Author: ohadmin

First 10 Years of StoryCorps

“Ties That Bind: Stories of Love & Gratitude from the First Ten Years of StoryCorps,” by Dave Isay, with Lizzie Jacobs. New York: The Penguin Press, 2013. 202 pages, $25.95 (hardcover).  Dave Isay is founder of StoryCorps, the oral history project that has collected conversations between friends and family members for the National Archives and for airing on National Public Radio on Friday mornings for the past 10 years. As StoryCorps began its collection process, Studs Terkel stood in Grand Central Station at the first recording booth and proclaimed: “Today, we shall begin celebrating the lives of the uncelebrated.” During the past 10 years, StoryCorps has more than met all expectations for success by recording almost 50,000 interviews from more than 1,000 locations spread over all 50 states.  Read full story here and listen to an interview with Dave Isay here.

Call for Australian Indigenous stories (Sydney)

The city of Sydney is seeking former and current Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander service men and women to share their stories of war and peace for a special oral history project. Aboriginal artist and curator Fabri Blacklock will select up to 20 stories to take pride of place on the city's new oral history website sydneyoralhistories.com.au with audio recordings, transcripts and photographs. For full story click here.

Samuel Proctor Oral History Project (USA)

Paul Ortiz is one of those rare individuals who has managed to merge his vocation and his avocation. As director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at University of Florida since 2008, he and his team of about 50 students gather interviews with individuals ranging from migrant farmworkers to war veterans.  “Our charge is really to try to document living history as much as possible,” Ortiz said. “We’re constantly interviewing people from different walks of life.” For full story click here.

Chicago Youth Violence

Caitlin Tyler-Richards says:
I’m not sure my introduction will do justice to this week’s interview between OHR managing editor Troy Reeves and DePaul University Professor Miles Harvey. An English professor and bestselling author trained in journalism, Harvey is the editor of How Long Will I Cry: Voices of Youth Violence (Big Shoulder Books, 2013), a compilation of oral histories collected by students in Harvey’s class “Creative Writing and Social Engagement” from young and old Chicago residents affected by youth violence. In addition to relating the powerful collection’s interdisciplinary origins, Harvey discusses oral history as a narrative form and the value of collaborative story telling.

Read full story, watch trailer about the book and listen to this very interesting podcast interview here.

Keith McGowan Obituary

Andrew Rule writes about the recent death of talkback radio host, Keith McGowan, who had the "graveyard shift".  He says:
"In 1990 I was driving home for an hour after midnight after finishing a late shift on this newspaper's predecessor, The Sun. Talkback keeps you alert on the road better than music, so I became one of thousands who tuned in to hear McGowan talking to the lonely, sleepless and sleep-deprived. Old people called in to talk, mostly about a past that was rapidly vanishing, of Depression and war. Almost by accident, McGowan had tapped into a vein of oral history. It gave me an idea to publish the extraordinary stories of ordinary people.  McGowan loved it – and so did his listeners. Hundreds of them wrote about their lives or their parents' lives, and sent pictures. The result was Thanks for the Memories, first of what would be a series of five "Overnighters" books. When McGowan launched it at Melbourne Town Hall the queue stretched down the street and around the corner."  See full story here. The books are out of print but you can get them, see this link.

 

Inuit Cree Reconciliation

The war in northern Quebec began before there was a Quebec, before anyone but Cree and Inuit lived there, and it ended more than two centuries ago. But as filmmakers Zacharias Kunuk and Neil Diamond discovered, the long conflict between the two native peoples still echoes through their present-day relations.  Inuit Cree Reconciliation, the 45-minute film Kunuk and Diamond made about the war and its modern-day aftermath, spans at least three centuries and three languages (Cree, Inuktitut and English). It brings to life a chapter of northern history that’s scarcely known elsewhere, in the stunningly beautiful places where it occurred. The film also gives pride of place to the way First Nations retain their history, through stories handed down by elders. This is a real indigenous documentary, if that word even applies to a project so grounded in oral culture. For full story, including link to the documentary, click here.

Alice Springs interviews

Ken Johnson –

Ken Johnson arrived in Central Australia in 1978.  His experience working with Aboriginal people to bring Mala and Bilby back from the brink of extinction won him renown and grounded him in the process of successful intercultural engagement.  In the latter part of his career, he was integral to the evolution of the Alice Springs Desert Park and Desert Knowledge movement.  Now retired, he has turned his prodigious talent to writing, with a book honouring the life of HH Finlayson in development.  In this oral history, Ken reflects on these stories and more.

Listen to this audio interview from ABC in Alice Springs.  You will also see links to other interviews on the site – click here. 

 

Canberra Centenary Project

The big stories of Canberra's history have been important in this centenary year but perhaps the ones that will resonate the loudest will be the so-called little ones, the personal tales of its residents.  In what was the final official community event on the centenary calendar, Centenary Stories, an oral history project, was launched on Wednesday at the Canberra Museum and Gallery.  Members of Canberra's pioneering families were present, with some committing to tell their life story for posterity, showing the changing attitudes, culture and concerns of a city. For full story click here.

1937 Nanjing Massacre

USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education and Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall have embarked on a historic effort to preserve the testimonies of the last survivors of the 1973 Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanjing.  Testimonies in the new Nanjing collection seek to establish full-life histories of the individuals, including their social and cultural life before and after the Nanjing Massacre.  On December 13, 1937, the Japanese army captured what was then China's capital city, Nanjing, and killed as many as 300,000 civilians and numerous unarmed Chinese soldiers over the course of two months.  For full story click here.