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I’d like to invite you to listen to Dave Isay, the 2015 TED Prize winner. Isay has made his life’s work preserving the stories of everyday Americans. In 2003 he founded StoryCorps in a booth at New York’s Grand Central Terminal. As part of his project, he invited anyone and everyone to honor someone else by interviewing them about their life. The forty-minute sessions were recorded, and they are now archived at the American Folk Life Center at the Library of Congress.
Photo by: © U.P. Images
StoryCorps expanded across the country. Earlier this year it developed an app to bring the project out of the booth into your hands, wherever you are, whenever you are so moved. To make the most of your interview, Isay offers the following five tips:
Ask the big life questions.
Pour your attention into the interview.
Be an active participant in the conversation.
Remember it’s not the story that matters.
Say thank you.
These tips will work for you, whether you’re a personal historian working with others or a grandchild seeking your roots. As Isay says, “Everyone around you has a story the world needs to hear.”
© 2015 Susan Marg – All Rights Reserved
When writing a life of family history, we all struggle for the truth. But the truth is a funny thing. It’s shielded by feelings and clouded by memory.
Illustration by: © marish
In his 1997 memoir All Over but the Shoutin’, Rick Bragg writes of his childhood, growing up poor in the deep South, essentially fatherless, but supported by a hard-working mother and her family. He describes his restlessness, moving around before settling down as a journalist, never forgetting his kith and kin.
Bragg believes he was born to write. As he tells it, “The only thing I was ever any good at was in the telling and hearing of stories, and there was no profit in that. I cannot truthfully even say that I went to work for my high school newspaper because of a love for writing. Writing was hard work. It made your hand cramp, and I couldn’t type a lick. Telling stories was something you did on your porch.”
But telling stories also got Bragg writing assignments working for small town newspapers across the South. He eventually earned an award fellowship to Harvard University. The New York Times hired him as a journalist.
Of New York City, he writes, “Through one of the coldest, nastiest winters on record, I roamed that giant, confusing place, but to say I searched for stories would be a lie. I did not have to search. New York hurled stories at you like Nolan Ryan throws fastballs. All you had to do was catch them, and try not to get your head knocked off.”
Bragg won a Pulitzer for his writing, but his proudest moments came from telling the truth. Of his work he says, “It wasn’t that I had gotten it right – God knows I mess up a lot – but that I had gotten it true.”
© 2015 Susan Marg – All Rights Reserved
Within the past decade, Personal History Awareness Month – it’s May – was added to Chase’s Calendar of Events. Although this publication, first created in 1957, is now 752 pages and contains more than 12,000 entries worldwide, I think it says something that one of those entries highlights personal history.
illustration of head with colorful gears
As Sarah White, President of the Association of Personal Historians, says, “If you ever received something in writing from an ancestor ― a diary, a letter or better yet, a memoir ― you’ve already felt how important it is to preserve our stories for future generations.”
More and more folks are putting pen to paper, organizing their photos in a scrapbook, or recording their memories in a video. The popularity of memoirs as a type of literary non-fiction underscores how much we enjoy learning about other people. Their lives resonate with our lives. Alicia Florrick, the television character on which The Good Wife revolves, recently hired a ghostwriter to help with the task. While I have the feeling she’s deep shelving the project to return to the practice of law, that’s no reason for others to give up after an episode or two.
There’s help out there. The Association of Personal Historians, founded in 1995, has 600 members strong, who are devoted to helping those with an interest in preserving their past. If you want to do-it-yourself there are plenty of courses on-line or workshops at local community colleges.
So, clear your desk. Open your mind. And get ready to fill your thoughts with days gone by.
What? Nothing’s happening?!? That’s not possible.
What do you know about your parents and grandparents? What do you remember about growing up – your room, your school. your neighborhood? Are you on the path you want to be on? What mistakes do you keep making? What stories do you keep telling yourself? Do they share a common theme?
Examining your own life can make a difference, not only for future generations, but for yourself, as well. It’s all part of Personal History Awareness Month.
© 2015 Susan Marg – All Rights Reserved
Photo by: © massonforstock
So many excuses: Too busy. Too boring. Can’t read. Can’t write. Too young. Too old. Too soon. Too late. Too many photographs. Too many questions – Where to start? When to stop?
Too few answers.
So little time.
So, make the time.
Get help. Ask a personal historian.
© 2015 Susan Marg – All Rights Reserved
Your Biography 2 