"On Loving and Hating my Mentally Retarded Mother" by Carol Rambo Ronai, Ph.D.

Autoethnography is a form of communication in which someone from one culture engages in sharing their own experience to a person or group of people of a different culture. The most famous example is Poma's 1200 page letter to King Phillip II. In said letter, he attempted to describe the life of the Andean people under rule of the Conquistadors. It was written in semi-understandable spanish. Poma had written it out not understanding grammar and it never reached the King of Spain.

Today, there are many different types of autoethnographic texts. These texts are written to explain one subculture's life to the people of another subculture. Below is a link to what I would consider an auto ethnographic text. The article, by Carol Rambo Ronai, is a detailed account of the life of a woman living with her mentally retarded mother, facing sexual and physical abuse, and having family members who are hard on her as well. The author uses vivid detail to shock the reader. This example is definitely for mature readers at best. Since the article is 49 pages long, I am providing two examples from the article that are work safe on this post.
http://www.carolrambo.com/articles/mrmother.pdf

I found her diary once.  Inside it her aunt had drawn
beautiful pictures of bears and described picnics and birthday
parties Suzanne had attended with them.  On a page towards the end,
my mother had written in her own scraggly handwriting:  "I mary
Frank today.  I be his booful brid.  I be so hapy."  Reading these
words was physically revolting to me.  Marrying Frank was a way for
her to live out some kind of fantasy story in her mind.  How could
the world let them marry?  His family knew what a monster he was;
he had molested one of his sister's children.  What the hell was
everybody in Dysfunction land thinking?  Does her definition of the
situation apply?  His?  What should my definition be?  I don't
understand why I care.  It is like a hangnail I can't leave alone--
the more I mess with it the rattier and more painful it becomes. (13)

The government has contributed to the pretense that everything
is normal.  They won't certify her as too retarded to hold a job,
but they will provide her vocational rehabilitation.  I worked many
hours, on three separate occasions, over an eight year period of
time to get her services.  Each time she stopped the counseling and
training the moment my back was turned.  Since social service
workers cannot force services on anyone, and since Suzanne has to
want the help, no one can do anything about it.  And so we go on
protecting her from the truth, lying, keeping silent and pretending
everything is perfectly normal.  In a sense we are complicit agents
in her failure.  If she did not have us, if she did not have the
trust fund, if she could not go on living this fiction, she would
be forced to go out and get job training. (24)