Untold Autoethnographic Stories of (In)Justice, Teaching and Scholarship

Ari Sherris is a Professor of Bilingual Education at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. His research interests explore communication, meaning-making and complex social semiotics in multilingual contexts. Ari also documents and supports indigenous languages and teacher activists reclaiming and revitalizing their languages as they bring those languages into schooling for the Safaliba in Ghana and Salish speakers on the Flathead Reservation in the USA. He has edited four books on indigenous languages, literacies, pedagogies of revitalization and ethnography. His research appears in Writing & Pedagogy, Journal of Multilingual & Multicultural Development, The Canadian Modern Language Review, Language Awareness, and edited volumes. Joy Kreeft Peyton is President of the Coalition of Community-Based Heritage Language Schools in the United States, which connects and collaborates with thousands of schools teaching hundreds of languages, mostly on weekends. She has also worked in Ethiopia, Nepal and The Gambia to develop curriculum, materials and student pleasure reading books in students’ mother tongues.

Autoethnography has been defined as a postcolonial genre that allows the powerless to talk back. Authors from wide ranging communities in this collection speak against diverse silencing forces in contemporary geopolitics. Beneath the deceptive simplicity of their stories is a complex theorization from new materialism, affect studies, and southern theories to amplify this genre as a heuristics of the heart.

• ContributorsAcknowledgementsSuhanthie Motha: Foreword: Inhabiting (In)Justice Through Our LivesChapter 1. Ari Sherris and Joy Kreeft Peyton: Embodying Untold Truths: Autoethnographic Textu(r)alities of (In)Justice in and Beyond Applied LinguisticsChapter 2. Rima Elabdali: Embodied Reflexivity: Ethnographic Trouble and the Hypervisibility of the Muslim BodyChapter 3. Gail Prasad: Brown – Blanche? Black: Weaving Multilingual, Multicultural and Multiracial Minoritised Identities Across International Educational ContextsChapter 4. Elaine W. Chun: Easy-LinguisticsChapter 5. Patriann Smith: Racialized Entanglements of Englishes, Literacies and Peoples across Transnational Contexts: An Autoethnographic AccountChapter 6. Darshini Nadarajan: Wraiths, Rasa and Rememory: Re-Searching in the Shadows of Peripheral Knowledge and Wisdom in the QuotidianChapter 7. Ahmar Mahboob / Prof Nomad / Sunny Boy Brumby: 'No Stars: Nothing to Guide Me': Paving Our Destiny by Learning from the Land and Creating Alternative PracticesChapter 8. Adam Haupt: Sample a Look Back: Autoethnographic Reflections on Hiphopography, Language and IdentityChapter 9. Emile Jansen aka Emile YX?: The 4 Rs of Hip Hop Cultural EducationChapter 10. Paul J. Meighan: 'Whatever you do, don’t give up!' A Scottish Gael’s Language Reclamation Journey Chapter 11. Tania M. Ka’ai: Privileging Indigenous Māori Knowledge – Reclaiming My Birthright of Language and Culture: An Autoethnographic StoryChapter 12. Kū Kahakalau: Kūlia I Ka Nu’u: Strive to Reach Your HighestChapter 13. Aurora Tsai: Unlearning Shame and Silence as a Multiracial Woman of Color: My Pursuit of Research for Collective Healing and LiberationChapter 14. Ayanna Cooper and Shelley Jallow: Fieldnotes from Buffalo Soldiers: Black Educators in TESOL LeadershipChapter 15: Ari Sherris: 'Isn’t Ari an Israeli name?' Untethered Discourses, Entangling TroublesTommaso M. Milani: Instead of an AfterwordIndex