Arab and Jewish Women in Kentucky: Stories of Accommodation and Audacity

Postscript

Postscript On Being a Documentarian Nearly two decades ago, when I embarked on my first qualitative work interviewing black activists, the practice of documenting ordinary lives was known outside of academia, but it was not widely done. Today, by contrast, lives are incessantly recorded in books, films, photographs, reality television shows, and social networking sites. Is there a point at which we document too much? Wonderful programs have been developed that help people chronicle family tales for the sake of future generations .1 Story Corps, for example, travels the country and gives ordinary citizens the opportunity to speak as, among many other things, mothers who have lost children, partners in interracial relationships, or relatives of those killed in the Twin Towers. This work is part of a refrain that considers history to comprise not solely the acts of great men and women but also those of ordinary people who are not famous and whose lives are not usually documented.2 Because such lives can be extraordinary in their simplicity, I believe that collecting quiet stories is a worthy endeavor. There may be risks, however, in jumping on the story-gathering bandwagon. Previous generations believed that most people’s lives are ordinary, neither famous nor glamorous, and that their stories are not worth telling—a sentiment that may result in rich information being lost. In the past, I have had to convince some interviewees that their lives are worthy of attention. Today, the opposite sentiment is prevalent, with people believing that every vacation or every child’s step is worthy of outside attention and recognition. Stories are told with wider and more public audiences in mind and with the hope that the opportunity for fame rests 182 arab and jewish women in kentucky in the ordinary. Contrast this attitude with that of one of my Palestinian interviewees, who uttered relatively few words and exuded the sentiment that his life was what it was—nothing more, nothing less—and hence undeserving of excessive attention. Gishie Bloomfield also comes to mind; Gishie, according to her daughter, had no time for self-reflection. Their attitudes stand outside the larger present-day cultural frame that encourages individuals to aggrandize their lives. The desire to make stories public may not be individually motivated but institutionally driven. At the 2009 Oral History Society conference in Glasgow, Scotland, Claire Hall, a freelance oral historian, observed that after decades of silence, Vietnam veterans in New Zealand were finally sharing their stories because of encouragement from the government. According to Hall, their difficult and deeply troubling stories of war were told not to underscore or understand the ravages of war but rather to fill a governmental need to create and celebrate the figure of the heroic veteran and citizen. Even when institutions are not at work, stories are generated and orchestrated for public consumption. Appearances are what matter. In his work Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman explores the dangers of television and public discourse. In the entertainment age, he claims, truth no longer matters; instead, it is the appearance of truth that counts. “If on television, credibility replaces reality as the decisive test of truth-telling, political leaders need not trouble themselves very much with reality provided that their performances consistently generate a sense of verisimilitude.”3 Postman writes about television and politicians, but his words resonate in an age dominated by a plethora of image-producing and -transmitting devices. There are now more opportunities than ever to manipulate appearances. What is at stake, according to Postman, is the nature and character of public discourse and, hence, democracy. Oral historians, too, have often considered themselves promoters of democracy. Studs Terkel viewed the recording of ordinary lives as an act that enlarges democracy: the oral historian makes the silent and voiceless visible. Decades ago, oral historian Alessandro Portelli battled popular Italian sentiments that shunned the recording of ordinary lives in favor of focusing solely on famous ones. Terkel, during his long career, and Portelli, today, remind us of the uncommon beauty of regular lives and postscript 183 the power and authenticity of the everyday person’s narrative. In their estimation, voice gathering constitutes democracy building. Yet enlarging democracy via oral histories may not be as easy as simply gathering unheard voices. Postman may not have fully predicted the reach of today’s entertainment age, when ordinary individuals in their daily lives, not just public figures, divulge and project...