By Sasha Kindred
Participating in the Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURE) this past summer has greatly transformed me in both personal and professional ways.
When my faculty mentor, Dr. Finn Bell, first asked me if I wanted to work as a research assistant on an oral history project he coordinated, where I would be tasked with writing a literature review for a manuscript about the archive, I had no idea the extent to which much of the research I would end up doing would focus on trauma-informed interviewing and relationships. Assuming that the bulk of what I would find would be lot of dense articles about data collection methods, I was pleasantly surprised when I was carrying out my database searches that there was so much literature calling on the importance for oral historians and novice practitioners to incorporate trauma-informed practices into their work, and to treat oral history work with narrators and community members as a process of learning through developing relationships, as opposed a quest for obtaining a product to add to an archive.
When done intentionally and in a way that centers relationships above all else, there are many contexts in which oral history and social work really are one and the same. This lies largely in the fact that listening to stories from people who have experienced something firsthand, as opposed to secondary interpretations or observations of what they experienced, by its very nature entails connecting with another on a deeper level. When you bear witness to another person’s story, you and that person inevitably become closer. True connection cannot happen without some level of vulnerability and risk, without some level of showing others who we truly are, what we have experienced, and what matters to us. And it is because of this element of risk that centering narrators and implementing protections against potential psychological harm is extremely important in this work.
The importance of reclaiming one’s story is especially significant as it relates to people from marginalized communities. Dominant social narratives and stereotypes often serve to silence and misinterpret the voices of these communities, to further isolate them from themselves in favor of legitimizing and upholding the status quo. I am very biased in that I believe that the oral expression of personal stories–unedited, raw, and 100% human–enrich us so much more than data or even written narratives can. Sure, from a qualitative researcher perspective there are major “themes” that can be analyzed from a series of interviews to assess commonalities in the experiences of a group of people. This is not necessarily always a bad thing, as this knowledge is important to have and plays its own role in bringing greater awareness to shared experiences of oppression and fostering social change. That being said, from a relational perspective, these stories have the potential to either affirm and empower–or to hurt and disempower–people who have had their narratives silenced or rewritten for so long. Within the oral history interview lies the opportunity for healing, and so it is a pursuit that must be taken seriously.
This project has not only helped me professionally in the sense that it has given me a different view of what it means to practice social work, but also on a personal level in that it has encouraged me to reclaim my own story. I am a walking contradiction. I am mixed-race, but white-passing. I am a lesbian, but femme, and very “straight looking.” I have greatly struggled with my self-image and my mental health since my adolescence, but I am considered fine because I can manage to be a somewhat productive member of society, go to work, and get good marks in school. In more ways than one, I am an invisible minority. For so long I have silenced myself by avoiding speaking publicly about these parts of myself for fear of not being recognized as any of these things; for fear of being found out for the fraud that I constantly feel that I am; and for fear of not communicating these experiences tactfully enough in a way that I end up being ignorant to or downplaying the very real–and often much more immediately dangerous–struggle that being a visible minority presents, which is the last thing that I would ever want to do. I have since realized that there is a great gap in some of my personal relationships that this self-silencing has caused, because not talking about these experiences is a way of hiding parts of myself that are needed to fully understand who I am.
There is a common saying in social work, that you can’t preach wellness if you are not practicing wellness yourself. After my experience this summer, and in learning truly that narrative identity and storytelling are inextricably intertwined, I feel called to reclaim my own voice. From this summer experience I have learned to embrace my contradictions. I have learned to vocalize all parts of myself, no matter how scared I am of judgment or rejection for doing so, because being able to tell your own story and challenge the assumptions and stories that others paint about you is not simply a luxury, but a right. We all have a right to be heard, to be seen, and to be accepted for who we truly are–and not simply the roles that we are supposed to play or conform to. Social change cannot happen without reclaiming the narrative, bridging gaps in understanding, and without challenging the assumptions that we make about each other as well-intentioned–yet ultimately fallible–human beings who are just trying to get by in our day-to-day lives.
