[2024-05-15] Recording your family history

Last week, I purchased a used book from the collection of Archives Lanark called Recording Your Family History. Despite being published in 1983, the book contains timeless information for conducting a life history interview. Author William Fletcher defines a life history interview as an audio or video recording of an older person's oral history for the benefit of future generations.

As I explained in last week's post (Finding my place in the past), Fletcher says that a family history project "meets a deep need of most older persons to tell their story for posterity, and it fills an equally strong need in younger people to hear and know about the past and to find their place in the continuity of their family's experience."

The bulk of the book is devoted to questions to use in an interview, organized by time period and experiences: family history, childhood, youth, middle age, old age, experience as a parent and grandparent, and historical events. The book also includes a section of general questions, focusing on unusual life experiences and values.

Fletcher makes clear that interviewers conducting a life history should not attempt to ask every question included in the book. Instead, they should use it as a general guide for their interviews. He recommends that, in advance of a recording session, interviewers review the questions and note those of particular interest, asking themselves: "Which questions do I sincerely want to hear my speaker talk about?"

Over the coming weeks, I'll come back to the book to share some of the questions I find especially useful. I plan to use one or two in my daily conversations with my mom to add to a growing compilation of stories I'm calling Don't-Forget-Olivette.

Tonight's post focuses on Fletcher's overall recommendations in the book's introduction. He states that "Perhaps one person in ten thousand will ever actually write an autobiography, but virtually everyone can talk one, in his or her own words, to a sympathetic and interested listener."

Some key pieces of advice I took from Fletcher's introduction are these:
  1. If possible, conduct the interview in the narrator's home. "The reasons for this are simple: it is more relaxed and comfortable for your speaker, it reinforces the idea that your narrator is the central focus of the project, it is likely that familiar surroundings will help the free flow of memories, and it eliminates any inconvenience in traveling for your narrator. It also reinforces the attitude of respect you want to develop for the stories you are about to hear and record."
  2. Let the narrator do most of the talking. "Always remember that you are interviewing your narrator, so try not to have a conversation with him or her. Your job is to listen carefully and sensitively, and to be curious about what your narrator wants to say. Try to say as little as possible yourself."
  3. Practice pausing, which encourages the narrator to expand on their story. "A five- or ten-second silence is perfectly acceptable. Count silently to ten, and wait for your narrator to break the silence with another thought. Learning to wait silently long beyond what would be tolerable in a normal conversation is a rewarding skill, for it allows your speaker to talk in more detail and depth about his or her feelings and experiences."
  4. At the beginning of the recording, state the time, location and person being interviewed. "Always begin an interview by establishing the time and place, and the person you are talking to."
  5. Don't edit the original tapes. "If you must condense some of the narrative, make a copy first, then do your editing. How can you tell what may be of value to a listener or viewer in thirty or fifty years? The footage you decide to discard now may include material important to future generations."
  6. Start subsequent sessions by asking the narrator whether they thought of anything since the previous recording. "I often start each successive session with the question: 'Did anything else come to mind since we last talked, or did we leave anything out last time?' This provides the opportunity to address something important that might have been remembered in the meantime."

While I don't record my conversations with my mother, I do take notes as we chat, then turn them into proper stories. I never mind when a given anecdote comes up more than once, because I find it becomes clearer in my mind with each telling, which makes it easier to write up the story in its final form.