Abstracts Category : Other

Parenting Autism: An Exploratory Study of The Culture and Experience of African-American Parents of Children Diagnosed with Autism

by Parks Stephanie Keeney

This work represents an unapologetic look at the experience of African-American parents of children with autism. It is an attempt to pull back the curtain to better understand how parents perceive the diagnosis of autism and navigate culture and clinical spaces. My study is not at all about autism in the sense of the clinical definition or the child diagnosed with autism, but rather the continued effort of parents to traverse two conflicting experiences in the form of clinical culture and African-American culture. The foundation for my thesis is laid out by parents use of collective Black English Vernacular in the form of phrases such as doing the most. At first glance, these phrases seem to be inconspicuous. However, when they are placed in the context of describing the perceptions of autism, they become acculturative proverbs.|These proverbs do the work of acculturation by transferring the label autism from a place of White biomedical understanding to the African-American cultural space. African-American parents move between these conflicting contexts often being forced to assimilate into various forms to enable biocitizenship and cultural citizenship. The use of acculturative proverbs finds its place in the efforts of African-American parents to emplot their children into the narratives and scenarios that are culturally appropriate and provide them with better long-term outcomes.Advisors/Committee Members: Heinemann, Laura L (advisor).