Post by nzbc on Jun 24, 2016 20:43:16 GMT 12
Introduction
While other ethnic groups might consider written family documents as containing mostly true information Chinese Americans do not always have that luxury if their ancestors came during the Exclusion Act of 1882, which was renewed and expanded until 1943. The Exclusion Act limited immigration to scholars and merchants and denied entry to laborers. Many Chinese immigrants during this period entered the United States as paper sons. This is the reason it is important to interview any living relative, friend of the family, neighbors or business partners, or villagers in the old country, while you can.
Because of the Exclusion Act, immigration raids, McCarthy period, reverberations of the amnesty programs, which sometimes resulted in the outing of relatives to gain legality, many Chinese are reluctant to talk about family history. Fears about deportation were real and bone deep. In addition, interviews might remind our elders of interrogation to enter this country, passing citizenship tests, and answering to various officials involved in the many stepped processes of getting to these shores. The Chinese do not have a storytelling oral tradition. Genealogy in China is about tracing male ancestors through generations in the family book. Hierarchical, patriarchal, authoritarian, and class strains in the traditional Chinese culture may also leave individual elders feeling that their story is not important, or that bringing attention to oneself is not becoming. All of these factors could contribute to reluctance to talk or be interviewed.
The following are tips that may help you to gain accurate family history information from interviews.
A. Getting Accurate Information
1. If you are lucky enough to have living elders and have started conversations with them about your family history, ask if you can record the conversations so that you can get the details accurately. Getting facts as accurate as possible is important, especially when you get into the details of the family tree. Recordings or videotapes of the conversations, whether they are genealogical details or family stories, allow you to maintain accuracy as well as flavor and capture the voice of the person. You may incorporate recordings or videos into various end products, such as slide shows for reunions and important events.
a. Never record without knowledge of the person you are interviewing.
b. Use digital equipment.
Instead, you may wish to have an informal session and just take written notes. It is up to each interviewer to decide which method to use and what end products may come out of the interview
2. If you are recording, label each recording immediately with the date, location, narrator (person being interviewed), and general topic. Make a copy immediately. Make another copy and send it off-site (perhaps to another family member). Summarize the interview soon after so that you have important information easily accessible. Do this while the interview is fresh in case there are words that are inaudible.
3. Consider the following additional steps if you begin to do more lengthy interviews and interview more individuals. Processing the interviews will help to make the information accessible; as well as helping you to see where you might pursue further questions.
a. Make a log, tracking the processing of each interview.
b. Make a log of the contents within each interview, for example, at 10-minute intervals, so that you can find information easily.
c. Get a signed permission form from each person you are interviewing to use the interview.
d. Transcribe the interview, writing it out word for word, with the help of free software.
4. For Chinese immigrating to the United States as paper sons, official written documents will likely have false information. Processing the interview becomes important when you have documents such as, immigration interrogation transcripts obtained at NARA. You will want to go back and forth between documents and family members to sort out the veracity of each bit of information.
B. Interviewing Those Reluctant to Talk
There have been no known repercussions for paper sons due to the Amnesty Program. Nevertheless, habits are difficult to change. It will take patience to establish trust.
1. It might help to start with general family information and to focus on the factual. You may verify information in documents you have obtained in your search, which can be a major task if there were paper sons involved. Another tactic is to build the family tree, a concept, which will be familiar and recognized as important by your relative. Starting with these, and recording the conversations will help get you and your relative comfortable with being recorded. This might allow for an easier transition to getting the life story of the person being interviewed. However, if you have a family member who likes to talk and tell stories, it might be better to start with the stories and then transition into getting the factual information.
2. Be aware of who you are in the context of the family and possible implications for your interview. Even though the elders have become acculturated, some of the old ways are still present. They may talk more to a first son than to a daughter. They may answer differently if you are from the second wife’s branch rather than from the first. Was there a break in family relations due to personal or business reasons and are you a descendent of the “wrong” side of the family?
a. Bring a little gift of fruit, etc.
b. Follow up with expressions of appreciation
c. Make them a copy of the interview
d. You may not always be the best person to do the interview. Gather a team of other relatives who can help you.
3. Showing knowledge of what the elders went through may help to establish that trust. Become familiar with the history of their times.
4. Be prepared and neutral about sensitive issues such as opium use, suicide, second wives and families, breaking the law in various ways, “shady” occupations of early immigrants, starvation and poverty, collaborating with the enemy, racism, favoritism, etc. Let the elders know that you have a historical and non-judgmental view.
5. A permission form may be used to stipulate conditions of how the information may be shared. Discuss options about what the interview will cover and if there is something they wish to skip.
6. Sometimes just putting the recorder on the table and saying that they can stop the interview at any time or ask for it to be erased is enough to let you start recording and to give them time to become accustomed to being recorded.
7. Emphasize positive goals that future generations will know of the difficulties they have overcome and that their grandchildren will know who they are. There may be hesitation to relive difficult pasts. However, it may be cathartic. It is good to tell another soul.
8. Interview someone who is willing, even if they are less important in your family tree. Use this as a model so that others will know that they will be treated well.
C. Questioning Your Relatives
1. By using life stage outlines and questions found in such common sources as grandparent books as well as oral history sites, you will get much of the information you want. You do not have to worry about specific questions because these general questions will elicit specific answers about your family. For example, “What type of holidays did you celebrate?” might elicit a description of Chinese New Year and other typical Chinese holidays. Going through a person’s life stages chronologically will cover information fairly thoroughly. The reason you do not want to worry about specific questions at this early stage is that you want to be able to hear what your narrator is telling you and to follow their telling of their experience. You can look at your summary for holes in your information, and follow up to ask about specifics and for clarification.
2. Reading the history of Chinese in America and China will help you to ask good follow-up questions in this process. If your mother tells you that her father left for the United States in the year XXXX, you may want to follow up in a later interview to ask if many of the people in the village had left for other parts, who was left in the village, and how that affected village life. You might ask if previous sojourners had sent money home to invest in public projects in the village and nearby areas. You might ask how many times her father was able to return, etc.
3. Look for themes to develop out of your relative’s responses. Developing these will give you a more interesting story or set of information. Some possible themes: separation from family, hardships of the times, help from family, being the first to...
4. The Exclusion Act, and other immigration restrictions, the paper sons phenomenon and other ways of circumventing the Exclusion Act, the immigration raids and amnesty programs, the McCarthy period, a resulting geographic, demographic and occupational profile, sojourners and transnationalism, etc. all have impacted the Chinese American experience. Questions about how these affected your family history seem obvious if your family immigration story starts before 1965.
Refer to the section on Chinese American immigration timelines and other timelines pertinent to the Chinese immigration experience. Refer to those time periods that encompass your relative’s life experiences, as these would affect his or her interpretation of these milestones. By the same token, your relative’s experiences in the United States might have been influenced by historical and cultural events here and around the world.
Consider donating a copy of your interview(s) to the Angel Island Immigrant Voices Project. aiisf.org/immigrant-voices info@aiisf.org
Oral History Interview Techniques:
Baylor University: www.baylor.edu/oralhistory/index.php?id=23566
Check out the interview outline and questions sections in the body under Introduction to oral History. Includes list of family interview questions.
Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage: www.folklife.si.edu/education_exhibits/resources/guide/introduction.aspx
Check out the topics on the left side of the screen in the green. This site includes list of family interview questions.
Oral History Association: www.oralhistory.org/do-oral-history/principles-and-practices
This site includes guidelines for conducting oral interviews; has an outline of topics for Oral interviews.
UCLA Center for Oral History Research: oralhistory.library.ucla.edu/
This website has a complete listing of the offerings at this Center. The “Family History Sample Outline” under resources is very pertinent to researchers getting started with family interviews.
Additional Tips:
Preserving Personal and Family Histories by Lynne Choy Uyeda - February 2014 CFHGSC Meeting
Helpful tips and handouts to aid in gathering family history information.
www.chinesefamilyhistory.org/oral-history-interview-techniques.html