An Evocative Autoethnography: What I Thought I Learned about Culture, Power, and Communication as a Hospital Patient: Then, a Surprise Epiphany!

Authors

• Janet C. Richards, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USAFollow

Abstract

Like all truthful autoethnographies, this is not just a simple story I tell here. Originally, I wrote this narrative describing what I thought was a good example of a relatively new but expanding genre of research and writing entitled evocative autoethnography. However, although I did not know it at the time, some information was missing from my story – even worse-  many of my initial perceptions were incorrect. Through additional  reading, self-reflection, and interviews of family, colleagues, and friends I discovered “autoethnographic writing does not merely tell stories about yourself garnished with details but actively interprets your stories to make sense of how they are connected to others’ stories. Through this method  you gain new knowledge and insights about yourself and others and become transformed. In this sense autoethnographic writing is a constructive interpreted process” (Chang, 2008, p. 49). Thus, I learned that further information relative to my representations of my hospital “internment” helped me better comprehend what was closer to the “real truth.”

Keywords

para influenza, thoracentesis, ontological issues, displacement issues

Author Bio(s)

Janet Richards teaches at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Fl. She served as an Invited Scholar in Canada and worked in a sponsored program in Pakistan, Estonia, Romania, Hungary, and in jungle camps between Myanmar and Thailand. She recently published her 14th book and is a member of TQR Editorial Board. Please direct correspondence to [email protected]

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Caroline Ellis for her astute and positive comments about this manuscript.

Publication Date

11-10-2026

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Recommended APA Citation

Richards, J. C. (2026). An evocative autoethnography: What I thought I learned about culture, power, and communication as a hospital patient: Then, a surprise epiphany! The Qualitative Report, 31(11), 7106-7113.