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Disability and (Auto)Ethnography

Riding (and Writing) the Bus with My Sister

Hofstra University

Disabled people have largely been ignored by ethnographers, arguably to the detriment of both disabled people and the discipline of anthropology. But although disability communities are ripe for ethnographic investigation, disabled people, long subjected both to marginalization and objectifying examination, may resent and resist such attention. Indeed, disability ethnography faces some of the same ethical challenges as ethnography involving populations subjected to classic Western imperialism. Although not ethnography by a strict definition, Rachel Simon’s Riding the Bus with My Sister, an account of sharing the life of her mildly retarded sister, who spends most of her waking hours riding the buses in her Pennsylvania hometown, exemplifies disability life narrative that approaches ethnography in its method and that suggests what disability and ethnography have to offer each other.

Key Words: disability • ethnography • mental retardation • Rachel Simon • life writing

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 34, No. 2, 121-142 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0891241604272089


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