In this engaging oral history, residents of California's scenic, sparsely-populated Owens Valley reflect on their varied experiences with the region's turbulent past. Contested themes of Native American removal, water transfers, and wartime internment are interwoven with remembrances of the valley's multicultural communities, its cattle ranching and agriculture, and its Western filmmaking, railroad, and mining enterprises. Together, author and narrators create an accessible and richly textured work of history, memory, and place.

When Gertrude Williams retired in 1998, after forty-nine years in the Baltimore public schools, The Baltimore Sun called her "the most powerful of principals" who "tangled with two superintendents and beat them both." In this oral memoir, Williams identifies the essential elements of sound education and describes the battles she waged to secure those elements, first as teacher, then a counselor, and, for twenty-five years, as principal. She also described her own education - growing up black in largely white Germantown, Pennsylvania; studying black history and culture for the first time at...

Terrorism, black poverty, and economic exploitation produced a condition of collective trauma and social suffering for thousands of black Deltans in the Twentieth Century. Based on oral histories with African American activists and community leaders, this work reveals the impact of that oppression.

Sticking to the Union relates the vibrant life of Julia Ruuttila (1907-1991), a political radical and labor journalist in the Pacific Northwest. Ruuttila's life of activism provides a much-needed woman's voice in the history of labor and social activism in the twentieth century. Ruuttila worked for civil liberties, civil rights, and peace organizations throughout her life, supporting striking workers, taking part in lunch-counter protests against businesses that discriminated against African Americans, and demonstrating against the Vietnam War. Polishuk provides insightful historical context...

Drawing on the work of scholars and practitioners such as Augusto Boal, Gloria Anzaldua, and Trinh Minh-ha, these essays advocate oral history and oral history-based performance as means to challenge and expand upon traditional ways of transmitting historical knowledge. The contributors' central concerns are performative aspects of oral history itself and the theatrical or classroom "re-performance" of oral history. The essays detail classroom and public pedagogies, community-based interventions, processes of developing interview-based performances, and the ethical and political implications...

Postmemories of Terror focuses on how young Argentineans remember the traumatic events of the military dictatorship (1976-83). This fascinating work is based on oral histories with sixty-three young people who were too young to be directly victimized or politically active during this period. All were born during or after the terror and possessed an entirely mediated knowledge of it. Susana Kaiser explores how the post-dictatorship generation was reconstructing this past from three main sources: inter-generational dialogue, education and the communication media. These conversations discuss...

Radicals, Rhetoric, and the War documents the Kent State antiwar protest at the height of the Vietnam era. Informed by thirty years of oral history interviews, the book details perspectives and voices from students, faculty, and administrators.

In conversational style and in chronological sequence, Ye Weili and Ma Xiaodong recount their lives in China from the 1950s to the 1980s, a particularly eventful period that included the Cultural Revolution and the ensuing Communist regime. Using their own stories as two case studies, they examine the making of a significant yet rarely understood generation in recent Chinese history. They also reflect upon the mixed legacy of the early decades of the People's Republic of China (PRC). In doing so, the book strives for a balance between critical scrutiny of a complex era and the sweeping...

In conversational style and in chronological sequence, Ye Weili and Ma Xiaodong recount their lives in China from the 1950s to the 1980s, a particularly eventful period that included the Cultural Revolution and the ensuing Communist regime. Using their own stories as two case studies, they examine the making of a significant yet rarely understood generation in recent Chinese history. They also reflect upon the mixed legacy of the early decades of the People's Republic of China (PRC). In doing so, the book strives for a balance between critical scrutiny of a complex era and the sweeping...

In this book, workers displaced by plant closings in Louisville, Kentucky tell their stories, emphasizing their agency, demanding respect for their skill, casting judgment on business and government for not showing that respect, and revealing a sense of alienation resulting from violation of their values and trust.