Praise for SAY IT FORWARD
Oral history changes lives. It changes the lives of the narrators, the listeners, the editors, and the readers. And for students of any age, there is no more impactful and even life-changing project they can undertake. Claire Kiefer and Cliff Mayotte have made a profoundly clear, fluid, and accessible guide to doing your own oral histories, and teachers, students, and parents: I beg you to try it.
Dave Eggers, Voice of Witness cofounder and author,
The Monk of Mokha and What Is the What
Stories are humankinds connective tissue, and Say It Forward reminds us the process through which we document a story is as important and powerful as the story itself. This booka collection of oral historians own stories and perspectivesis at once a how-to guide, a call to action, and a thoughtful, loving usher through oral historys framework, ethics, methodology, and highest ideals.
Say It Forward is a vital guide from a vital organization, and it couldnt come at a more critical time. More stories, please, and more justiceand more stories justly told.
Lauren Markham, author, The Far Away Brothers:
Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life
Say It Forward provides not only a practical blueprint for storytelling methodology and approach; it does something more meaningfulit contextualizes and validates the purpose and multilayered nuances of capturing and honoring deeply personal accounts. The storyteller becomes the teacher in their own unfiltered testimony. Say It Forward is equally useful as an introductory tool for new oral history practitioners and a refresher for the more experienced. No small feat, done thoughtfully in this essential resource.
Linda Sotelo, New Americans Museum
Say It Forward is a useful guide for anyone new to recording the oral histories of vulnerable populations. Voice of Witness makes plain how to work with sensitivity, respect, and care.
Danielle Jackson, cofounder, Bronx Documentary Center
SAY IT FORWARD
A Guide to Social Justice Storytelling
WRITTEN AND EDITED BY
CLIFF MAYOTTE AND CLAIRE KIEFER
WITH ASSISTANT EDITORS
NATALIE CATASS AND ERIN VONG
2018 Voice of Witness
Cover design by Michel Vrana.
Cover photograph Yaissy Solis. Nautica Jenkins (right), community organizer at Project South, and Patricia Cipollitti (left), national coordinator at the Alliance for Fair Food, share words of solidarity at a rollicking rally with more than one hundred farmworkers and consumers in Atlanta during the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) Return to Human Rights Tour in March 2017. To learn more about the CIWs historic movement for dignity and respect in the fields, visit www.ciw-online.org.
Published in 2018 by
Haymarket Books
P.O. Box 180165
Chicago, IL 60618
773-583-7884
www.haymarketbooks.org
ISBN: 978-1-60846-959-8
Trade distribution:
In the US, Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, www.cbsd.com
In Canada, Publishers Group Canada, www.pgcbooks.ca
In the UK, Turnaround Publisher Services, www.turnaround-uk.com
All other countries, Ingram Publisher Services International,
This book was published with the generous support of Lannan Foundation and Wallace Action Fund.
Printed in Canada by union labor.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.
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INTRODUCTION:
MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE
Sometimes I walk down the street and I look at all the people Im passing and I think, damn, all these stories walking right by me. So, so many stories that I will never know. All the heartbreak, all the joy. Theres a quote from William Jamess work where he says something like (Ive been trying to re-find this quote for years and so who knows, maybe I made it up?): If you took all the thoughts of all the people in a single city on a single night, your head would explode.I think this sort of work makes a little bit of a dent in this idea. You know what I mean? You get a little closer to people you never knew and never were going to know.
Peter Orner, novelist, and editor of Underground America,
Hope Deferred, and Lavil
Say It Forward was created to address the varying needs of both beginning and experienced oral history practitioners. All of us in this field have the desire to listen toand sharestories in order to learn firsthand about the experiences of other people. Under the right circumstances, story sharing can be empowering, transformational, and life-changing for both audience and storyteller. There are countless relevant and engaging unheard stories to listen to and learn from, as well as many individuals and communities that long to share them.
Part of the transformative power of oral history stems from the intimacy and vulnerability that comes with listening to and sharing personal stories. And with that power comes the responsibility to be mindful about the planning and execution of oral history projects. There are many practical and ethical questions to explore that are profoundly important to the oral history processquestions that usually emerge like bolts of lightning, when you least expect them. Or sometimes when you do expect them, but dont necessarily have the experience or a particular plan to acknowledge or address them. Sometimes these questions are straightforward: How am I going to find people to interview? Other times they are more complex: How do power and privilege affect my project?
The first part of this book introduces some of the most crucial questions and concerns that have emerged in our work as oral historians at Voice of Witness. We dont necessarily have answers to all of these questions, but its our intention to help facilitate a dialogue. We see Say It Forward as a conversation about the experiences of practicing oral historians. In that sense, much of the content of this book is an oral history of ways to approach oral history.
The second section contains eleven chapters, or field reports, in which new and experienced oral historians document the development of their own oral history projects. All field report authors were drawn from the larger Voice of Witness learning community, including teachers, students, and independent practitioners who are familiar with our oral history methodology. We chose field reports that reflected a wide geographic range and a variety of content. There is overlap in the essential questions and thematic issues these eleven reports raise, and this is indicative of the overarching, recurring concerns that come up when doing oral history with purpose and intentionality. However, each of the field reports also brings to light its own set of specific lessons. We want the guide to be as far-reaching and comprehensive as possible.
Field reports are based on real projectsa few complete, many still in progress. With each project, we asked the authors to consider lessons learned as they went along, and each field report is an intimate record of some of the challenges, successes, direction changes, and surprising moments of oral history work. Our hope is that readers will use these hard-won lessons as guideposts for their own oral history approaches. We have also included an extensive oral history resource section with materials ranging from a mini oral history project-planning template to a list of recommendations for recording equipment to resources for trauma and self-care.
