Tóm tắt: Autoethnography is a unique discipline which steps inside and outside the self to experience, embody and express social and cultural meaning. At once a performative, political and poetic genre of research writing, it holds the potential to uncover the ‘heart of the world’, if only for a moment. The author uses theory as story and story as theory to explore her place in the world through painstaking and intimate self and social narratives to lay bare the unique challenges and rewards of autoethnography.