An Unauthorized Biography of the World: Oral History on the Front Lines

by Michael Riordon

Overview

An Unauthorized Biography of the World explores the practice of engaged oral history: the difficult, sometimes dangerous work of recovering fragments of human story that have gone missing from the official versions.

Michael Riordon has thirty years’ experience as a writer and broadcaster in the field. Readers will encounter a gallery of brave, passionate people who gather silenced voices and lost life stories. The canvas is broad, the stakes are high: the battles for First Nations lands in Canada; environmental justice in Chicago; genocide in Peru; homeless people organizing in Cleveland; September 11/01, and after, in New York City; gay survivors of electroshock in Britain; the struggle to preserve a people’s identity in Newfoundland; peasant resistance to a huge transnational gold mine in Turkey.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781897071762
Publisher:	Between the Lines
Publication date:	10/08/2004
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	633 KB

About the Author

A Canadian writer and documentary-maker for almost four decades, Michael Riordon generates books and articles, audio, video and film documentaries, and plays for radio and stage. A primary goal of his work is to recover voices of people who have been silenced in the mainstream, written out of the official version.

Michael Riordon teaches writing, and has written four books of oral history: Our Way to Fight: Peace-Work Under Siege in Israel-Palestine, Eating Fire: Family Life on the Queer Side, An Unauthorized Biography of the World, and Out Our Way: Gay and Lesbian Life in Rural Canada. He lives near Picton, Ontario.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

1 Finding Voice, Making Sense

2 Kanien’keha/Ts’eouli (First Nations, Canada)

3 Land and Life (First Nations, Canada)

4 Umut/Hope (Turkey)

5 The Messenger (Chicago, Illinois)

6 The Gale Began to Rise (Newfoundland, Canada)

7 The Whole Truth (Peru)

8 Passion in the Archives (Canada)

9 9/11/01 (New York)

10 9/11/01 + 2 (New York)

11 History on the Floor (labour, Canada)

12 Turning the Tables (on the author)

13 A Really Tender One-Night Stand (gay, Canada)

14 Keep Asking Questions! (Cleveland, Ohio)

15 A Map of the Holy Land (Israel-Palestine)

Oral History Resources List