Oral History, Community, and Work in the American West ed. by Jessie L. Embry (review)

In this anthology, editor Jessie L. Embry provides an assortment of oral history case studies that delve into ideas and issues surrounding labor and community in the American West. The fifteen-chapter book includes three parts; the first, “Reflections,” introduces the book theoretically and practically. Here, Embry, Barbara Allen Bogart, and Laurie Mercier identify oral history as a deeply social practice that can reshape historical understanding of Western history. Embry writes a brief historiography and discusses differing definitions of community and varying interpretations of work, noting that myth and reality often collide in the West: “I am a product of the western myths of open spaces and the individualistic ‘can-do-it’ attitude,” she writes. “I am also a product of the Mormon community support system. I show the dilemma many westerners face,” the junctions of the communal and the individual (12).

Bogart follows with an empirical analysis of her experiences in Oregon and Wyoming that raises questions about oral history and community memory. She participates in what she calls a “feedback loop,” filtering residents’ memories through her outsider’s perspective and then re-presenting them (40). She describes her dawning awareness in the 1970s of oral historians as mediators, an understanding that developed from interviewing and creating community exhibits. Her story reminds the oral historian that there is no escape from negotiating mediated spaces between academic and public perceptions. “The trick,” she writes, “is to recognize the challenges and demands of both worlds and find that balance that will create a fully dimensional view of the past from both the inside and the outside” (41).

And finally, Mercier reminds the reader that all views of the past rely on socially constructed, multidimensional, temporally contingent memories. Armed with new questions, insights, and the passage of time, Mercier revisits interviews she conducted years before. Because narrator and historian engage in the interview process in a particular time, place, and social location, returning to a collection takes her back to the iterative, dialogic process begun in the original interview. Mercier explores conversations between past and present, individual and collective memory, and historical lessons that collections—about the West, communities, migrations, race, gender, and class—provide.

The themes in “Reflections” are then analyzed more fully in the second part, comprised of nine case studies of “Neglected Groups” that expose historical patterns. The best chapters connect labor, community, and oral history methodology, demonstrating intersections between social structure and individual human agency, subverting stereotypes, filling in unrecognized blanks in the historical record, and performing exactly the role that oral history fits best—elucidating the human condition. Rather than focus on labor activity, the stories show how work shapes and is shaped by community, family, and Western history.

William Bauer begins with Round Valley Indians recalling migration as an economic activity and a family endeavor. He subverts stereotypes by incorporating Native labor into twentieth century labor patterns, also connected to social and kinship relations. Jose Alamillo analyzes stories about leisure, gender, and the power of place, unveiling racialized and social spaces in the lemon groves of California. Skott Brandon Vigil follows his Ute/Mexican American family migration from the 1930s to the 1950s, demonstrating the impact of national events on real people whose experiences usually remain unheard. Georgia Wier connects the individual and collective through an oral history of Japanese Americans in Weld County, Colorado; her narrators share personal experiences, family immigration stories, and accounts before and after World War II, expanding Western history and creating comparative possibilities among states. Claytee White’s piece about “back of the house” workers in Las Vegas includes interviews with African American maids, porters, community organizers, farmers, miners, dealers, and others. These stories show that rugged individualism does not shape the history of blacks in the West; White suggests a “reshaping of the Turner thesis” to write a regional black history (169). Joanne Goodwin’s exploration of Las Vegas showgirls from...