Final Reflection Essay

“Latino Oral Histories” exceeded my expectations.  I chose to take this class for several reasons: my positionality as a Vietnamese American, a patchy understanding of the Vietnam War, and an academic interest in comparative ethnic studies.  I think I came into the class perhaps a little overly self-assured: I had just finished a SURP in which I interviewed my grandmother about her flight from Vietnam right before the Fall of Saigon, and thus felt confident in the prospect of conducting oral histories, as well as somewhat knowledgeable of alternative understandings of the Vietnam War.  I had a perhaps simplistic anti-war politics, but did not expect it to get in the way.  I didn’t identify as Latino, but had taken a couple Chican@ studies classes before this one.

I did not, however, have any previous significant relationship with a veteran, of Vietnam or otherwise.  I do have a friend from high school who joined the Reserves and did a tour in Afghanistan, but we haven’t talked much about his experiences.  Thus emotionally and intellectually distanced, I felt somewhat alienated by and critical of mainstream “Veteran Appreciation” rhetoric, which was coded in what I perceived as imperialistic patriotism and an uncritical glorification of war.  Looking back, I think I had a somewhat elitist anti-war stance, in which I, with my liberal education, thought I “knew better” than to fall for American patriotism.  I, of course, did not articulate this, because I sympathized with those who chose to go off to war for lack of other options; I had somewhat of an understanding of the systematic racism the pushed many poor people of color into the military.  Sympathy, however, is laced more with inadvertent pity than with critical understanding.  Thus, I am not sure if I truly empathized with them.

Conducting the interviews with the two Latino Vietnam veterans radically changed my perspective, challenging my self-assured politics and invoking a greater sense of empathy.  I think initially I was wary of the prospect of interviewing a veteran who had been trained to vilify and kill Vietnamese people, who might have crossed paths with members of my extended family.  How would this veteran view me?  Would I invoke memories of those Viet Cong enemies?  However, my fears were not justified.  The interviews were intimate but not threatening; the veterans retained their composure, only sharing the memories with which they felt comfortable, and I listened with the respect due to an older person of greater experience and wisdom.

I felt honored that the veterans shared their stories with me.  I was struck by their intimate association with death, by the fragile miracle of their survival, by the lasting effects of war on their psyche and well being.  I realized that there was a way to feel heartfelt respect and admiration for these veterans as individuals, without compromising my pacifist politics.

Initially, I was intimidated by the prospect of having to represent these veterans, of integrating their oral histories and my historical analysis into an accessible narrative.  I appreciated the idea to place their stories on a web page, to share with a larger public.  Although I eventually want to become a professor and go into academia, I acknowledge the problematic of knowledge circulation that does not breach the “ivory tower” of the university—especially of research that purports to strive for “social justice.”  Furthermore, I critique the paternalistic need to “give voice to the voiceless;” the veterans are not voiceless.  They do not “need” me.  Rather, in this mutually beneficial relationship, I feel grateful for the chance to listen to their narratives.  Thus, I felt the burden of representing their narratives “correctly”—or rather, in a meaningful way, that respected their self-presentation but which integrated my own critical race, gender, and political analysis.

I liked the idea of organizing the web site by topic rather than by veteran.  I do not know how I would have condensed the veterans’ two hour long interviews into three pages in a way that adequately represented their whole story, without leaving out relevant aspects or making unilateral editing choices.  The topic organization relieved some of the pressure of having to narrate an “overarching story,” although the implicit directive to choose the most “compelling” quotes initially left me a bit unsettled.  How does one define “compelling”?  Most shocking?  Most exotic?  Most relevant?  Compelling to whom?  An audience with little knowledge of the Vietnam War?  Anti-war demonstrators?  Other military veterans?

In the end, however, I focused on parts that sounded unique, were rich with detail, and which resonated with human connection.  I wanted to present the veterans in an honest but positive light, in a way that neither glorified nor vilified their actions, but which retained an understanding of Latinos’ uneven position in U.S. society and an implicit critique of U.S. imperialism abroad.  However, I also wanted to evoke empathy from anti-war protestors—like myself—who may unwittingly blame the individual caught in the military industrial complex instead of the system of war itself.  Thus, I was drawn to the moments of human connection, which revealed the interviewees not as stock veterans but rather as complex individuals—with intimate relationships with their families, partners, friends, and comrades—who were forever changed by the violence they witnessed, who may still be haunted by memories and guilt, and who may never feel comfortable in civilian society again.

The moving conversations that took place in the interviews reflected the productive discussions that we had in class.  I really appreciated this class dynamic.  This was perhaps the best discussion space of any class that I’ve taken at the Claremont Colleges: each person spoke without prompting, students listened attentively and built off their peers’ comments, and no one dominated the conversation.  I liked the class readings—especially Gods Go Begging and “The Archive of Desire”—and was very moved by all the documentaries.  “Taking the Hill” was especially emotive; the juxtaposition of shots of contemporary Vietnam—which I had just visited this past summer—with the violent narrative of a Vietnam War veteran—who spoke of killing Vietnamese and abusing his family—really hit me emotionally.  However, I found it hard to vilify the narrator, and was uncomfortable with the way other students seemed to write off the role of religion in these people’s lives.  I think it is easy to critique zealous Christianity from a distance, and harder to empathize with those who cling to it out of a desperate need to make sense of their lives and make peace with their actions.  I appreciate this class for opening my mind to this more nuanced realization.

Overall, “Latino Oral Histories” taught me greater empathy, complicated my understanding of war, and re-emphasized the importance of human conversation.  I thank my fellow students and the Profé for this life-changing experience.

Reflection Post 3

Partnered with Marisa, I conducted my 2nd Vietnam veteran interview this morning at 9am. I woke early and reviewed the questions again so I would not have to read them off the paper during the interview. Marisa and I had not practiced interviewing together beforehand, so I was a bit nervous to see just how this would go. I have never co-interviewed anyone before. However, we decided to just wing it, planning to alternate questions (leaving space for the other to ask follow-up questions) and trusting the natural flow of conversation.

Fortunately, this plan worked. I was pleasantly surprised at how naturally the oral history interview unfolded; it was a productive triangulation of voices–mine, Marisa’s, and the narrator’s–that listened attentively to each other’s silences and spaces so that we allowed each other to finish our thoughts and reflect briefly, but kept the flow of the conversation going so as to avoid any awkward pauses. It helped that our narrator talked in a very linear fashion–he answered the questions given to him succinctly, offering stories and memories, but did not jump ahead or behind temporally in his narrative. Marisa and I gave each other space to ask follow-up questions to flesh out the “bare-bones” of his narrative–where he was born, when he enlisted in the Marines, what he did in Vietnam, when he came back, what he did afterwards–but followed the other’s prompting when she decided to move to the next “stage” of the narrator’s life. Overall, I really appreciated this opportunity to interview with a partner; Marisa asked questions that I would have asked anyway, as well as added things that I would have forgotten but that made the interview richer.

The narrator mentioned at the end that he had considered canceling this interview, because he had been worried that talking about his experiences would have brought up unwanted emotions and memories. We are grateful that he did not. He admitted to having nightmares and drinking heavily to avoid memories when he initially came back to Los Angeles; the memories are starting to resurface now that he is retired (he retired from the police force in 2010), causing him to seek out counseling from the VA Center. He appreciates the counseling and therapy sessions, and thus sees the value of talking through his repressed emotions. He mentioned talking to younger Marines that had just returned from Iraq and Afghanistan at a Marine Get-Together on Nov. 10, recognizing parallels between their post-war re-adjustment experience and his. Interestingly, he was more open to talking about certain combat stories that the first veteran I interviewed, though he did mention that he was not interested in attending the “Recounting Combat Stories” counseling session at the VA. Instead, he preferred the more forward-looking workshops that talked about how to manage stress and anger.

Once again, I am grateful for this opportunity to listen a Vietnam War veteran’s story, and am honored that he would share intimate and painful stories that he hesitates to share even with his family. This narrator expressed frustration and uncontrolled anger against Vietnam war protestors, whom he considered were disrespecting the people who risked their lives overseas. As someone who grew up with anti-war political leanings, these stories are very sobering and lead me to greater empathy. Furthermore, it is painful and moving to witness the lasting effects of war on bodies, minds, and hearts–it is hard to say whether people ever “re-adjust” to civilian life, or if they merely learn to cope. It makes me think of all the people who are damaged by combat today; I hesitate to pathologize/pity them and claim that “their lives are now ruined forever.” However, one can not deny that their experiences will set them apart from those of us who are privileged enough not to go through the horrors of war.

Reading Post 6

Alfredo Véa’s Gods Go Begging (1999) entwines the story of Jesse Pasadoble—Vietnam War veteran turned lawyer—with the diverse narratives of characters of different races, classes, genders, sexualities, nationalities, and times. Stylistically, Véa breaks down boundaries and deconstructs binaries, drawing connections between multiple moments and issues of identity, memory, violence, and hope. Just as Jesse’s story cannot be contained within one language, one nation-state, or one time-space, so too does the Vietnam War itself spill across borders, reaching out from the past to touch the present, drawing together the lives of seemingly disparate individuals. In the courtroom, Jesse comments that it is a “war of words;” textuality is important here—words have the power to (re)tell scenes that can never be replayed, to (re)create worlds that perhaps never existed (yet). Thus, Véa’s novel as a whole is not a “war of words,” but rather a “(re)construction with words,” a (re)constitution of the connections that seemed to have been broken through violence and disillusionment, a coming-to-terms with the past that makes room for an enlightened future.

Gods Go Begging deconstructs binaries of race, gender, and sexuality, speaking to the multiplicity and messiness of life. For one, the novel breaks down the black-white binary the pervades most American racial commentary, instead highlighting the narrative of a Chicano veteran—Jesse—and his intimate relationships with not whites, but rather blacks, Asians (on both sides of the Pacific), and other Latinos. In this way, the novel addresses issues of racial injustice—colonization, imperialism, the ghetto, the prison system—while still decentering the privileged “White Male.” Furthermore, although the novel is a story about Vietnam veterans and the specifically masculine enticement of war, it does engage the narratives of women, who are not merely passive wives, but rather actors, lovers, and warriors in their own right. Creole Persephone and Vietnamese Mai—a beautiful and rare example of an interracial/non-white couple—passionately long for their husbands; however, they are also strong women who have carved out their own spaces and forged their own relationships. Mai’s battle cry of “Tien Lan!” at the end of the novel—echoing her own husband’s cry many years ago—establishes her as a soldier on this domestic warfront: the segregated, oppressed and violent-ridden ghetto of her new California neighborhood. Furthermore, Mai and Persephone’s queered intimacy deconstructs the binary between homosexuality and heterosexuality; each woman fulfills the other’s needs and fills the other’s loss, remembering their husbands while still engaging with/in the present. Their final fatal embrace echoes the embrace of their lovers—Trin and Amos—in Vietnam: two men on opposite sides of the conflict who were both drawn by the perverse “sexual” enticement of war. Thus, the novel also deconstructs the opposition between the United States and Vietnam, drawing intimate connections across borders and times.

These critical (inter)connections are exemplified by Véa’s use of multiple languages. His characters speak not only English and Vietnamese—as expected in a nationalist, binarily-constructed conflict—but also slip in between Spanish and French. This inclusion of multiple languages not only destabilizes English as the “true and natural” language of the United States—thus acknowledging the diversity of its people—but also references histories of colonization—the French colonization of Vietnam and the Caribbean as well as the Spanish colonization of Latin America. Furthermore, language is important for its power to create, to critique, and to imagine new worlds into being. Jesse, Amos, and the chaplain enjoy “supposing,” challenging hegemonic historical narratives by inverting racial hierarchies. Importantly, these suppositions are hopeful but not utopian, maintaining their critical edge. For example, although the soldiers suppose about Mexicans in outer-space as a way to calm their nerves in the midst of the Vietnam War, these suppositions are not merely fantasies, but rather rooted in an awareness of racial inequalities and disparate educational access in the United States.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Gods Go Begging. I have read fictional narratives about the Vietnam War before, but they either focused solely on the Vietnamese warrior’s or refugee’s experience, or on the masculine and patronizing tale of an American Vietnam War veteran. This novel was an enlightening and moving surprise. The beautiful and critical connections that Véa drew between Vietnam and the United States, between men and women, between the past and the present, between multiple languages and sexualities and injustices and times and races and spaces attests to the awesome power of words to foster critical consciousness, healing, and hope.

Reading Post 5

J. Todd Moye. Freedom Flyers. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2010.

J. Todd Moye preferences his detailed historical account of the discrimination against African Americans and the politics surrounding the building of the Tuskegee air force training base with a touching prologue of oral histories from black pilots. These quick biographies are peppered with moving quotes; for example, Moye paints John Roach as a dreamer who wanted to fly planes since he was a young child. When describing Milton Henry, a black man from Quaker Philadelphia, Moye highlights his jarring first experience with Jim Crow racism in the South, setting the scene for the more historical details of the time period outlined in Chapter One. Thus, the Talented Tenth–these young, educated, aspirational black men who initiated the fight for racial equality in the United States by pressuring the White House during WWII to allow equal opportunity in the military–are given voices, feelings, and dreams, thanks to Moye’s inclusion of their oral histories. These stories touch the readers on an emotional level, emphasizing the injustices of racial discrimination.

When framing my own history that I have conducted, I want to focus on the “personal interest” stories, on the touching anecdotes that really humanize the Vietnam War veteran; because, just as the veterans were accused of dehumanizing the Vietnamese soldiers and civilians in Vietnam, they ironically have also been sometimes dehumanized themselves–stereotyped as monolithic “baby killers”–especially in light of the US’s defeat in Vietnam. Thus, I want to highlight the story of how the veteran’s grandmother gave him a pre-war blessing, and then “stayed alive” long enough to see him return and bless him again before passing away herself, as well as anecdotes about how his wife sent him a tinsel Christmas tree while he was in Vietnam and how he shared novels with his comrades in the jungle.

Reflection Post 2

I just concluded my first oral history interview about an hour ago, and it went really well.  Listening to the narrator’s story was a humbling and amazing experience for which I am deeply grateful.

Over the past couple of days, I was initially a bit anxious about conducting the interview; I have great awe and respect for this Oral History Project, and I did not want to mess up the interview by acting nervous, forgetting which questions to ask, or recording the interview incorrectly.  However, I arrived at the set interview place early, made sure I could work the recorder, looked over the questions, and calmed my scattered thoughts to put myself in the mindset to conduct the oral history.

I was lucky; the narrator was a personable man who understood the importance of the project.  He said he does not talk about his experiences with the Vietnam War often–because of the negative and shocked reactions he predicts he will get–but he has had a chance to share his story on several previous occasions and thus was at least somewhat familiar and comfortable with the interview format.  Before we started the interview, we talked a bit and I introduced myself as a History major with some interview experience.  I shared how this summer I had conducted an oral history with my grandmother, who came to the US from Vietnam in 1970, and how I had also returned to Vietnam to visit relatives and shoot a film.  Thus, I came out with the fact that I was part Vietnamese, and he talked about how he would like to visit Vietnam again (under different circumstances!) sometime before he died.

Then we started the interview, and for the most part, it flowed naturally.  At the back of my mind I worried about the recorder picking up the sound sufficiently, but for the most part, I tried to be really present in the interview, maintaining eye contact and being very open with my facial expressions and responses.  I am the kind of listener who makes a lot of sounds–like “mmm” and “mhmm”–to show that I am actively listening, and I hope these do not come off as too distracting in the recorded interview.  For the most part, though, I think they helped the narrator feel like I was really interested in what he had to say–which I was.  The interview did not unfold strictly linearly; I think the narrator had a propensity to “jump forward” in the narrative and draw connections with “foreshadowed” events, and as an interviewer, I tried to respect this while still “drawing it back” in order to make sure we touched on enough childhood and pre-war background stories before going on to further discuss the war and homecoming.  I found it gratifyingly easy to think of follow-up questions and guiding questions, so thankfully there were no awkward pauses.  The whole interview lasted for about 1 hour and 45 minutes, without breaks.

Although the interview was intimate, it was not threateningly emotional, I think, for either of us.  The narrator mentioned that this interview addressed mostly the “broad framework” of his story, and it would took many more hours and days to pull out all of the small details, details that he does not necessarily need or want to relive.  He made a beautiful metaphor about how although we had began to draw the “outline” of a body, we had just scratched the surface of going deeper and detailing the “eyes” and “nose” of this imaginary figure, this tale.  The narrator mentioned repeatedly that he does not want to talk about people he killed or violent things he did in Vietnam, so I did not push him, but asked more about his reflections of the entire experience and whether he discussed his story often.  Also, as someone who is interested in ethnic studies, I asked him questions about the racial composition of his childhood neighborhood(s) and how he perceived race relations in Vietnam.  I ended with a question about his general reflection of his experience with the Vietnam War and he talked about how it shaped who he is today.

I am grateful for this great experience and I look forward to the next oral history.

Reading Post 4

Yow, Valeria Raleigh.  Recording Oral History: A Guide for the Humanities and Social Sciences.  Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2005.

I found chapters five and six—about ethics and interpersonal relations in oral history methodology—especially interesting.

For example, in her section on the “Ethics in Relations of Unequal Power,” Yow quotes oral historian Alessandro Portelli: “The real service I think we provide to communities, movements, or individuals is to amplify their voices by taking them outside, to break their sense of isolation and powerlessness by allowing their discourse to reach other people and communities” (136).  While I think it is important for the interviewers to recognize their inherent power and to constructively use their privilege and resources to circulate forgotten stories and isolated histories—thus countering the dominant narrative of History—I would caution against seeing narrators as “powerless” victims that are dependent on their interviewers to give them a “voice.”  To suggest that narrators need to be “saved” from “silence” is to reproduce elitist constructions of power dynamics.  Rather, I would suggest that it is us interviewers—and the broader audience of the interviewers’ project(s)—that (also) need to be “saved” from our potential ignorance and inaccessibility to these important oral histories that could teach us so much.

I thought the question of appropriate boundaries between narrator and interviewer is also tenuous.  On one hand, I agree with the concerns to Judith Stacey—author of “Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography?”—who argues that interviewers should not manipulate narrators’ emotions and/or expectations by acting like a friend in order to gain access to more (personal) information.  However, I question Yow’s order to maintain a “professional relationship” (138).  How does one define “professional?”  Although I think interviewers should refrain from offering advice or promising things they cannot fulfill, I believe that interviewers have a certain amount of social responsibility to the people/communities they interview.  Otherwise, they run the risk of merely exploiting people for their stories—stories used in research from which the interviewer will presumably profit—in a sort of elitist, exoticizing fashion.  Furthermore, how friendly should an interviewer be with the narrator?  Insofar as there are unequal power dynamics between interviewer and narrator, I agree with the caution against sexual or overly intimate relationships.  However, I also look to Horacio N. Roque Ramirez’s piece on Teresita La Campesina, “A Living Archive of Desire,” as a beautiful example of productively unchecked intimacy between interviewer and narrator.  Ramirez does not remain the distanced researcher, but rather is quite open about his stake in the project and his intense love and respect for Teresita, and it is this intimacy that makes his writing so rich.

Yow echoes feminists’ question, “How do we explain the lives of others without violating their reality?” (142).  I think it is important for the interviewer/researcher/writer to neither speak over nor purport to speak for the narrator.  However, I think it is just as important that the interviewer/researcher/writer be true to their intellectual convictions and to actively analyze and interpret—rather than merely repeat—oral history “texts” in order to “make meaning” and construct useful arguments.  Perhaps the solution is to accept the existence of multiple realities that may contradict, compliment, and dialogically speak to each other.

Reading Post 3

I am interested in hauntings, in the ghosts of war, in the affects that linger after the fighting appears to stop.  However, these ghosts haunted not only the Vietnam veteranos—manifested psychologically in dreams (PTSD) and physically in rashes (Agent Orange poisoning)—but also their families and loved ones.  For example, Connie’s story about her son Hank was especially moving (184-192).  Connie was literally haunted by ghost sightings of Hank (187); however, Connie was also figuratively haunted by Hank’s memory, going “crazy” and withdrawing from her family in order to try and get closer to her son.  However, ghosts do not merely inspire nostalgia or longing; they can also incite anger and activism, as evidenced by Connie’s politicization and motivation to “get involved in the community” (188).  Connie testifies: “Maybe something good did come out of Hank’s death . . . I began to notice things, like how the Anglos had the good jobs and the Mexicans were mowing the lawn or hoeing and the Anglos were sitting on top of the tractor, driving, just waiting for the other ones to do the work.  I began to notice all that and I couldn’t keep quiet” (190).  Thus, although potentially terribly debilitating, pain and loss can also inspire social awareness and mobilization.

I was also struck by the Vietnam veteranos’ discussion of U.S. Foreign Policy in Latin America, and their greater hesitation to fight other Latinos compared to Vietnamese people.  I was gladdened by the common sentiment that “if the United States was involved in Latin America, it should not be from a military standpoint, but, instead, from the standpoint of helping the people become more self-sufficient” (222).  This complicates Benedict Anderson’s theory of “imagined communities,” speaking to the stronger pull of alliances of an imagined “nation” over loyalties to the bureaucratic “state.”  This begs the question: In what ways can we expand people’s conceptualizations of “identity” so as to include the “Other” and decrease nationalistic oppositions that lead to war, without falling into the apolitical—and sometimes racist—trap of “universalism” or “humanism”?

 

Reading Post 2

Ybarra, Lea. Vietnam Veteranos: Chicanos Recall the War.  Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004.

The oral history testimonies of the Vietnam veteranos reveal an interesting interrelation between class, education, and politicization.  Many of the young Chicanos who fought in the war—those who volunteered as well as those who were drafted—knew little about Vietnam coming in.  For example, Gilberto testifies, “When I got drafted, I didn’t even know what the word political meant . . . We were just struggling to survive and I had no idea what Vietnam was” (15).  Another, Charley, says, “We weren’t really very political because, during that time, especially in those small towns, they didn’t teach us anything about Vietnam” (40).  Antonio echoes, “I’m from South Texas, and we were a fairly poor family . . . At the time, I didn’t even know about Vietnam” (68).  In contrast, those who were conscientious objectors from the start were more privileged, educated, and politicized.  For example, Frank acknowledges that his pacifist position was influenced by his education: “Having taken courses in Mexican American/Chicano history, we knew that we were very much a part of the United States, yet we never had access to the institutions” (111).  However, this collection of oral histories cautions against privileging academic education over military “education”—or rather, military experience.  Many veteranos learned a lot about themselves and about politics in Vietnam; furthermore, students should recognize their privilege to condemn a war they do not have to fight (55).  In retrospect, however, many veteranos advocate more education and governmental transparency.  Ray says, “I’d rather be educated and then make my decision.  That’s the key, because education gives you the time to say, well, I want to go this way or I want to go that way” (130).  Gilberto pronounces, “I would tell all those little Chicanitos that have a bent toward becoming military people to seriously reconsider those impulses and to struggle in getting a good, solid education, to not be fooled by the marketing techniques that the military’s coming up with nowadays” (26).  Leonel suggest, “I think Vietnam has to be looked at historically, and it has to start down at the kindergarten level on up through the colleges, so that we can see how the hell we got into the mess that we got into” (51).

There is also an interesting tension between victimhood and agency in the way the veteranos narrativize the outcomes of the war.  Many veteranos express anger at feeling used by the U.S. government.  Gilberto reflects, “I felt I was a victim and I was manipulated” (25).  Tanis says, “I felt like we were let down, and I guess the main culprit of the whole thing has to be the government because they were calling the shots” (32).  Leonel proposes, “The vets were merely pawns of the whole deal, but the government lied to the American people” (48).  However, the veteranos also express the need to share their stories and combat historical amensia, so that the tragedies and horrors that they suffered do not get perpetuated.  Tony testifies, “I can’t forget because it’s like forgetting your history, and you can’t look at your future without learning from your past” (59).  Thus, they validate the importance of their narratives and their contributions to the community, as well as address the urgency that their voices be heard.

Reading Post 1

In the first chapter of Recording Oral History (1994), Valerie Raleigh Yow references oral historian Alessandro Portelli, who argues that “‘untrue’ statements are psychologically ‘true’ and that errors in fact may be more revealing than factually accurate accounts” (22).  First of all, Yow questions the objectivity and validity of what constitutes “fact,” showing that statistical records and census data, for example, are potentially as skewed as—if not more than—“subjective” oral testimonies.  Second, Yow argues that constructed realities—that is, the stories narrators tell about their lives based on their memories—are just as “true” as “evidenced” realities—that is, the written documents that survive a period and that constitute an official “historical” record.  In actuality, an oral historian could learn quite a lot from these “discrepancies” in “truth;” for example, s/he could then ask, “Why has the individual/community decided to construct and to remember the past in such a way that diverges from the given archive?”  Does this mean that the given archive—written by those in power—is “false?”  Or, how does an altered memory of an event function as a survival mechanism, a way to understand and make sense of painful and threatening experiences of the past?  These are important and interesting questions.

In “An Oral History of Our Time” (2003), Donald A. Ritchie writes, “[I]nterviews conducted long after the event benefit from the interviewee’s reflections that better enable them to weigh the event and sort the significant from the trivial” (39).  Although some social scientists might dismissingly point out that as the time that passes since the significant event increases, accuracy of memory decreases, Ritchie argues that we should actually embrace this significant space between “then” and “now.”  Oral historians are concerned not so much with what actually happened, but rather how people make sense of and narrativize what occurred.

Horacio N. Roque Ramirez’s piece on Teresita La Campesina, “A Living Archive of Desire” (2005), is a beautiful reflection on an oral history, on a “living archive.”  Teresita’s “life history frames a living archive of evidence that responds to both the whiteness of queer archiving practices and the heteronormativity of Latino historiography” (113).  We must utilize an intersectional analysis to hear the voices that have been left out of not only the official archive, but out of the identity-based movements that sought to challenge it.  Teresita embodied history, living and performing and narrating her story, giving voice to the stories of thousands of other Latin@ queer community members.  Ramirez writes, “For marginalized communities constantly involved in struggles for visibility, political identity, and space—the business of ‘cultural citizenship’—testimonios about their existence are critical acts of documentation” (116).  Furthermore, Ramirez is not a “neutral” researcher (indeed, neutrality is not necessarily valued in oral history research); as a queer Latino academic, Ramirez has a personal stake in collaboratively documenting Teresita’s narrative, before it is lost to a constant threat to the (Latin@) queer community—AIDS.  It is this personal sense of agency—among other factors—that makes this oral history so critical and compelling.

Reflection Post 1

As a second generation Asian Pacific Islander (API) academic, I am interested in Latino Studies from a comparative ethnic studies approach; I want to explore the intersections and divergences between our differential racialization in the United States.  Specifically, as a second generation Vietnamese American whose mother and grandmother fled to the United States during the Vietnam War, I am interested in Latino Vietnam War veterans’ experiences of and responses to this sociohistorical event.

As a history major, I am interested in oral histories as a way to democratize the archive–to document the voices that have previously been left out of the dominant narrative.  I have conducted several oral histories before; however, I also learn a lot from each experience, and am nervous but excited to conduct more.  I plan to go to grad school, and I predict that my future research will rely heavily on critical theory and oral histories.