This evocative autoethnography reflects the author’s grief after she learns that a past teacher candidate was killed on Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) flight 752. Grief washes over her as “writing down our worst experiences can also offer a way to cope with some of life’s horrors.”1 The autoethnography becomes “interventionist, seeking to give notice to those who may otherwise not be allowed to tell their story or are denied a voice to speak.”2 Memorable stories from the trauma become a composed collection of touchstones. In the end, the author discovers how “weaving personal experiences with academic research can reveal an understanding of complex, painful issues, such as death, grief, and traumatic loss,”3 in hopes to inspire others to share their autoethnographic experiences.
Niloo: Flight 752
Karen V. Lee, PhD, is a lecturer, faculty advisor, area coordinator, and co-founder of the Teaching Initiative for Music Educators cohort (TIME) at the Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Her research interests include issues of memoir, autoethnography, poetic inquiry, performance ethnography, creative-relational inquiry, women’s life histories, writing practices, music/teacher education, and arts-based approaches to qualitative research. Her doctoral dissertation was a book of short stories titled Riffs of Change: Musicians Becoming Music Educators. She is a teacher, writer, musician, teacher/music educator, and researcher. She currently teaches undergraduate and graduate students at the university in both traditional and online contexts alongside her academic and scholarly writing pursuits. In 2020, she received the Killam Teaching Prize.
Karen V. Lee; Niloo: Flight 752. Journal of Autoethnography 1 July 2021; 2 (3): 317–325. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/joae.2021.2.3.317
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