Sometimes the quietest life is more insightful than the most visible.A prison memoir, Malika Oufkir's story opens sweetly, as if her life were a fairy tale in reverse. Personal accounts can also offer comparative views on issues like public transfers of power between high profile individuals as effected in battles and political pacts, or provide an ordinary perception of a period in history, as experienced by the majority of people in the culture. These kinds of sources can bring forth the voices of people whose personal stories have long been ignored. Personal accounts and oral histories allow scholars to delve more deeply into the complexities of human experience. Depending on the political and socioeconomic views of the person asked, the account, published as Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail, is described as brutally honest or full of lies. In Morocco, for example, the government has banned a book that recounts the long imprisonment of a family whose head opposed the reigning king in a coup 20 years ago. Sometimes political considerations silence certain voices. It is important to know what facts they consider significant and which individuals they choose to study. More recently, as scholars write their interpretations of history and biographies of significant players, the nature of history itself is shaped by their choices. In ancient historical periods, court praise singers preserved in oral poetic form the preferred version of succession as a hedge against usurpers.
What we know about the past is what certain individuals have decided should be preserved. They can often provide personal perspectives on historical events and offer insight into the past beyond official or formal sources. The voices of minorities have long been silent, or marginalized at best.
Sample Analysis: Marjorie Shostak, Nisa, a !Kung WomanĪnthropology and other cross-cultural approaches have begun to influence the ways in which history is interpreted and various perspectives are valued. Sample Analysis: Fatima Mernissi, Dreams of Trespass How do personal accounts function in a larger context? What is the motivation for the personal account?ĥ. How does the form of the personal account influence content?ģ. Who is the subject of the personal account?Ģ.
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