Inheritance Stories, Volume 2: So Much Together

I was feeling nervous on Saturday, April 3, as I prepared to host a four-hour zoom workshop called Inheritance Stories as part of the Oregon Humanities So Much Together series. It was a balmy spring day, the kind when it feels like color has just returned to the world, and I felt bizarre and cruel stealing four hours of people’s time. Although I’d planned very carefully (with extraordinary guidance from Rozzell Medina, the series creator) and tested my idea on close friends and a class of students, this was the first time I was going to try out my oral history framework on strangers. My plan was to send groups of three people who didn’t know each other at all into zoom breakout rooms to share personal stories. It seemed both beautiful and risky.

The fourteen people who joined that Saturday were attentive and engaged beyond my wildest dreams. My first test of Inheritance Stories led my friends Nancy, Stef and me to make a zine that we’ve been selling (with proceeds donated to LA Chinatown Mutual Aid).

The basic idea is that three people get together and each person takes a turn as the interviewer, the storyteller, and the recorder. When you are the interviewer, you follow a set of questions asking the storyteller to share a recipe they learned from someone in their life, memories of that person, and sensory descriptions of the places where they first encountered the dish. The interviewer doesn’t interject but simply encourages and listens. When you are the storyteller, you take your time answering the questions the interviewer asks. When you are the recorder, you take notes as carefully as you can, trying to capture details and voice. And then everyone switches roles until everyone has played every role.

The stories created during the workshop delight me with their vividness. You’ll notice that these really stem from the questions asked—in that way, they are not always linear, but they do sometimes surface details that I think would go missing if someone told a story the way they always tell it. Sometimes one vivid detail acts like a homing device to reach a distant memory and sensation. I love the way that other people’s particular memories jog my own, even when they take different shapes, and also how my imagination begins using the details they share to erect a structure for their memories to occupy. I hope this will happen for you!