Blended Voices: Crafting a Narrative from Oral History Interviews

Abstract

Editing oral history interviews for publication is part of a joint construction of a narrative by both the narrator and the oral historian. In this article, editing oral history is discussed through the case study, Blended Voices, a book of oral history interviews with people who migrated to Australia between 1950 and 2000 and now live in the southeastern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. The degree of editing is dependent on the purpose of the project. The joint construction of oral history in this project involved extensive editing of the transcript by the author and review by the narrator. This was necessary to create a document that was readily accessible to a general audience and still conveyed the meaning of the stories. This construction was influenced by power dynamics inherent in any oral history and involved balancing the historian's ethical responsibilities to the narrator, the audience, and to the content of the narratives.