as a function of narrative perspective and individual differences in alexithymia. The authors hypothesised that narrative engagement would be higher when people assume a first-person (rather than third-person) perspective and for people lower (rather than higher) on alexithymia. In an online study (N = 541) and a lab study (N = 55), participants with varying levels of alexithymia read first- and/or third-person narrated texts and then rated their narrative engagement. As expected, first-person stories evoked more narrative engagement than third-person stories, and global alexithymia was negatively correlated with narrative engagement. Narrative perspective did not interact with cognitive facets of alexithymia (i.e. difficulties identifying, verbalising, and understanding feelings). However, narrative perspective did interact with affective facets of alexithymia (i.e. emotionalising and fantasising): First-person (rather than third-person) stories elicited more narrative engagement at lower levels of affective alexithymia, but not at higher levels of affective alexithymia. The interaction effect was significant in Study 1; the interaction was significant in Study 2 after controlling for trait absorption. Together, these findings suggest that alexithymia is linked to difficulties in mentally simulating narrative worlds.

“Fake Vets” and Viral Lies: Personal Narrative in a Post-Truth Era

Abstract “Stolen valor” confrontations calling out “fake vets” have generated a popular genre of viral video, a highly concentrated and visible expression of contemporary anxieties over the commodification of identity online. The boom in first-person stories, particularly traumatic ones, has oversaturated the attention economy of the internet, creating a market for fakes that real veterans can’t criticize without challenging the authenticity of their own stories.

Techniques of black male re/dress: corporeal drag and kinesthetic politics in the rebirth of Waacking/Punkin’

The improvisation-based dance Waacking/Punking developed in gay underground disco clubs of 1970s Los Angeles and circulated transnationally via television's landmark black music/dance show Soul Train. With almost all male progenitors passing during the early AIDS crisis, the culture was reborn in the 2000s to the transnational hip-hop/street dance arena, now a competition style dominated by nonblack cisgender females. While seeming to promote hetero-normative gender performance, learning the dance practice potentially queers movement norms through corporeal drag – techniques for trying on and refashioning movement that transform kinesthetic consciousness. At the same time, the obscure structural positioning of the black male figure associated with Waacking/Punking's historical context complicates and disorients gendered notions of power and racialized sexuality in its rebirth. This trans-methodological study centers experiences of black practitioners, drawing from first-person stories of pioneer and new generation dancers, as well as native ethnography and archival research. In subtle ways, Waacking practices redress black masculinity and question performing social inclusion under terms of a white patriarchal order – terms that suture blackness-to-pathology-to-violence. The erotic practice of Waacking/Punking may be understood as an embodied re-negotiation of hegemonic demands on gender and sexuality, made possible through its transmission of a black kinesthetic politics.

The limits of plot: Accounting for how women interpret stories of sexual assault

Although scholars have argued that plot is key to narrative’s effects, no one has studied empirically how people interpret stories told along different plotlines. This has left unexamined an important puzzle: how do time- and place-specific beliefs intrude on the operation of plot genres in shaping narrative’s meaning? On the basis of a survey and focus-group study of how women interpreted first-person stories of an acquaintance rape told along different plotlines, we argue that what stands in the way of adapting old stories to new purposes is less plot than character. The same events can be inserted into different genres of plot to yield quite different moral messages. But audiences’ expectations of characters are more rigid. Time- and place-specific ideas about how people properly behave – about how ambitious women should be, for example, or how emotional men should be – limit audiences’ ability to imagine them playing the roles associated with different plots. Plots are transposable; characters are less so.