What happens when you have countless hours of people’s stories, stories that you know are extremely valuable, but no one else seems to see it in that way? When you have pages and pages of journal entries, field notes, or documents describing the beautiful encounters you’ve had with individuals that are relying on you to pass on their stories, but no one seems to care? Like Eric Marcus, you might store your cassette tapes (or mp3 files) in a dark storage closet only to find that you will later use them to create something beautiful and inspirational to many.
Read MoreField Notes: The Narrative Outside of Oral History
Image by Emma Courtland
Earlier this fall, DW Gibson, author of Not Working and The Edge Becomes the Center: An Oral History of Gentrification in the Twenty-First Century, gave an OHMA Workshop Series lecture in on how he used oral history to reflect the changes in peoples’ lives through gentrification. This article—written by current OHMA student Liu Ting (2016)—focuses on how Gibson presents oral histories in his book and how his own narrative interplays with the interviews.
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