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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

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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The motivation for this book came from my editor.

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Um, I had recently written a book using memoirs

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as the basis for the research.

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It was called Keeping Family Secrets.

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And to write that book, I had read hundreds, many, many,

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many memoirs, and I was kind of at a loss for

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what I was going to do next.

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Then I asked my editor, well, what do you think I should do?

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And she said, well, why don't you write a guide

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to using memoirs?

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It'll be useful. And I thought that was a good idea.

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Um, as most projects, it turned out

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to be more complicated than a simple guide,

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but it, that got me started.

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What happened was, as I started reading, thinking about how

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to use memoirs as a sociologist, I realized that,

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people in other fields had written about similar topics.

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I realized I had to read some literary criticism,

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which is something I was,

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maybe let's say a little shy of having been an English major

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as an undergraduate.

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And not so sure I knew how to read literary criticism,

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but it just turned out

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that other people were using memoirs in different ways than

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I had done, and that the relationship between memoir

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and sociology was more complex than

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I had originally thought.

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I kept on reading memoirs

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and I kept on reading memoirs in a variety of different,

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a variety of different kinds of memoirs.

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I had focused when I'd written my earlier book on

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memoirs about family secrets,

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but now I had

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to read more memoirs about growing up in the United States

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and also from a more diverse group of people.

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Um, I had previously focused on those who were

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adolescent children in the post World War II period,

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and so I started reading, more contemporary memoirs.

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The basic difference

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that people often ask about is what's the difference

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between a memoir and an autobiography?

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So, I think one answer is,

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and if you put it into AI

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or chat GBT, this is what they'll tell you, which is

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that memoirs are about a fragment

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of somebody's life usually rather than the entire life.

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And they often focus on a particular incident

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or a particular experience rather than,

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

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but eventually I'll die over there.

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Um, so memoirs are more limited,

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but one of my colleagues really said something very

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interesting to me, which was, we read memoirs differently

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for different reasons than we read autobiographies.

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So we read an autobiography

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because we're interested in the person,

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and we might pick up a memoir we may not have know nothing

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about that individual. In

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Fact, that's part of the virtue of memoirs, is

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that they're written by nobodies.

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But we'll pick up a memoir

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because we're interested in the experience rather than the

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individual themselves.

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I I also think it's important to distinguish between memoirs

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and the Latin American practice called testimonial,

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and excuse my English, I have no Spanish in my background,

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but testimonials are, are usually,

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pieces of writing about an experience designed

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to bring attention to oppression

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or bring, bring attention to some kind of,

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political activity.

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And memoirs don't have that necessarily.

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I mean, one of the reasons I think I wanted

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to write this book was to encourage people,

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or encourage it least sociologists

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to think about using memoirs in their research.

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So there are other people who have used memoirs.

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I mean, Eric Good wrote about using memoirs as a way to

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talk about how people who'd had

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criminal activity could justify their activity

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and explain it to another generation.

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Um, a historian, another sociologist used memoirs

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to talk about the experience of the self

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and how people had understood their self over time.

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And Arthur Frank, who's a quite well-known sociologist,

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uses memoirs as a way to think about illness

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and the kinds of illness narratives people have.

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But, I, I think memoirs are an important

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resource available to sociologists, available

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to historians avail available to anthropologists.

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I won't limit myself,

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but as a way to think about, people's experiences

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without the intermediary of the researcher.

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So I, I previously had always interviewed my subject,

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people I was writing about,

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and then I'm part of the process.

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Of course, I'm part of the process when I'm,

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analyzing a memoir, but I'm not collecting the data.

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And also memoirs give us access to p voices we might not

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otherwise have heard, and a range of people

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and people in the past who would be impossible to interview.

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The memoir is there, it's written, it's a piece of work.

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It's, you can draw from it what you can,

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but you're unlikely to be able to go back

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and say, Hmm, can you explain more fully what you meant?

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Which I was able to do when I conducted interviews.

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Also, the research, you know,

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it depends on people's memory,

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but so does most research, that is

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if I ask somebody about their past, I'm asking them,

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what do you remember?

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What do you wanna tell me?

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What do you think is most important?

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And of course, the memoir is going to have the same kinds

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of issues involved in issues of memory, people remembering

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or not remembering.

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I'm doing some research now

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where I'm reading an interview conducted with somebody

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who was asked about, she was the only,

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she lived in a small town

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and she was the only Jewish child in the town.

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And I asked her about antisemitism

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and she said, no, there was no antisemitism.

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I grew up exactly the same way as everybody else did.

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Well, had she forgotten, did she not wanna admit it?

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I mean, these are problems we have when we conduct research

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about the past, we rely on people's memories

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of, of the past.

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And so it's going to be a problem dealing with memoir.

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The thing about memoir is that people are willing

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to tell this is what people wanna tell the public.

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I would hope that readers use it a little bit

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to clarify their own thinking.

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Um, I wrote it for both students and teachers.

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I hope that students might look at it

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and say, Hmm, we just were reading a memoir in a class.

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Why did my teacher assign this?

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What kinds of questions might I ask

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that the teacher might not have considered?

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Um, I hope students might think, gee, I have

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to do a little bit of a research project.

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I don't know how to go out and do interviews.

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I'm shy, but I might be able to find out

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what other people have said about this issue in

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their own memoirs.

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And I hope that,

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my colleagues will think more about using

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memoirs and their teaching.

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I think it's a wonderful teaching tool.

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I wish I'd done more of it when I was teaching,

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but I don't teach anymore.

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I'm past that stage of life, either happily or unhappily.

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That's a different discussion.

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But I would hope that teachers might think, gee,

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here's a way for me to get my students over the hurdle

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of identifying with somebody who's very different from

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themselves, or identifying with somebody who's very similar

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than themselves, but the to themselves,

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but thinking about their issues in a different kind of way.

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I think not sure

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where future researchers should go, but I'll say this.

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Um, I think I have my own limitations

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as a theoretical thinker,

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and I think that there is some work to be done

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on the relationship between memoir

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and sociology that I was not able to do in this book.

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So I hope somebody smarter than me

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or with a different perception from me

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or with a different interest than me would think again about

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what's the relationship between sociology and memoir.

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I think they're both offer opportunities

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to understand the social world.

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I think they both offer opportunities

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to think about the relationship between people's

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personal issues and public public issues, personal troubles

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and public issues to use the formulation by Searight Mills.

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But I, I, I think that there are ways to kind of think about

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how do we read memoirs?

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What, what can we get from them?

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What are their importance to thinking about the social world

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that I touched the surface of, and what was meant to be

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and is kind of a guide

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and somebody else could delve more deeply into it.

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