Mary Louise Pratt discussed autoethnographic writing in a lecture to her
fellow MLA members back in 1991. Autoethnography is a type of research
involving working with others to discover oneself in ways that are usually
unseen from a introspective view. This lecture included two examples of how
people were working through transculturation, or the merging of different
cultures, to communicate ideas to others. These were a 1,200-page letter called
The First New Chronicle and Good
Government by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, and an assignment from Mary
Louise Pratt’s son entitled “A grate adventchin” following a prompt from his
teacher. Each work attempted to express something that they felt very strong
about. With the limited amount of knowledge of language, each tried to convey
their message. The difference, Pratt's son wrote one paragraph. Poma wrote a
large letter and illustrations of life in Kuzco. Also, Poma was describing his
home and new life with the conquistadors. Pratt's son was writing about his
idea for an invention. That would help him, his friends, and his teachers. In
terms of who was more successful, I would say that Pratt's son had better luck
getting his message across. It took 299 years to not only locate the letter,
but to translate it as well. Poma was using a writing system that was not even
legible to anyone else outside of the Andes. The paragraph on inventions may
have been misspelled, but he knew that it would sound the same as he meant it
to.
