Editors' Introduction

We have all had moments of the unexpected while working with oral history. We may have stumbled across traumatic memories from narrators and not known how best to respond to their surprising revelations, or we may realize when reading through a transcript or listening to a recording years after the fact that the interviewer asked the wrong questions or framed them in a way littered with unintended social or cultural assumptions. We may grasp the reasons why a project failed so completely that interviewees came to resent and regret their participation, or perhaps we discover a way to reinterpret or repurpose interviews through a new lens or for a new audience. What do we do with those unanticipated moments? We digest. We reflect. We learn. We grow. And then we do our best to let our colleagues know about our experiences or the insights we gained from studying the works of others. We speak. We write. We publish.

In this issue of the Oral History Review, our authors—Alexander Freund; Andromache Gazi; Lauren Gutterman; Philip F. Napoli, Thomas Brinson, Neil Kenny, and Joan Furey; Melanie Shell-Weiss; and Emma Vickers—explore some of these unexpected moments in their own work or in the works of predecessors, and they share their thoughts and reflections about the intricacies of our practice and its meanings for oral historians and the public alike.

• • Freund looks at the complex history of oral history in China, its roots in oral tradition, its role in the wake of the establishment of the People's Republic of China, and its modern academic and public formulations.

• • Gazi discusses the uses of oral testimonies in the Industrial Gas Museum in Athens, Greece, and the ways in which those uses enhanced visitors' understanding of lived experiences and helped them embrace the ambiguity and polyvocality of this site-based history.

• • Gutterman reflects on interviews with lesbian and bisexual women who came out within the context of heterosexual marriages, experiencing feelings of shame, guilt, and regret, and the ways such emotions relate to traditional LGBTQ narratives of progress and triumph.

• • In revisiting oral histories Napoli conducted with Vietnam veterans Brinson, Kenny, and Furey, the authors look for traces of "moral injury," a recent concept in clinical psychology, and the ways in which understanding oral history through the lens of moral injury can lead to new interpretations of the memories of military experience and their aftermath.

• • Shell-Weiss looks at the ramifications and legacy of the Native American oral history project that the grand Rapids Public Library carried out in Michigan between 1974 and 1978 to discuss community engagement, ethics, and how well-intended projects can fail spectacularly.

• • Vickers looks more closely at the role that the principles of transactional analysis may be able to play for interviewers in situations when interviewees relate, expectedly or not, memories of trauma.

We are also fortunate to have two guest editors, Rina Benmayor and Linda Shopes, who have brought together Andor Skotnes, Alexander Freund, Luisa Passerini, John Kuo We Tchen, and Mary Marshall Clark to reflect on the work and contributions of Ron Grele to the field of oral history. The section is an outgrowth of a panel at the Oral History Association's fiftieth anniversary meeting in 2016; each author discusses not only her or his personal memories of Ron over the years, but also the ways in which Ron's own life history and worldview contributed to his beliefs about and research using oral history. Rounding out this special section are a piece from Ron himself, a bibliography of his work, and a small online photo exhibit that complements the section as a whole.

Our tireless book review editor, Nancy MacKay, has given us twenty-nine reviews of literature in the field, and we also have four reviews of nonprint media.

We want to close out this introduction by wishing our assiduous and indefatigable copy- and production editor, Elinor Mazé, a fond farewell as she moves on from her position at the journal. There are no words that could ever express our heartfelt gratitude for all that she has done for the Review...