CRAFTING A STORY: REPRESENTATION OF DATA
7. HOW I WROTE THE STORIES
I had the transcripts. Now what? I knew I wanted to write a story about each person. The purpose of the story would be to illuminate how an individual negotiated the various dynamics of her or his life in order to gain a doctorate. I was writing these stories for the academy and I wanted this as a research story. I did not want the story to be a mere listing of a sequence of events. Initially I saw the story writing process as consisting of two parts: the descriptive and the analytical.
I read a number of re-presentations of narrative interviews (Shostak, Thomson, Etter-Lewis, Randall, Frisch, Middleton). The first decision I had to make was whether I wanted to write as participant first or third person. I also had to make a decision on the length of each story. Within the context of the thesis I decided that each story should be about 20 pages long (single spaced). This meant that it would be around 12000 words.
I experimented with the shortest interview (Ahrned Bawa). I (the researcher) would be the narrator of the story. In the story I paraphrased excerpts of the story and
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included large chunks of direct speech. I called this the descriptive story and attempted to provide a synthesis and a alysis at the end of the story. Excerpts are provided to illustrate my approach.
up to the age of 14 or 15, Ahmed went to the mosque, but this was more as a social function - after mosque you went to the cafe and had something to drink. But religion was not a significant part of his life. In fact Ahmed caused quite a stir in the mosque 'there was one occasion, after the prayers, when the molvi saib was talking about the whole notion of predestination and I put up my handerwas 14 or IS at the time). He got a shock - this is never done in the mosque - here were all the elders. [Ahmed Bawa's story].
School provided the social arena for the discussion of issues about larger philosophical issues and questioning things that did n t make sense. The questioning of larger issues led to Ahmed asking questions about things preached in the mosque and him being chased out of the mosque for doing the 'unthinkable.' [Researchers commentary]
With my limited skill of crafting a story, I found that this approach did not work well. The story was also not very readable and I found that my (narrator) voice got in the way and interfered with the story rather than enhancing it. Further I did not provide a sharp commentary but rather repeated parts of the story. I decided to abandon this approach.
I was impressed with Shostak's portrayal of Nisa in the book of the same name. I decided to write one of the stories (Nozibele Mjoli) with the respondent as the narrator.
In the process of writing Nozibele's story, I eliminated my questions, re-ordered parts of the transcript so that there was a coherent sequence, eliminated repetitions and paraphrased parts of the responses. I refined the writing of the story to improve readability and eliminated aspects of the interview so that I could get to twenty pages. I called this the descriptive story. At the end of each of the different sections (childhood, schooling, university) I attempted analytical comments. In writing the 'analytical' comments I wanted to draw attention to certain aspects and attempted to explain an event in terms of some contextual dynamic. I also wanted to comment on the process of remembering. My first attempt at analytical comments was weak and amounted to mostly repeating the interview text. Anexample of the writing follows:
The family house in Umzimkulu consisted of several units called a homestead. My mother was primarily responsible for running the house and the farm as my father was teaching. Farm responsibilities included looking after and milking cows and goats, planting of the fields, the harvesting etc. The children had to help - they had to work in the fields, look after cattle, milk cows and goats. However these were not the most enjoyable way to spend time. I enjoyed milking cows. I am not scared of them. [Mjoli's story]
Nozi was born and grew upInrural Transkei in 1954. Rural Transkei means little exposure to the 'outside world' with limited access to opportunities and a deliberately under-developed place.It also means a place without electricity and running water, there is subsistence farming where the whole family gets involved in carrying water from the stream and spending days in the farm tending to the cattle. [Researchers comment].
Writing with the participant as the first person made for better readability, but I had some (tiny) misgiving about writing the story in the first person participant's voice.
I continued with other descriptive stories (Ngoepe, Tema) writing them in the first person participants voice. I attempted to write deeper and sharper analytical comments about the story. I sent these descriptive stories to the respondents and one person (Tema) responded with comments (mainly spelling and correcting one 'fact'). She did not raise any problems with the format of the story but thought the analysis was weak.
I continued with two other stories (Volmink, Mokhele) in the same format. My misgivings about using the format of first person participant in writing the stories deepened. Writing Mokhele's story was troublesome - it was a 10.5 hours interview and about 1aa-page transcript. In the process of constructing a 20-page story, I did massive editing. I felt that this was a dishonest process. I was writing the words for another person. I gave Mokhele the story and asked for comments. After reading parts of the story he indicated that the story gave him problems. I had written the story with him as narrator, but he indicated this would not have been the way he would have written his story. He attempted to correct some of the parts that gave him difficulty, but in the end gave up because there were too many alterations. I realised that with a group of high profile people the image projected by the written word is important. The participants were very articulate about their experiences and, being in the public eye, were cautious about what they wanted to say, how it was said and the image they wanted to project.
They were cautious about how their words appeared in print, especially if it was presented as though they had written them. There is a difference between how a person talks about their lives and how they write about their lives.
At about the time that I was interacting with Mokhele about the re-presentation of his story, I was also preparing to present one of the stories (Tema) at a conference (Gender, Science and Technology in Malawi). Given that the story was written with Tema as narrator, I wrestled with the question of claiming authorship for myself. During this time I had begun reading the book I've Known Rivers: Lives ofLoss and Liberation by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot (see discussion above for a discussion of Lawrence- Lightfoot's approach). I attempted to craft Tema's story in the style that Lawrence- Lightfoot used. I felt comfortable with this approach because it was a clear declaration that I was crafting the story. My primary data source was the participant's experience, but I was responsible for the writing process. I paraphrased the respondent's responses,
commented on what was said and attempted to make connections and contextualise the expenences.
Further I became more aware of the need for me to declare my central plot and frame the story around the key questions of my research. The overarching theme in writing the story was to answer the question, Why did these individuals achieve academic success? The structure was to follow the chronological path and illuminate how the political, family, economic, social and individual dynamics interacted to produce the academic traject ry that it did. These were not going to be just interesting, romantic stories of overcoming obstacles. It had to be critical and sharp and look at both how they negotiated their path as well as the compromises they had to make in getting to their goals.
My analysis was now embedded in the story. There was no longer a descriptive story and separate analytical comments. The analysis would be in the way I configured the different experiences and reflections to illuminate how the life unfolded. The descriptive part of the story would answer the question of what happened. This would be in the format of this happened and then that happened. The analytical part of the story would answer the question of how and why did something happen. According to Huberman and Miles (1998), this involves justifying an action, giving reasons, supporting a claim and maki g causal statements. I attempted to structure the events of the story in a way that reflected causality -even if this was retrospective. The causality was linked to the research question and a plot, which unfolded over time.
Writing the story in a way that I was narrator gave me freedom in the writing process. The life story is a co-construction and I acknowledge that I made decisions about what to keep in and what to leave out. I now put myself into the story and indicated how I felt and responded at different times. One of the respondents (Tema) commented, when she saw a draft of the version with me as narrator, that she thought this was more honest. In addition to being the narrator I included non-textual cues and moods. I was also able to comment on how I was feeling at any point in the interview.
Anexcerpt of a story written:
Botlhale is now irritated by y questions to explain more about the period and indicates that this is so obvious and she does not see how it would help me answer my research questions. I urge her to continue, as it is important for me to hear her experiences. "I just want to say that to have studied at Turfloop, you studiedina situation where no one was interested in your success. The chemistry and zoology were large classes but they were happier because we supported each other. The
lecturers were horrible. I do not know what I got out of that situation. They had these lecture notes that they dictated from and somewhere along the way we would get a hang of what was going on because we had to write examinations and tests."
I rewrote the storied naJTatives from six sets of data using this approach. These stories reflect the issues about construction of stories discussed in section 5. I decided to stop at six stories because t ey were sufficient to illuminate the unfolding of the academic pathways in differe t contexts. I would use the ten interviews in the cross- case analysis.
The individual stories goes beyond the story of gaining a doctorate. The career pathways of black scientists after gaining the doctorate are a research study on its own.
These stories include a brief analytical description of their career paths until the time of the interview. This provides a rounding up of the story as well as gives an indication of where they are today. Their current position would impact on how the story is told.
Each of the participants told their stories differently - with different emphases, different ways of telling, different amounts of reflection and giving emphases to different parts of their lives. In telling the stories most participants emphasised their own character and determination as crucial to their success. My role as the researcher was to highlight the significant other dynamics that contributed to their success. The stories attempt to capture both the different personalities of the participants and highlight the issues outside themselves that contributed to their academic success.
A question in the writing of stories about academic is how much of the personal needs to be included. Participants may have mentioned children but not a partner. Or not mentioned the social context and relationships in their lives. As I discuss in chapter 13, I had to decide whether knowing about the personal was important to the story or was my personal curiosity. The participants knew the purpose and public nature of my research.
I decided not to probe further or comment on the personal because I believed in the separation of the personal and the public. If I were asked to relate my academic life story, I would not include my personal life. Nelson Mandela's autobiography documents the break-up of his marriage from Winnie Mandela without giving personal details. Not having those details did not detract from the power of the story.
I also realised that for the experiences to be understood by an outside reader, these experiences needed to be juxtaposed against the policies and laws of the country during a particular historical period. The autobiography of Nelson Mandela in Long Walk to
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Freedom is a good example of the approach which encompasses personal experience located against broader movements in the country. I therefore included brief related policies in the stories. As I was writing six stories the historical and policy dimensions repeated themselves and I removed them to Chapter Two which describes the educational context in the country during the period 1948 to 1994.
These analytical stories were sent to the participants for comment. Those that returned their stories made minor factual corrections and did not dispute the plot and structure I had imposed in the story. One participant asked questions about anonymity.
She indicated that while everything she said was true it also involved other people. I indicated that it was impossible to mask the identity of the respondents because being in high profile positions it would immediately be clear who they were.