Narrating our Pasts: The Social Construction of Oral History (Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture)

Elizabeth Tonkin looks at how oral histories are constructed and how they should be interpreted. Her study is illustrated through a wide range of examples of memory, narration, and oral tradition, including many from Europe and the Americas, and with a particular focus on oral histories from the Jlao Kru of Liberia, with whom the author has carried out extensive research. She also draws on and integrates the insights of a range of disciplines, such as literary criticism, linguistics, history, psychology, and communication and cultural studies.