The Oral History Review has written an article an interview with contributor Jason Ruiz, who explains some of the motivations behind the project, the erotics of oral history, and how others can build on the successes of the Twin Cities GLBT Oral History Project. – See more here.
Category: Uncategorized
Treading Air
Oral History Queensland is proud to announce that a member, former President, and author Ariella Van Luyn has published her first book. It is great to have the opportunity to encourage a young local author. Read more about Ariella's book here.
New books from Holocaust survivors
In the 21st century everyone is a writer with an important story to tell and easy access to publishing tools. Underpinning the phenomenon is a plethora of writing courses promoting the notion that all personal stories are equally interesting and should be shared. Is this a welcome advance on the quaint condition of the cottage industry known as publishing, where publishers acted as gatekeepers, editors edited and critics provided robust judgment?
Making sense of one’s life through writing and reflection can be useful. But so too is a stint on the therapist’s couch. In a period bloated by the fetish for the personal and a paucity of informed analysis, there is cause for concern. The compulsion to make a personal exercise public rests on the assumption that an individual’s story must be of interest to others. For full story click here.
Train Journeys in western New South Wales
This month the Orange oral hstory group revealed its own love affair with steam trains as well as admitting a sneaking admiration for "toast rack" trams, as we continued our examination of travel in days gone by. For full story click here.
Secondhand Time
For more than three decades now, voice-recorder and notebook always to hand, the winner of last year's Nobel Prize in Literature, Svetlana Alexievich, has been rummaging through the debris of the Soviet world, capturing the voices of those who lived, suffered or prospered in the USSR and in the chaos that followed its disintegration. For the full review of her new book click here.
Atlantic City Project
Their words can be heard amid the crackles of cassette tapes and read on typewritten pages from 38 years ago, in a collection at the Atlantic City Free Public Library. In a small room with a window facing Tennessee Avenue, the little-known collection exists amid stacked boxes, memorabilia, crowded shelves and a single computer. Here, hand-typed pages, reels of audio tape and gigs of memory hold the voices of Atlantic City’s past. For full story including podcast and video click here.
Wisconsin’s Vietnam Veterans
For decades, the Wisconsin Veterans Museum has been collecting the personal stories of people who've served in the military. They reflect on their time in uniform, the impact of their service, and their thoughts about it today. For full story, with audio excerpt click here.
Carcoar Exhibition
The Survivors exhibition which caught the imagination of people in Wellington and Dubbo, is now in Carcoar. More than 18,000 people have attended the exhibition. This is a photographic and recorded oral history of 18 Elders and Elders-in-waiting who reflect on their lives, growing up and living on Nanima Mission at Wellington – the oldest continually run mission in Australia. For full story click here.
East Garfield Park, Chicago Project
One major touchstone for Chicagoans when they talk about the history of East Garfield Park is the riots that took place there following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. In some ways, the riots seem to have overshadowed other, brighter moments in the neighborhood’s past. For full story including an audio radio interview click here.
Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947
When Guneeta Singh Bhalla was 19 years old, her paternal grandmother Harbhajan Kaur sat her down at her home in New Jersey to relay a harrowing migration story. The date was August 1947. The place, Lahore, a city in the northern state of Punjab, in what was once India, but what was now the new Muslim majority country of Pakistan. Almost overnight, Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims who'd lived in Lahore for generations in peace turned on one another. Kaur, a Sikh, was forced to abandon her family estate and board a train with her three young children — ages four, three, and one — to Amritsar, a small city just inside the new border of India. For six months, she was separated from her husband. The dead bodies, the horrific violence she witnessed haunted her for the rest of her life. Read full story with videos and links here.