Abstract
This chapter explores aspects of narrative construction, and alternative ways in which we can ‘write up’ our data. Drawing upon some of the interview material generated in the course of my research, I offer a fictional framing of the ‘truths’ that the interviews revealed in order to excavate more deeply the ‘graphic’ element in the term ‘autoethnography’. The fictional presentation of my material highlights, and makes transparent, the representational nature of what we do whilst posing broader epistemological questions about veracity and verisimilitude: truth and representation.
Wisdom
The child looks up at Wisdom
And holds her Life Scroll.
Wisdom returns her gaze and lets unroll
The gradual unfolding that is her due.
And the child learns that virtue is its own reward too.
Not that she knows this now.
Now she is discovering how
To live and why.
This fledgling female cannot fly
Until she’s let her lost soul cry.
Then, through a darkened lens she’ll see a re-emergence
And after this, a slow resurgence
Of an old self she’d buried long ago.
Fertile seeds of joy and hope she’ll sow,
And all her life she’ll strive to tell
All shall be well, all shall be well.
(Ann Harrison-Brooks, 2016); Copyright by Ann Harrison-Brooks
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Fraser, W. (2018). The Stories That We Tell and Those That Tell Us. In: Seeking Wisdom in Adult Teaching and Learning. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56295-1_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56295-1_7
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