Listening on the Edge: Oral History in the Aftermath of Crisis eds. by Mark Cave and Stephen Sloan (review)

Listening on the Edge represents an essential contribution for newcomers among the growing cohort of oral historians who apply their skills in conflict and post-conflict settings. The volume is inspired by the realization that "literature on the best practices of oral history fieldwork in the aftermath of crisis is limited" (11). To address this problem, it includes chapters from a number of skilled practitioners whose insights on crises that have unfolded around the world speak effectively to the methodological and interpretive challenges of this particular application of oral history.

In the introduction, editor Mark Cave provides a helpful historical overview of the application of oral history to crises since World War II, beginning with the pioneering work of Samuel Marshall, Forrest Pogue, and Elena Poniatowska and ending with the Oral History Association's present efforts to promote oral historical research into emerging crises around the world. From there, "Part I: Clamour" includes chapters by Selma Leydesdorff; Denise Phillips; Tamara Kennelly and Susan Fleming-Cook; Elizabeth Campisi; Taylor Krauss; and Ghislaine Boulanger. Leydesdorff's chapter explores the impact of trauma and other forms of emotional distress on life history narratives, as evidenced by the account of Hanifa, a Bosniak woman whose husband and son disappeared during the 1995 genocide at Srebrenica. Leydesdorff's insightful analysis of Hanifa's narrative and the conversations that surrounded their interviews revealed Hanifa's tendency to interpret her entire life through the lens of personal loss, resulting in the sense that a "whole world" had been obliterated with the murder of her loved ones at Srebrenica (31).

Next, Phillips considers the narratives of two brothers who sought asylum in Australia to escape persecution in their native Afghanistan. Their voices shed much-needed light on the ongoing marginalization and persecution of the Hazara ethnic minority community in Afghanistan, as well as the negative "longer-term effects of Australia's rapidly evolving refugee policies implemented since 1999 to deter arrivals" (43). Simultaneously, Phillips's chapter explores challenges inherent in interviewing distressed narrators who may require—in order to feel comfortable—that the oral historian abandon scholarly reserve or listen to graphic accounts of physical violence, for example.

Kennelly and Fleming-Cook follow with their analysis of transcript excerpts from interviews with survivors of the mass shooting at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in 2007, revealing the difficult healing that can emerge through narrating stories of survival in an oral history project. They caution readers of the emotional burden of "listening with compassion," particularly when the oral historian is personally connected to the crisis, while simultaneously recognizing the value of this endeavour in terms of helping survivors redefine themselves in a manner that breaks the cycle of entrapment that commonly emerges from experiencing crisis firsthand (70).

Campisi then reflects on interviews she conducted with Cuban rafters who fled political repression in Cuba in the mid-1990s in the hopes of finding a better life in the United States. Their narratives and their reception (and at times rejection) by older Cuban exiles and the American public more generally prompted an awareness of the reciprocal gains for individuals and society from approaching oral history as a "social activity that can sensitize the collective to the need to provide healing opportunities for trauma survivors, whose stories benefit the larger society because they offer wisdom for overcoming terrible life events" (89). Krauss applies Lawrence Langer's classification of forms of memory to the postgenocide recollections of a handful of Rwandan genocide survivors. Shifting from "anguished memory" (the inability to separate oneself from those who did not survive) to "tainted memory" (in which the speaker feels compelled to speak of necessary, if not always admirable, conduct) and finally to "humiliated memory" (wherein the speaker's inability to communicate an experience results in "burning helplessness"), Krauss complicates the simplistic assertion that oral history in the aftermath...