Sociology Meets Memoir: An Exploration of Narrative and Method

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Margaret Nelson explores how sociologists can approach memoir in their writing, research, and in the classroom

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Margaret Nelson explores how sociologists can approach memoir in their writing, research, and in the classroom

Image courtesy of interviewee. August 26, 2024

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This video is a transcription of an interview discussing the intersection of sociology and memoir writing. The conversation features Margaret, an author who reflects on her motivations for writing a book that serves as a guide to using memoirs in sociological research. Initially encouraged by her editor after her previous work on family secrets, she discovered the complexity of how memoirs relate to sociology and the varied ways in which different fields utilize memoirs.

Throughout the interview, Margaret emphasizes the differences between memoirs and autobiographies, highlighting that memoirs focus on specific experiences rather than a complete life story. She also distinguishes memoirs from testimonials, which aim to highlight social injustices.

Margaret elaborates on the methodological challenges of using memoirs in research, such as the inability to follow up on questions after reading and the reliance on memory, which can affect the authenticity of the recollections. She advocates for the incorporation of memoirs into sociological research and teaching, as they provide unique insights and access to voices that may otherwise go unheard.

The interview concludes with Margaret's hopes for readers to clarify their thinking about memoirs in a pedagogical context and her call for future researchers to explore the relationship between memoir writing and sociology in more depth. Overall, it highlights the potential of memoirs as valuable tools for understanding individual and collective human experiences within social contexts.

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00:00.065 --> 00:03.485
The motivation for this book came from my editor.

00:04.065 --> 00:07.245
Um, I had recently written a book using memoirs

00:07.905 --> 00:09.725
as the basis for the research.

00:09.865 --> 00:12.005
It was called Keeping Family Secrets.

00:12.465 --> 00:16.045
And to write that book, I had read hundreds, many, many,

00:16.045 --> 00:19.485
many memoirs, and I was kind of at a loss for

00:19.645 --> 00:20.885
what I was going to do next.

00:21.035 --> 00:24.445
Then I asked my editor, well, what do you think I should do?

00:24.505 --> 00:27.045
And she said, well, why don't you write a guide

00:27.145 --> 00:28.525
to using memoirs?

00:28.975 --> 00:32.245
It'll be useful. And I thought that was a good idea.

00:32.985 --> 00:35.685
Um, as most projects, it turned out

00:35.685 --> 00:38.085
to be more complicated than a simple guide,

00:38.225 --> 00:39.725
but it, that got me started.

00:39.915 --> 00:44.245
What happened was, as I started reading, thinking about how

00:44.245 --> 00:49.085
to use memoirs as a sociologist, I realized that,

00:49.145 --> 00:52.325
people in other fields had written about similar topics.

00:52.925 --> 00:55.605
I realized I had to read some literary criticism,

00:55.935 --> 00:58.005
which is something I was,

00:59.135 --> 01:03.125
maybe let's say a little shy of having been an English major

01:03.305 --> 01:04.485
as an undergraduate.

01:04.825 --> 01:07.805
And not so sure I knew how to read literary criticism,

01:08.545 --> 01:09.885
but it just turned out

01:09.955 --> 01:13.605
that other people were using memoirs in different ways than

01:13.645 --> 01:17.205
I had done, and that the relationship between memoir

01:17.305 --> 01:20.325
and sociology was more complex than

01:20.445 --> 01:21.525
I had originally thought.

01:22.285 --> 01:24.645
I kept on reading memoirs

01:24.825 --> 01:29.445
and I kept on reading memoirs in a variety of different,

01:29.525 --> 01:31.445
a variety of different kinds of memoirs.

01:32.005 --> 01:35.045
I had focused when I'd written my earlier book on

01:35.555 --> 01:37.325
memoirs about family secrets,

01:37.545 --> 01:38.925
but now I had

01:38.925 --> 01:42.445
to read more memoirs about growing up in the United States

01:42.865 --> 01:45.565
and also from a more diverse group of people.

01:46.225 --> 01:49.125
Um, I had previously focused on those who were

01:49.935 --> 01:53.285
adolescent children in the post World War II period,

01:53.865 --> 01:57.925
and so I started reading, more contemporary memoirs.

01:58.265 --> 01:59.845
The basic difference

02:00.395 --> 02:03.365
that people often ask about is what's the difference

02:03.365 --> 02:05.485
between a memoir and an autobiography?

02:06.145 --> 02:09.205
So, I think one answer is,

02:09.545 --> 02:11.605
and if you put it into AI

02:11.665 --> 02:15.765
or chat GBT, this is what they'll tell you, which is

02:16.195 --> 02:18.725
that memoirs are about a fragment

02:18.865 --> 02:22.485
of somebody's life usually rather than the entire life.

02:22.865 --> 02:25.405
And they often focus on a particular incident

02:25.505 --> 02:29.325
or a particular experience rather than,

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from I was born here and I'm, well, I'm still alive,

02:33.345 --> 02:35.005
but eventually I'll die over there.

02:35.705 --> 02:38.245
Um, so memoirs are more limited,

02:38.785 --> 02:41.405
but one of my colleagues really said something very

02:41.725 --> 02:44.925
interesting to me, which was, we read memoirs differently

02:45.785 --> 02:48.525
for different reasons than we read autobiographies.

02:49.105 --> 02:51.005
So we read an autobiography

02:51.005 --> 02:52.685
because we're interested in the person,

02:53.265 --> 02:57.085
and we might pick up a memoir we may not have know nothing

02:57.135 --> 02:58.725
about that individual. In

02:58.725 --> 03:01.645
Fact, that's part of the virtue of memoirs, is

03:01.645 --> 03:03.565
that they're written by nobodies.

03:04.105 --> 03:05.685
But we'll pick up a memoir

03:05.685 --> 03:09.085
because we're interested in the experience rather than the

03:09.085 --> 03:10.325
individual themselves.

03:11.205 --> 03:14.645
I I also think it's important to distinguish between memoirs

03:14.785 --> 03:18.365
and the Latin American practice called testimonial,

03:18.705 --> 03:23.165
and excuse my English, I have no Spanish in my background,

03:23.425 --> 03:26.925
but testimonials are, are usually,

03:28.025 --> 03:32.165
pieces of writing about an experience designed

03:32.265 --> 03:34.685
to bring attention to oppression

03:35.025 --> 03:39.645
or bring, bring attention to some kind of,

03:40.825 --> 03:42.645
political activity.

03:43.185 --> 03:46.205
And memoirs don't have that necessarily.

03:46.445 --> 03:48.445
I mean, one of the reasons I think I wanted

03:48.445 --> 03:50.925
to write this book was to encourage people,

03:51.185 --> 03:53.085
or encourage it least sociologists

03:53.545 --> 03:56.885
to think about using memoirs in their research.

03:57.425 --> 04:00.645
So there are other people who have used memoirs.

04:01.165 --> 04:04.765
I mean, Eric Good wrote about using memoirs as a way to

04:05.435 --> 04:07.525
talk about how people who'd had

04:08.125 --> 04:10.285
criminal activity could justify their activity

04:10.385 --> 04:13.125
and explain it to another generation.

04:13.865 --> 04:18.725
Um, a historian, another sociologist used memoirs

04:18.985 --> 04:22.285
to talk about the experience of the self

04:22.705 --> 04:25.525
and how people had understood their self over time.

04:26.145 --> 04:29.325
And Arthur Frank, who's a quite well-known sociologist,

04:30.075 --> 04:33.205
uses memoirs as a way to think about illness

04:33.865 --> 04:37.405
and the kinds of illness narratives people have.

04:38.185 --> 04:42.245
But, I, I think memoirs are an important

04:43.085 --> 04:46.405
resource available to sociologists, available

04:46.405 --> 04:49.725
to historians avail available to anthropologists.

04:50.165 --> 04:51.405
I won't limit myself,

04:51.625 --> 04:56.365
but as a way to think about, people's experiences

04:56.955 --> 05:00.125
without the intermediary of the researcher.

05:00.665 --> 05:04.805
So I, I previously had always interviewed my subject,

05:04.985 --> 05:06.805
people I was writing about,

05:07.425 --> 05:09.485
and then I'm part of the process.

05:10.185 --> 05:12.645
Of course, I'm part of the process when I'm,

05:13.195 --> 05:16.085
analyzing a memoir, but I'm not collecting the data.

05:16.705 --> 05:21.605
And also memoirs give us access to p voices we might not

05:21.605 --> 05:24.845
otherwise have heard, and a range of people

05:25.345 --> 05:28.805
and people in the past who would be impossible to interview.

05:28.905 --> 05:31.965
The memoir is there, it's written, it's a piece of work.

05:32.675 --> 05:35.365
It's, you can draw from it what you can,

05:35.865 --> 05:38.205
but you're unlikely to be able to go back

05:38.265 --> 05:41.805
and say, Hmm, can you explain more fully what you meant?

05:42.095 --> 05:44.885
Which I was able to do when I conducted interviews.

05:45.675 --> 05:48.885
Also, the research, you know,

05:48.885 --> 05:50.285
it depends on people's memory,

05:50.505 --> 05:53.965
but so does most research, that is

05:54.545 --> 05:58.525
if I ask somebody about their past, I'm asking them,

05:58.635 --> 05:59.645
what do you remember?

06:00.235 --> 06:01.405
What do you wanna tell me?

06:01.875 --> 06:03.485
What do you think is most important?

06:03.745 --> 06:07.605
And of course, the memoir is going to have the same kinds

06:07.605 --> 06:11.805
of issues involved in issues of memory, people remembering

06:11.905 --> 06:12.965
or not remembering.

06:13.425 --> 06:14.965
I'm doing some research now

06:15.055 --> 06:18.005
where I'm reading an interview conducted with somebody

06:18.745 --> 06:20.925
who was asked about, she was the only,

06:21.625 --> 06:23.085
she lived in a small town

06:23.105 --> 06:26.045
and she was the only Jewish child in the town.

06:26.465 --> 06:28.525
And I asked her about antisemitism

06:28.525 --> 06:30.685
and she said, no, there was no antisemitism.

06:31.005 --> 06:34.165
I grew up exactly the same way as everybody else did.

06:34.555 --> 06:38.005
Well, had she forgotten, did she not wanna admit it?

06:38.405 --> 06:42.005
I mean, these are problems we have when we conduct research

06:42.015 --> 06:45.685
about the past, we rely on people's memories

06:45.985 --> 06:47.965
of, of the past.

06:48.225 --> 06:51.685
And so it's going to be a problem dealing with memoir.

06:51.985 --> 06:55.365
The thing about memoir is that people are willing

06:55.385 --> 06:57.925
to tell this is what people wanna tell the public.

06:58.325 --> 07:00.925
I would hope that readers use it a little bit

07:00.945 --> 07:02.565
to clarify their own thinking.

07:03.105 --> 07:06.165
Um, I wrote it for both students and teachers.

07:07.045 --> 07:09.045
I hope that students might look at it

07:09.045 --> 07:13.445
and say, Hmm, we just were reading a memoir in a class.

07:13.705 --> 07:15.165
Why did my teacher assign this?

07:15.475 --> 07:17.325
What kinds of questions might I ask

07:17.395 --> 07:19.485
that the teacher might not have considered?

07:20.065 --> 07:22.925
Um, I hope students might think, gee, I have

07:22.925 --> 07:24.725
to do a little bit of a research project.

07:25.325 --> 07:27.125
I don't know how to go out and do interviews.

07:27.345 --> 07:30.165
I'm shy, but I might be able to find out

07:30.165 --> 07:32.845
what other people have said about this issue in

07:32.845 --> 07:33.885
their own memoirs.

07:34.425 --> 07:36.085
And I hope that,

07:36.225 --> 07:39.445
my colleagues will think more about using

07:39.635 --> 07:41.045
memoirs and their teaching.

07:41.405 --> 07:43.165
I think it's a wonderful teaching tool.

07:43.605 --> 07:45.645
I wish I'd done more of it when I was teaching,

07:45.705 --> 07:47.045
but I don't teach anymore.

07:47.905 --> 07:52.445
I'm past that stage of life, either happily or unhappily.

07:52.625 --> 07:53.965
That's a different discussion.

07:54.585 --> 07:57.685
But I would hope that teachers might think, gee,

07:58.105 --> 08:01.445
here's a way for me to get my students over the hurdle

08:02.025 --> 08:04.445
of identifying with somebody who's very different from

08:04.445 --> 08:08.005
themselves, or identifying with somebody who's very similar

08:08.555 --> 08:11.205
than themselves, but the to themselves,

08:11.305 --> 08:14.125
but thinking about their issues in a different kind of way.

08:14.485 --> 08:16.235
I think not sure

08:16.235 --> 08:19.115
where future researchers should go, but I'll say this.

08:19.895 --> 08:23.345
Um, I think I have my own limitations

08:23.445 --> 08:24.945
as a theoretical thinker,

08:25.965 --> 08:29.585
and I think that there is some work to be done

08:30.165 --> 08:32.545
on the relationship between memoir

08:32.965 --> 08:36.425
and sociology that I was not able to do in this book.

08:36.925 --> 08:39.105
So I hope somebody smarter than me

08:39.405 --> 08:41.225
or with a different perception from me

08:41.605 --> 08:45.865
or with a different interest than me would think again about

08:46.205 --> 08:49.185
what's the relationship between sociology and memoir.

08:49.705 --> 08:52.025
I think they're both offer opportunities

08:52.245 --> 08:54.465
to understand the social world.

08:54.785 --> 08:56.565
I think they both offer opportunities

08:57.185 --> 08:59.685
to think about the relationship between people's

09:00.245 --> 09:04.525
personal issues and public public issues, personal troubles

09:04.525 --> 09:09.085
and public issues to use the formulation by Searight Mills.

09:09.145 --> 09:13.285
But I, I, I think that there are ways to kind of think about

09:14.025 --> 09:15.405
how do we read memoirs?

09:15.995 --> 09:17.645
What, what can we get from them?

09:18.355 --> 09:21.605
What are their importance to thinking about the social world

09:22.035 --> 09:25.405
that I touched the surface of, and what was meant to be

09:25.425 --> 09:26.725
and is kind of a guide

09:27.105 --> 09:29.405
and somebody else could delve more deeply into it.

"Exploring the Complex Relationship Between Memoir and Sociology: From Personal Narratives to Research Insights"

00:00:00 - The motivation for this book came from my editor. I had recently written a book using memoirs as the basis for the research. It was called Keeping Family Secrets. And to write that book, I had read hundreds, many, many, many memoirs, and I was kind of at a loss for what I was going to do next. Then I asked my editor, well, what do you think I should do? And she said, well, why don't you write a guide to using memoirs? It'll be useful. And I thought that was a good idea. as most projects, it turned out to be more complicated than a simple guide, but it, that got me started. What happened was, as I started reading, thinking about how
00:00:49 - people in other fields had written about similar topics. I realized I had to read some literary criticism, which is something I was, maybe let's say a little shy of having been an English major as an undergraduate. And not so sure I knew how to read literary criticism, but it just turned out that other people were using memoirs in different ways than I had done, and that the relationship between memoir and sociology was more complex than I had originally thought. I kept on reading memoirs
00:01:29 - a variety of different kinds of memoirs. I had focused when I'd written my earlier book on memoirs about family secrets, but now I had to read more memoirs about growing up in the United States and also from a more diverse group of people. I had previously focused on those who were adolescent children in the post World War II period, and so I started reading, more contemporary memoirs. The basic difference that people often ask about is what's the difference between a memoir and an autobiography?
00:02:09 - and if you put it into AI or chat GBT, this is what they'll tell you, which is that memoirs are about a fragment of somebody's life usually rather than the entire life. And they often focus on a particular incident or a particular experience rather than, from I was born here and I'm, well, I'm still alive, but eventually I'll die over there. so memoirs are more limited, but one of my colleagues really said something very interesting to me, which was, we read memoirs differently for different reasons than we read autobiographies.
00:02:51 - because we're interested in the person, and we might pick up a memoir we may not have know nothing about that individual. In Fact, that's part of the virtue of memoirs, is that they're written by nobodies. But we'll pick up a memoir because we're interested in the experience rather than the individual themselves. I I also think it's important to distinguish between memoirs and the Latin American practice called testimonial, and excuse my English, I have no Spanish in my background, but testimonials are, are usually, pieces of writing about an experience designed
00:03:35 - or bring, bring attention to some kind of, political activity. And memoirs don't have that necessarily. I mean, one of the reasons I think I wanted to write this book was to encourage people, or encourage it least sociologists to think about using memoirs in their research. So there are other people who have used memoirs. I mean, Eric Good wrote about using memoirs as a way to talk about how people who'd had criminal activity could justify their activity and explain it to another generation.

"Exploring the Intersection of Memoir and Sociology: Understanding Personal Narratives and Memory"

00:04:18 - to talk about the experience of the self and how people had understood their self over time. And Arthur Frank, who's a quite well-known sociologist, uses memoirs as a way to think about illness and the kinds of illness narratives people have. But, I, I think memoirs are an important resource available to sociologists, available to historians avail available to anthropologists. I won't limit myself, but as a way to think about, people's experiences
00:05:00 - So I, I previously had always interviewed my subject, people I was writing about, and then I'm part of the process. Of course, I'm part of the process when I'm, analyzing a memoir, but I'm not collecting the data. And also memoirs give us access to p voices we might not otherwise have heard, and a range of people and people in the past who would be impossible to interview. The memoir is there, it's written, it's a piece of work. It's, you can draw from it what you can, but you're unlikely to be able to go back
00:05:42 - Which I was able to do when I conducted interviews. Also, the research, you know, it depends on people's memory, but so does most research, that is if I ask somebody about their past, I'm asking them, what do you remember? What do you wanna tell me? What do you think is most important? And of course, the memoir is going to have the same kinds of issues involved in issues of memory, people remembering or not remembering. I'm doing some research now where I'm reading an interview conducted with somebody
00:06:21 - she lived in a small town and she was the only Jewish child in the town. And I asked her about antisemitism and she said, no, there was no antisemitism. I grew up exactly the same way as everybody else did. Well, had she forgotten, did she not wanna admit it? I mean, these are problems we have when we conduct research about the past, we rely on people's memories of, of the past. And so it's going to be a problem dealing with memoir. The thing about memoir is that people are willing to tell this is what people wanna tell the public. I would hope that readers use it a little bit
00:07:03 - I wrote it for both students and teachers. I hope that students might look at it and say, Hmm, we just were reading a memoir in a class. Why did my teacher assign this? What kinds of questions might I ask that the teacher might not have considered? I hope students might think, gee, I have to do a little bit of a research project. I don't know how to go out and do interviews. I'm shy, but I might be able to find out what other people have said about this issue in their own memoirs. And I hope that, my colleagues will think more about using memoirs and their teaching.
00:07:43 - I wish I'd done more of it when I was teaching, but I don't teach anymore. I'm past that stage of life, either happily or unhappily. That's a different discussion. But I would hope that teachers might think, gee, here's a way for me to get my students over the hurdle of identifying with somebody who's very different from themselves, or identifying with somebody who's very similar than themselves, but the to themselves, but thinking about their issues in a different kind of way. I think not sure where future researchers should go, but I'll say this. I think I have my own limitations

"Exploring the Depths: The Intersection of Memoir and Sociology"

00:08:25 - and I think that there is some work to be done on the relationship between memoir and sociology that I was not able to do in this book. So I hope somebody smarter than me or with a different perception from me or with a different interest than me would think again about what's the relationship between sociology and memoir. I think they're both offer opportunities to understand the social world. I think they both offer opportunities to think about the relationship between people's personal issues and public public issues, personal troubles
00:09:27 - But I, I, I think that there are ways to kind of think about how do we read memoirs? What, what can we get from them? What are their importance to thinking about the social world that I touched the surface of, and what was meant to be and is kind of a guide and somebody else could delve more deeply into it.

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