Best of
Oral-History

2014

Palestine Speaks: Narratives of Life Under Occupation (Voice of Witness)


Cate Malek - 2014
    In their own words, men and women from West Bank and Gaza describe how their lives have been shaped by the conflict. Here are stories that humanize the oft-ignored violations of human rights that occur daily in the occupied Palestinian territories.Narrators include:Ebtihaj, whose son, born during the first intifada, was killed by Israeli soldiers during a night raid almost 20 years later.Nader, a professional marathon runner from the Gaza Strip who is determined to pursue his dream of competing in international races in the face of countless challenges, including severe travel restrictions and few resources to help him train.Ibtisam, the director of a children’s center in the West Bank whose work is significantly constrained by mobility obstacles in the region.Kifah, who was jailed for years with no charges. She believes she was imprisoned for her work as a community leader and outreach to prisoners.

Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks


Brad Dukes - 2014
    As the mystery of “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” played out on television sets across the world, another compelling drama was unfolding in the everyday lives of the show’s cast and crew. Twenty-five years later, Reflections goes behind the curtain of Twin Peaks and documents the series’ unlikely beginnings, widespread success, and peculiar collapse. Featuring first-hand accounts from series cocreator Mark Frost and cast members including Kyle MacLachlan, Joan Chen, Sherilyn Fenn, Piper Laurie, Michael Ontkean, Ray Wise, Billy Zane, and many more – Reflections explores the magic and mystique of a true television phenomenon, Twin Peaks.

Archiving the Unspeakable: Silence, Memory, and the Photographic Record in Cambodia


Michelle Caswell - 2014
    The regime’s brutality has come to be symbolized by the multitude of black-and-white mug shots of prisoners taken at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, where thousands of “enemies of the state” were tortured before being sent to the Killing Fields. In Archiving the Unspeakable, Michelle Caswell traces the social life of these photographic records through the lens of archival studies and elucidates how, paradoxically, they have become agents of silence and witnessing, human rights and injustice as they are deployed at various moments in time and space. From their creation as Khmer Rouge administrative records to their transformation beginning in 1979 into museum displays, archival collections, and databases, the mug shots are key components in an ongoing drama of unimaginable human suffering. Winner, Waldo Gifford Leland Award, Society of American Archivists Longlist, ICAS Book Prize, International Convention of Asia Scholars

Fleshing the Spirit: Spirituality and Activism in Chicana, Latina, and Indigenous Women’s Lives


Elisa Facio - 2014
    Examining the complex and dynamic connections among these concepts, the writers emphasize the value of “flesh and blood experience” as a site of knowledge. They argue that spirituality—something quite different from institutional religious practice—can heal the mind/body split and set the stage for social change. Spirituality, they argue, is a necessary component of an alternative political agenda focused on equitable social and ecological change. The anthology incorporates different genres of writing—such as poetry, testimonials, critical essays, and historical analysis—and stimulates the reader to engage spirituality in a critical, personal, and creative way. This interdisciplinary work is the first that attempts to theorize the radical interconnection between women of color, spirituality, and social activism. Before transformative political work can be done, the authors say in multiple ways, we must recognize that our spiritual need is a desire to more fully understand our relations with others. Conflict experienced on many levels sometimes severs those relations, separating us from others along racial, class, gender, sexual, national, or other socially constructed lines.Fleshing the Spirit offers a spiritual journey of healing, health, and human revolution. The book’s open invitation to engage in critical dialogue and social activism—with the spirit and spirituality at the forefront—illuminates the way to social change and the ability to live in harmony with life’s universal energies. ContributorsVolume Editors Elisa Facio Irene Lara   Chapter Authors Angelita Borbón Norma E. Cantú Berenice Dimas C. Alejandra Elenes Alicia Enciso Litschi Oliva M. Espín Maria Figueroa Patrisia Gonzales Inés Hernández- Avila Rosa María Hernández Juárez Cinthya Martinez Lara Medina Felicia Montes Sarahi Nuñez- Mejia Laura E. Pérez Brenda Sendejo Inés Talamantez Michelle Téllez Beatriz Villegas

Free All Along: The Robert Penn Warren Civil Rights Interviews


Stephen Drury Smith - 2014
    He spoke with luminaries such as James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, Ralph Ellison, and Roy Wilkins. In Harlem, a fifteen-minute appointment with Malcolm X unwound into several hours of vivid conversation.A year later, Penn Warren would publish Who Speaks for the Negro?, a probing narrative account of these conversations that blended his own reflections with brief excerpts and quotations from his interviews. The large collection of audiotapes of his conversations, however, remained unknown to the public until rediscovered by scholars in recent years. A major contribution in their own right to our understanding of the struggle for civil rights, these remarkable long-form interviews are presented here as original documents with pressing relevance today.Published to coincide with a national radio documentary from American RadioWorks®, Free All Along brings to life the voices of America’s civil rights generation, including writers, political activists, religious leaders, and intellectuals.

Downwind: A People's History of the Nuclear West


Sarah Alisabeth Fox - 2014
                   Sarah Alisabeth Fox interviews residents of the Great Basin region affected by environmental contamination from the uranium industry and nuclear testing fallout. Those residents tell tales of communities ravaged by cancer epidemics, farmers and ranchers economically ruined by massive crop and animal deaths, and Native miners working in dangerous conditions without proper safety equipment so that the government could surreptitiously study the effects of radiation on humans. In chilling detail, Downwind brings to light the stories and concerns of these groups whose voices have been silenced and marginalized for decades in the name of “patriotism” and “national security.” With the renewed boom in mining in the American West, Fox’s look at this hidden history, unearthed from years of field interviews, archival research, and epidemiological studies, is a must-read for every American concerned about the fate of our western lands and communities.

Invisible Hands: Voices from the Global Economy (Voice of Witness)


Corinne Goria - 2014
    These narrators � including phone manufacturers in China, copper miners in Zambia, garment workers in Bangladesh, and farmers around the world � reveal the secret history of the things we buy, including lives and communities devastated by low wages, environmental degradation, and political repression. Sweeping in scope and rich in detail, these stories capture the interconnectivity of all people struggling to support themselves and their families. Narrators include Kalpona, a leading Bangladeshi labor organizer who led her first strike at 15; Han, who, as a teenager, began assembling circuit boards for an international electronics company based in Seoul; Albert, a copper miner in Zambia who, during a wage protest, was shot by representatives of the Chinese-owned mining company that he worked for; and Sanjay, who grew up in the shadow of the Bhopal chemical disaster, one of the worst industrial accidents in history.

Whitewashing the South: White Memories of Segregation and Civil Rights


Kristen M Lavelle - 2014
    Author Kristen Lavelle draws on interviews with the oldest living generation of white southerners to uncover uncomfortable memories of our racial past. The vivid interview excerpts show how these lifelong southerners reflect on race in the segregated South, the civil rights era, and more recent decades. The book illustrates a number of complexities-how these white southerners both acknowledged and downplayed Jim Crow racial oppression, how they both appreciated desegregation and criticized the civil rights movement, and how they both favorably assessed racial progress while resenting reminders of its unflattering past. Chapters take readers on a real-world look inside The Help and an exploration of the way the Greensboro sit-ins and school desegregation have been remembered, and forgotten. Digging into difficult memories and emotions, Whitewashing the South challenges our understandings of the realities of racial inequality.

Listening on the Edge: Oral History in the Aftermath of Crisis


Mark Cave - 2014
    What we often fail to grasp, however, despite numerous treatments of events is the deep meaningand broader significance of crisis and disaster. The complexity and texture of these situations are most evident in the broader personal stories of those whom the events impact most intimately. Oral history, with its focus on listening and collaborative creation with participants, has emerged as aforceful approach to exploring the human experience of crisis.Despite the recent growth of crisis oral history fieldwork, there has been little formal discussion of the process and meaning of utilizing oral history in these environments. Oral history research takes on special dimensions when working in highly charged situations often in close proximity totraumatic events. The emergent inclination for oral historians to respond to document crisis calls for a shared conversation among scholars as to what we have learned from crisis work so far. This dialogue, at the heart of this collection of oral history excerpts and essays, reveals new layers ofthe work of the oral historian. From the perspective of crisis and disaster oral history, the book addresses both the ways in which we think about the craft of oral hsitory, and the manner in which we use it.The book presents excerpts from oral histories done after twelve world crises, followed by critical analyses by the interviewers. Additional analytical chapters set the interviews in the contexts of pyschoanalysis and oral history methodology.

The Ohio State University District: A Neighborhood History


Emily Foster - 2014
    Stories range from picnics in the University Woods and chats from porch swings to riots filled with tear gas and zoning wars mired in acrimony. The century of stories in this book reflects the shifting demographics of the district and the struggle against urban decay. Take a stroll with editor Emily Foster as she celebrates the historic homes, landmarks, architecture and collegiate culture that belong to this neighborhood like no other.

Written as I Remember It: Teachings (??ms t???w) from the Life of a Sliammon Elder


Elsie Paul - 2014
    In this remarkable book, Sliammon elder Elsie Paul collaborates with a scholar, Paige Raibmon, and her granddaughter, Harmony Johnson, to tell her life story and the history of her people, in her own words and storytelling style. Raised by her grandparents who took her on their seasonal travels, Paul spent most of her childhood learning Sliammon ways, teachings, and stories and is one of the last surviving mother-tongue speakers of the Sliammon language. She shares this traditional knowledge with future generations in Written as I Remember It.