This page will become a resource for those of you doing oral history interviews — or who are looking for a way to get your parents’ or grandparents’ stories down in a most natural way. I will demonstrate with some of my own work based on the Dennis Tedlock technique of description. First, though, I would urge you to look for these books:
FINDING THE CENTER: NARRATIVE POETRY OF THE ZUNI INDIANS
Translated by Dennis Tedlock
Alice Heil, Landswoman, 1975
University of Nebraska Press, 1972
ENVELOPES OF SOUND; SIX PRACTITIONERS DISCUSS THE METHOD, THEORY AND PRACTICE OF ORAL HISTORY AND ORAL TESTIMONY
Edited by Ronald Grele
Precedent Publishing, Inc., 1975
ORAL HISTORY; AN INTRODUCTION FOR STUDENTS
by James Hoopes
The University of North Carolina Press, 1979
NOW, HERE IS ALICE HEIL TELLING ME A STORY:
1. NEIGHBORS
He’d be here yet, if his boy
Was alive, you know.
But when his buy’s children went,
that was the end.
He went back –
Florida, I think –
someplace south.
We?
Oh my uncle lived right across
on the other road.
And let’s see . . .
there was a fellow who lived over here, in the old building.
Well, they all moved out. Oh boy.
And then the neighbors
moved in.
Like from Chicago, a couple of ‘em came in, and now look –
how many neighbors we have!
The last five years. I’d saY. Boy-oh-boy!