Finding Voice along the Appalachian Mountains: An Autoethnographic Journey of a Female Immigrant Student

Using autoethnography (Ellis, 2004), this study explores a female immigrant student's lived experiences in education in China, and in the United States. The theoretical framework of this study is critical autoethnography. In the study, I present my lived experiences in poems, narratives, and stories as the storied scholarship (Boylorn and Orbe, 2014). Through the study, I make sense of how a female non-traditional immigrant student navigated schooling in the complex social, cultural environment in the United States, and schooling experiences of my youth in China. I utilize the study to examine the deeper meaning of my story as an inquiry (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005; Richardson and St. Pierre, 2005). In doing so, to not only make sense of the complex lifelong experiences (Berger, 2004) of an immigrant student, but also to make connections with many other female immigrant students, and to bring new light to the understanding of their struggles, difficulties, and challenges. I use various literary styles and the metaphor of finding the voice in my writing to illustrate the process (Forber-Pratt, 2015; Luke, 2009).