Writing and Other Familiar Things: Autoethnographic Possibilities puts on display a number of distinct ways of structuring essays that can be used in qualitative research and creative writing.
The book takes as its subject an assortment of things. Part 1 approaches writing from a variety of perspectives, addressing distinct aspects of writing such as the power of the written word, the prevalence of writing in our daily lives, and the writing process itself. Part 2 takes on a variety of subjects, including seashells, hands, conundrums, masks, teaching, COVID, partners, hats, gardening, parents, politics, and hope.
By presenting various structural possibilities, the book might be described as a “how-to” book for any writer interested in a variety of creative approaches to writing essays.
Preface: A Hermit Crab Introduction PART I: WRITING 1. Pertaining to Writing 2. Writing with Uncertainty and Hope 3. A Menagerie of Writing Possibilities: Getting It Right 4. Epigraphs for Writers Considering Errors 5. Telling Secrets 6. What Can Writing Do? 7. Some Things I Remember about Memory and Writing 8. Still Going at It: Creative Longevity as a Desire for the Unobtainable 9. Thirteen Ars Poeticas Following Wallace Stevens PART II: OTHER FAMILIAR THINGS 10. Selling Sea Shells: A Narrative Conchology 11. The Hands’ Methods: An Embodied Practice 12. Negotiated Conundrums: Creative-Relational Inquiry 13. Masks: Always Becoming 14. An Old Man Stands in Front of the Class: Vignettes 15. Contact and the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020-23: An Ongoing History 16. Together, Everyday: A Composite Ethnodrama 17. Telling on Partners: Fictive Monologues 18. Hats: A Tailored Memoir 19. Digging the Garden: Posthumanist Disappointments, Puzzles, and Pleasures 20. Mom and Dad’s Letters: An Epistolary Speculation 21. Living with Loss: A Lyric Listing 22. Finding my Way into Resistance: Political Desires 23. Those Barnacles: A Metaphoric Argument 24. An Eye on Hope: A Series of Personal Pronouncements 25. Writing into Hope: A Blended Autoethnography Afterward: The Book’s Eulogy
Ronald J. Pelias is a Professor Emeritus from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. His most recent books are The Creative Qualitative Researcher and Lessons on Aging and Dying.
