Staff Spotlight: Interview in US Latina & Latino Oral History Journal

Our Editorial Program Manager, Fanny Julissa García, was interviewed in the US Latina & Latino Oral History Journal about her experiences in the field and approach to this work.

In this interview, Fanny describes her journey into the oral history field, considerations that have informed her approach, and insights from various projects. Fanny uses the term “applied oral history” to describe practices that use a social justice framework, putting impact and the narrators’ needs at the forefront of the project.

Below, read excerpts from Fanny’s interview. The full article is available online, published by the University of Texas Press (gift link here).

What – and when – was your introduction to oral history?

My first experiences with oral history were not under the name of oral history. My interest in people’s lives began through social work and public health activism and advocacy. Twenty years ago, I worked as a social worker with Latinas in California living with HIV/AIDS. At the time, the public face of the epidemic was still White gay men. However, all of the clients that I provided case management for were Latinas. Some of them were young women going to college, mothers raising children, and grandmothers helping to raise their children’s kids.

I conducted recorded interviews with them and together we wrote a play based on their stories. The play was performed by actors at a conference in Los Angeles, and the women who shared their stories were in the audience. Today, the public has become much more knowledgeable about how HIV/ AIDS does not discriminate. I would like to think the play I wrote with the women who shared so much of themselves helped contribute to this change. For me, the experience became the catalyst for what has become a long exploration into how storytelling can contribute to narrative change.

Tell us about what your first training entailed. How has that training influenced the training you offer today?

The most important part of my first training experiences was understanding that building relationships comes first, above all else. The women I interviewed for the play I wrote twenty years ago would not have spoken to me about their life if they did not know me and if they did not trust me. So, I’m continuously trying to practice relational and applied oral history. For me, this means that my goal is to always ask what the narrator needs from me first, before asking them to give of themselves.

Are there practices you have adopted over the years, after recognizing a need?

Applied oral history basically means that oral history can and should be actuated toward a goal or effort that serves the people who have contributed their story to an oral history project. For example, can we apply oral history toward policy change efforts? Can we apply oral history toward narrative change movements to transform the way we see immigration and immigrants? Can we apply oral history toward legislative change and awareness? I believe the answer is yes, but in order to do so effectively, we need to partner with people and organizations outside academia.

For the Separated: Stories of Injustice and Solidarity project, I interviewed parents and children that were separated by the Trump administration. I was in New York City and many of the families were in Central America when I conducted interviews. The Separated project partnered with the Women’s Refugee Commission, and they used excerpts from the oral histories to write a policy brief about the impact of family separation on the parents and children.

Applied oral history methods are the actions and efforts taken to mobilize oral histories in response to an injustice.

In your last journal article in the Oral History Review, you write about the reason you chose to compensate interviewees in Central America. Can you summarize the issue and explain how your thinking on compensation has evolved in the course of your research?

My colleague Nara Milanich and I wrote this article in response to the relationship and solidarity we built with narrators who contributed their story to the project. The article is called “Money Talks: Narrator Compensation in Oral History,” and it begins with an exploration about how the Separated project ended up being a case study for how narrator compensation can work in oral history.

Because we had funding, we quickly moved project funds around to be able to provide compensation for families who were sharing their stories with the project. We felt it was our responsibility to do so. We wanted to show families that we were in solidarity with their experience and we wanted to contribute to their survival. The funding we had was not a lot, but it was something. Our goal with the article was to unpack the pushback around narrator compensation, why some oral historians do it yet don’t discuss it publicly, what the arguments for and against narrator compensation are.

And most importantly, we wanted to provide readers with basic considerations that an oral historian might want to explore when deciding whether to incorporate payment for narrators into the design of an oral history project. Our experiences led us to what we call situated compensation—the idea that it might be a good thing to consider the narrators’ past and present situation to understand whether compensation needs to be incorporated into the project.

There are a growing number of independent oral historians. What are the challenges? The rewards? What advice might you give to someone who wants to follow in your footsteps?

The challenges are all related to funding for programs, and lack of full-time jobs that offer living wages. Oral history needs heart and funding. I want more and more people to know what oral history is and how it can be used outside the world of academia. I want oral history by the people, for the people. Oral history can transform the way we see ourselves, each other, and society. For me, the oral history rewards happen when interviews are mobilized for narrative change and equity. My advice for fledgling oral historians is to look to organizations like Voice of Witness, the Self Evident Oral History Toolkit, and the Oral History Summer School as leaders in how to use oral history for social change and oral history as a tool to connect us to one another and create meaning in our world.