(6 points) Undergraduate research project: 6 points

 https://open.substack.com/pub/chidxrra/p/autism-is-a-black-womans-disability?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer

To justify my H-Option for the English class "Narratives of Race and Health," I opted to write an autoethnography about my experiences as an autistic black woman in college. This project was much harder than I anticipated it to be. I had set deadlines with my professor, but did not follow through when he did not remember a deadline. Not taking accountability when needed negatively impacted the amount of resources I had at my disposal. I also learned more about how research can be conducted, as I found out that I would have to omit interviews to avoid issues with the IRB.

The lack of interviews in the project, and a push from my process lead me to focus more on the personal aspect of auto ethnography. This was difficult, as I have grown accustomed to the rigid and non-personal nature of writing chemistry lab reports. I was forced to push down some of my discomforts and to allow my story to be told.

This project also exposed the lack of research on autistic black women. I had to split these catagories up to find papers, and even then, they were scares. I am incredibly grateful for the diverse texts and films we used in class, because even though they did not all direct relate to autism, they had concepts I could take.

To further explore this topic, I will be leading a discussion with the Womans Research and Resource Center!

- Catherine Omeh