WHAT WOULD I SAY IF I WAS DYING

Abstract

This autoethnographic poem explores my gendered experience as a twenty-something academic. Sport, family, and disability shaped my gender identity. Life in the academy and traditional heterosexual love expectations later tested my understanding of self and the role of femininity as a cultural construct. Building on and inspired by the work of Susan Krieger (1996), The Family Silver: Essays on Relationships Among Women and Ruth Behar (1993), Translated Women: Crossing the Border with Esperanza’s Story and their exploration of gender and sexual identity within the academic and modern life, this poem attempts to navigate the tensions of womanhood, gender identity, feminism and the self in the late 1990s and 2000s.

Citation

Metz, J.L. (2004), "WHAT WOULD I SAY IF I WAS DYING", Studies in Symbolic Interaction (Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 27), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 339-346. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-2396(04)27023-5