Story Corps
Wednesday, December 26th by carlaFamily gatherings at holiday times are rich with telling of stories. Happy, sad, inspirational, or funny, these stories help us define ourselves. There will always be an audience for a good storyteller.
Story Corps understands that. This nonprofit organization records people’s stories, gives them a copy and stores a copy in the Library of Congress, makes them available online, and broadcasts some via public radio. Founded in 2003 by Dave Isay, the project includes StoryBooths in selected cities, mobile studios, special initiatives, a book, and a companion CD. (You know you’ve arrived when you’re featured at Starbucks!)
Oral histories are not new. During the late 1800s anthropologists recorded Native Americans talking about the past. During Depression the WPA recorded slave narratives. Beginning in the 70s, the Foxfire books recorded the stories of the people of Southern Appalachia, bringing oral history into the classroom.
I used to do an oral history unit in my expository writing class. During the course of a semester, students selected a theme, practiced writing open-ended interview questions, conducted interviews, transcribed, edited, and produced a booklet. We spent a lot of time talking about editing, dialect, and respect for the speaker. (Do we edit out ain’t or leave it in when we know the interview will be published?) Themes included first cars, famous bad weather, and war; but the best one was the first one: mischief. Students happily reported seeing their parents and other elders in a completely different light once they had conducted those interviews!
Transcribing was a time-consuming task in those days of cassette recorders, but the gains in editing skill, I felt, justified it. Eventually, though, the technology changed, and students just didn’t have access to recording devices. With the advent of inexpensive digital voice recorders and voice recognition software, perhaps oral history can return to the classroom now.
Story Corps demonstrates that the interest is still there. Once students understand the value of Grandpa’s stories from the past, perhaps they’ll be more willing to listen.
December 26th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
I love Story Corp! It is one of my favorite NPR series. I encourage everyone to get older relatives to tell their own stories…tape them, type them, whatever. I am 40; my grandfather moved to Texas from Indian Territory, in what is now Oklahoma, in a covered wagon. My great grandparents met at the State Fair of Texas; my great grandfather bought all of my great-grandmother’s tickets for a pie competition so she would win.
I only heard these stories second or third hand. How I wish I had had the foresight to ask and tape these reminisciences myself.
I remember one line in particular from Charles Frazier’s novel, “Cold Mountain,” which was something like, “Her story wasn’t important except that it was her own story.”
We all have stories to tell; stories make us human, connect us to one another over time and space. I hope you will listen to a few of these stories and be inspired to think of your own as valuable, before they slip away.