'Autoethnography' By Mary Louise Pratt Summary

Two Authors with One Voice
When observing the people around me, I’ve noticed that individuals have a tendency to share their personal stories in many ways. Some are too shy and others think that they will be judged if the person they were talking to knew who the story was really about. It’s an easier way to share information, whether it is personal or something basic like what they did today, through other’s words. Some individuals are confident enough to write about themselves and talk freely to the public. In both cases, Mary Louise Pratt and John Wideman show these forms of speaking known as “ethnography” and “autoethnography” through their writings.
Mary Louise Pratt uses many ideas and terms in her work “Arts of the Contact Zone”.
Using autoethnography, she ties it into her little boy and baseball. It was a way that people could define and interpret who he is based on how he put himself out there with the sport by trading cards and participating in the games. The value of looking at autoethnography in a contact zone is to see the individual struggle, whether it be by their actions or their words. It also is important to see how that individual makes it out of that contact zone and to see how they initially survive. Not only does she define autoethnography but she talks about ethnography as she defines it as being “those in which European metropolitan subjects represent to themselves their others (usually their conquered others)” (Pratt 487). I noticed ethnography more in Wideman’s terms as he would speak through other characters or talk about others. For example he wrote “I know that had something to do with it. Living in Shadyside with only white people around. You remember how it was. Except for us and them couple other families it was a all-white neighborhood” (Wideman 677). In this text it was Robby speaking as he told John about the life in