AMEWS members have long discussed the need to collect materials and memories of the organization’s early years for a historical narrative that would reflect the views and experiences of its diverse membership. Newsletters, committee meeting minutes, conference programs, and photographs collected and compiled over many years would be supplemented with oral histories that would capture members’ memories of its early and later years. Accordingly, in 2018, the AMEWS website posted the following announcement: “AMEWS has just launched a project to document its history from its early days to the present. To that end, we will be collecting and posting online statements from old and new members. Oral history is a way of telling history that is diverse and multilayered. The statements will be eclectic and varied and will we hope contribute to the wider history project.” It soon became clear that major questions needed to be asked. Who designed the questions? Who selected the interviewees and interviewers? How were the interviews structured? How would they be integrated into the wider history project? Oral histories, because of new technologies, have become easier than ever to record, preserve, transcribe, and share. Method, interpretation, and analysis however require renewed attention. This paper will discuss these complex issues and will contribute to our understanding of the uses and misuses of oral history.

In this paper I raise epistemological, methodological, and moral questions. The quest is to demonstrate how contrasting self-identifications noted in the process of collecting oral histories can profoundly affect the outcome of the research. For example, can a white Western feminist who is collecting the oral histories of Sudanese women (which I have done for over 50 years) be considered by her interlocutor in the same way that she self-identifies--as a leftist feminist from a working-class background, and a racially enlightened women’s rights activist when she may, in fact, represent so many other categories to the woman she is interviewing? In my case, the Sudanese oral history interviewee may see me only as a white, Western, privileged symbol of colonialism. I have been exploring if this matters, and if it does, is there anything I can do about it? One challenge is to question if we should try to create a different persona, that is, set up an artificial arena for the purpose of encouraging and more closely identifying with the narrator? If we are committed to a particular standpoint, and are engaged in praxis, is it authentic or moral to be other than ourselves? Many feminist oral historians may see a contradiction in a process whereby the oral historian builds an artificial setting of like personas, whereby the women whose oral history is being collected is encouraged to become the narrator of her own life, in contrast to the much-heralded feminist methodology of the facilitator building an interactional process. For me, in the Sudanese context, I ask if/when there are class differences and/or racial differences, or when the oral historian represents the colonizer and the narrator the colonized, can the scene, which is already artificially-constructed by the oral historian, lead to anything of value to Sudanese, considering that Sudan is a country rife with conflicts—ethnic, class, regional, race—and where some Sudanese are trying in many ways to decolonize? Is it possible for a feminist oral historian to contribute to that process of decolonializing? This topic should be of great concern to the twenty-first century western feminist oral historian as we sort out accountability, honesty, and not only the value of our research, but if we are only taking and not giving.

Marie Assaad (1922-2018) was a prominent social worker, an advocate for women’s rights, an environmentalist, and most importantly, an inspiration to generations of women. Within the framework of an oral history archive of Egyptian women established by the Women and Memory Forum, she recounted her life story as a journey towards freedom and resistance to injustice and discrimination. Her story is punctuated with insights on how she overcame obstacles, how she was affected by particular forms of injustice, and how she succeeded in transforming her anger and frustration into positive actions. In a memorial held in her honour, her dissenting voice was recognized and celebrated. Narrating/representing memories of dissent is potentially a powerful act of subversion and resistance, particularly during times of turmoil and conflict. At the same time, oral historians as mediators and interpreters of memory are confronted with ethical challenges regarding their role in the construction of personal and cultural memory. In this paper, I will engage with Marie Assaad’s personal memory as a political memory and argue that the ethics of representation is a political question rather than a moral question.