“What Are You?”: An Autocritography of Language, Stereotypes, and Microaggressions

My cultural identities blend into an ambiguous aesthetic that cannot be contained by boxes asking “what are you?” Racial marking, however, leaves little room for negotiation. In this essay, I use critical autoethnography to illuminate the Black/White binary, stereotypes, and microaggressions through everyday interactions. I use autocritography, a critical subgenre of autoethnographic inquiry that interrogates traditionally muted complexities, pains, confusions, and possibilities that push a person to study what they study, to connect my standpoint to scholarship. Using autocritography, I examine how the complexity and intersections of my identity influence my communication with others and analyze the underlying meanings of my experiences.