Project 2: Oral History (adapted from Derek Owens’ Composition and Sustainability, 189-91)

Oral History Preservation Project

As older generations pass on, so too do their experiences—the unique ways they responded to the circumstances of their lives and places. This assignment gives you an opportunity to play the role of preservationist: you will record and write an oral history, thereby preserving portions of one person’s life, memory, and history.

Step 1
Find someone who matters to you, ideally someone much older. This person could be an older relative, a friend of the family, a neighbor, or an acquaintance. The person need not be living nearby, so long as you can talk to this person on the phone at least three times in the next three weeks for at least thirty minutes per call. After you’ve selected your person do the following:

a. Write down a list of questions you’d like to ask this person. Let this list be at least several pages long. Be sure the questions can’t be answered with “yes” or “no” but are worded to get the interviewee talking as much as possible.

b. Interview the person for at least half an hour.

c. Write down the results of that interview. It’s up to you whether to print this up in an interview format or to compile the results in a narrative. In the former case the text will read something like a play, with each paragraph preceded by your name or the interviewee’s name, followed by what was said. In the latter case your text will look more like a narrative, in which you’ve compiled and probably rearranged the results of the interview, “gluing” it together with your own comments. Either way, be sure to accurately and truthfully record what the person says—don’t “clean up” his or her English, or alter what he or she said because it “sounds better.” The more accurate you are in getting down the person’s voice, and his or her responses, the better off you’ll be.

Step 2
Go back to this person and conduct a second interview. Let this be your opportunity not only to ask new questions but also to go back to the person’s earlier responses in order to get more information and further clarification. As before, you can either stick to the interview format or assemble the results of your interview into a narrative.

Step 3
Conduct one final interview with your person. Ask questions that might get the interviewee to supply more anecdotes and insights. Also, ask the interviewee what he or she would like to talk about and why. Let him or her play a role in selecting the topics discussed.
After this final interview, look at all the information you’ve collected and put together a brief oral history of this person. The end result can look like an interview, or you can assemble the material into a narrative. As you put together this assignment, ask yourself: What information should I include, and why? What might get edited, and why? How might I rearrange this material for better effect? Are there any themes I find running throughout this person’s life? What exactly makes this person’s history worth recording? Don’t just attach all three interviews together; think about ordering and arranging them to make a more finished, coherent product.
It would be a good idea to write an introduction to your interview and maybe even conclude it with an afterword in which you provide some additional information about the person you’re interviewing: why you chose this person, any details about your relationship with him or her, any closing thoughts you have about this person and what you learned from these interviews, and so on. It’s okay—preferable, really—to let the introduction and/or conclusion be fairly long.
Also, if you wish, you can interject commentary throughout the interview, inserting your comments in parentheses or italics to differentiate it from the main narrative. For example, in the past, some writers have indicated stuff like: “At this point we moved into the living room; my mom put her feet up on the coffee table, obviously exhausted from having worked in the bakery for thirteen hours that day. I started asking a few more questions…”

(This is optional, and only if your subject gives you permissions: take some photographs of this person, or gather up some that you already have, and bring them to class to show the class as we read and discuss your interview.)