Oral History, Community, and Work in the American WestJessie L.Embry, Editor. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2013.

Abstract

Oral History, Community, and Work in the American West Jessie L. Embry, Editor. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2013.In Oral History, Community, and Work in the American West, editor Jessie L. Embry has assembled eighteen authors to share their experiences working on oral history projects. Throughout the essay collection, each author comments on oral history's unique utility for the study of the American West and, in doing so, revisits some well-trod arguments. In particular, several authors focus on oral history's ability to fill gaps when textual sources are unavailable or misleading and on oral history's tradition of giving voice to people who are often ignored in mainstream historical texts. However, instead of seeming redundant, attention to the logistic, emotional, and political process of doing oral history produces an engaging narrative and provides satisfying insight into the interactive, communal process of writing oral history.Embry divides the book into three sections. The first section provides a retrospective look at careers spent working in oral history. She describes her experiences at the Redd Center for Western Studies, pointing out the fundamental importance of existing personal ties and the establishment of trust for a successful oral history project. Barbara Allen Bogart compares two oral history projects-her dissertation research into the homesteader past of Fort Rock, Oregon and a project on mining in Evanston, Wyoming-that bookend her oral history career. Laurie Mercier documents her experiences recording women's oral histories in Montana, demonstrating that much can be gleaned from studying the silences in oral history interviews.Section Two includes a series of oral history projects that fill gaps in Western historiography-telling the complex and varied stories of women and minority groups in the twentieth-century West. William Bauer, Jose Alamillo, Clay tee White, and Skott Brandon Vigil document labor in California and the Southwest. Bauer, Alamillo, and Vigil interview Native American and Flispanic farm laborers to document their continued sense of family and community in the face of alienating labor practices. White chronicles the overlooked experiences of African American workers in postwar Las Vegas. Joanne Goodwin, Sandra Mathews, John Sillito, Sarah Langsdon, Marci Farr, and Melanie Newport uncover the untold stories of women's lives in the West. Georgia Wier records the experiences of Japanese families in 1940s Colorado, adding complexity to the story of Japanese dislocation and internment during World War Two. …