Creating Lives: An Introduction to Biography

Texts

There will be no full length book assigned for this unit. Instead, I will use shorter texts as models for the students and utilize a variety of strategies listed in the next section. The texts chosen are oral histories, biographies, and various primary sources. Some of the texts are written in first person narrative while others are written in the third person. Some texts cover similar topics to offer "multiple perspectives" and others offer interesting structures that my students might want to model.

Listening is an Act of Love ⁸ is a collection of oral histories gathered by the Storycorp project. Storycorp provides a recording booth in which anyone can bring someone they want to interview. At the end of the interview, you are given a recording of the interview and another recording goes into the Library of Congress. This book offers short excerpts from many of the interviews. It is organized thematically and is appropriate for all levels of readers. What I like about the organization is that students can read different excerpts from a chapter and compare perspectives on a subject such as "work and dedication."

The Foxfire Book ⁹ is one of the most famous examples of a student driven oral history project in the United States. The project is based in the Appalachian mountains and began in 1966. The stories in Foxfire are fascinating. They tell about a system of living that has all but disappeared in the United States and is far removed from the lives of my students today. What I like about the book is the way the stories are structured and written. Students give a brief introduction to each section, often discussing how and why they interviewed that person. Some use a question and answer format while others are more of how-to manuals. What is clear in each chapter is that there is a strong relationship between interviewer and subject. I think it will be important to explore the value and challenges of relationships with one's subject through excerpts of this book.

Temescal Legacies: Narratives of change from a North Oakland neighborhood ¹⁰ is based on a neighboring community to Emeryville. What is unique about the book is the way it is organized and the information that is provided. Each section provides oral histories and historical documents to tell a story. This adds to the concept of multi-layered and varied perspectives that is at the center of this unit.

The Hero Project ¹¹ is a collection of biographies written by two teenage brothers who made a list of their heroes and interviewed them. The brothers interviewed Desmond Tutu, Dolores Huerta, Steve Wosniak, Jackie Chan and several more. They also include how they got each interview and a transcription of it. These will serve as great models for read aloud and think aloud activities.

Our school library also has a large collection of school yearbooks dating back to 1937. These yearbooks include valuable information that can serve as primary sources. The students can use them to learn about the activities, classes, perspectives, and demographics of the students from the past. Also, the yearbooks have been compiled by students, so they reflect student perspectives. From their investigations students can develop hypotheses and questions for their interviews. They might ask about life during a war, social movements, or when they demolished our school and rebuilt it. They may also want to find people in the yearbooks that they can interview now. For example, a student might find someone that wrote for the school newspaper in a yearbook, she can then try to find that alum and ask about his experience as a school journalist and how that impacted his life after Emery. These yearbooks are a crucial piece of written history that will help move students to do oral history.