Remembering: Oral History as Performance

Book Reviews 125 REMEMBERING: ORAL HISTORY AS PERFORMANCE. Edited by Della Pollock. Afterword by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 224 pp. Hardbound, $75.00; Softbound, 24.95. It is no simple feat to create, develop, and edit a strong collection of essays. The different agendas, variegated methodologies, and dis- parate voices must be well orchestrated, choreographed to unify writers without denying their important differences. With Della Pollock’s Remembering, readers have the opportunity not only to learn from its contents but also to enjoy a well-crafted collection of nine essays that explore the multiple intersections of oral history and performance studies. As a whole, Remembering aims to provide opportunities for 126 ORAL HISTORY REVIEW new experiences which might lead us to think about new directions for oral history and its related disciplines. As the fourth book in the Palgrave Studies in Oral History series, Remembering begins with one of the most powerful essays about oral history that I’ve read. Pollock begins her collection by offering a discussion of oral history and performance studies in ways that are both accessible and theoretically complex. She explains the transformational process in oral history and its “essential promise” that the bodies involved “will be redeemed in some kind of change” (2). Indeed, the unifying thread in the collection is “a sense that per- formance as promise and practice is at the heart of oral history” (2). Throughout her essay, and throughout the collection, the importance of “embodied” experience and knowledge plays a central role. But there’s...