Bonnie Sunstein argues that a good ethnography lives in the liminal space between story telling and informational text. This is a very fine line, because if we force ourselves to present the information we gather in as objective a way as possible, some of the feeling and the atmosphere is lost in the retelling. However, if we spend more time on the craft of the portrayal of information and atmosphere than on our actual observations, we run the risk of fictionalizing our experience.

I think it is imperative that we recall that our observations are never objective, always subject to our own point of view. As such, we cannot trust our ability to put forth information objectively and to try is to deny the complexity not only of our own interpretation, nor the highly contextual reality that we are attempting to record. It is best, in my view, to recognize our limitations and also to come to terms that to see something and to portray it within context is a strength, not a weakness, even and especially if we recognize and point out our own personal biases as we go.

I love the way that she uses narrative to make her story compelling, a creative non-fiction approach to conveying the information she has collected in her ethnography. This is all the more helpful to me for knowing this style is intentional, that in her ethnographic research write up she “crafted” her story in a way “that readers would recognize as information but feel compelled to read” (184). It seems to me that she has taken this cue from reading Barbara Myerhoff, another ethnographer who uses narrative to convey information rather than using a dry (boring), but perhaps more ‘objective,’ ‘professional,’ ‘text-book’ sounding discourse.  Without this sense that what I am reading is a story being told, I do not think I would take the time to read it at all, for a couple of reasons. Culture, being socially constructed, is best understood through personal experience, and second best through relation of personal experience through stories. In order for me to get the ‘feeling’ of being at the Center with Barbara Myerhoff and the seniors, or at the writing retreat with Bonnie Sunstien and the other writing teachers, I have to see the rooms and the benches through the words that these women use to describe their surroundings, through their own written accounts of what it felt like to sit with these people and to talk with them.  I see the intrinsic weakness in relating ethnographic information as narrative, but I see the strengths of doing so as well.