My Words Are Gonna Linger: The Art of Personal History [Paperback]

Editor (Author), Paula Stallings Yost (Author, Editor), Pat McNees (Author, Editor), Marion Johnson (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2009

Stories are the most powerful way to pass the experiences, wisdom, and voices of one generation on to the next.
This rich collection of 49 stories from real life celebrates the full range of life story writing, from lighthearted stories and deeply felt reminiscence to eyewitness accounts of history. Gathered or written by members of the Association of Personal Historians, the anthology also explores the importance of life review and why these stories matter so much.

Often the story behind the story is as interesting as the story itself. Back stories and introductory material provide enough practical insights into memoir writing to get you going, whether you are recording your own story or writing someone else's.

The following excerpts provide a glimpse into the anthology's contents.

From Beacons of Light in a Dark Time by Quentin Brown.
Every morning just after seven, Schwester Maria blew into our room and greeted us with a cheery Gut morgen! Raus! Raus! (Good morning! Rise and shine!) Blowing a half-inch strand of yellow hair out of her eye, she would cheerily take everyone's temperature, check our bandages, and fluff our pillows. But she refused to hear any complaints of sickness or pain. Ach! You not sick, you fine! You be good!
With all of her admiration for Herr Hitler and My Hermann, she did her best to make us so-called Luftgangsters as comfortable and happy as possible.

From The Plunge by Sarah White
By the time I was twelve, I carried over 150 pounds on my 5-foot body. Those next years were punctuated with the embarrassing moments of fat people... Shopping in women s departments, where the clothes didn t look like what other young girls wore. Attempts to purchase bathing suits. The pants that split at the thigh or seat at random, public intervals. Then I began the Great Hot Dog Diet. My buddy Sue had read about it in a teen magazine....

From the Preface
The stories in this collection are gathered in three sections; one on why we create personal histories, a second on how we put the pieces together, and a third on the many voices and approaches to life story writing. The background story for each story also sheds light on the process a personal historian experiences helping someone else with their life story.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This anthology sings with Walt Whitman's spirit of democracy, a celebration of our diversity. Each selection is a song of self; some have perfect pitch, some the waver of authenticity. All demonstrate the power of the word to salvage, from the unrush of life, nuggets worth saving.
Tristine Rainer, author, Your Life As Story, Writing the New Autobiography --Personal History Press

At last, a collection that shows the 'why, what, and how' behind memoir as legacy. Spanning more than a century, these intriguing reflections of personal as well as global, social and political history are told in the unique voice and viewpoint of each storyteller.
Susan Wittig Albert, author, Writing from Life; founder, Story Circle Network. --Personal History Press

About the Author

Paula Stallings Yost, Editor
President and Founder of LifeSketches & Heirloom Memoirs Publishing, Paula Yost has helped hundreds of people record their memoirs in book form or as an oral history or transcript. She served as co-editor and contributed her own stories for a Story Circle Network anthology titled What Wildness is This: Women Write About the Southwest, published by the University of Texas Press in 2007.
A popular speaker on the national circuit, Paula also offers informative, compelling workshops. For example, "From Memory to Memoir" covers basic life-writing techniques. "Cooking Up the Memories" centers on creating family history cookbooks. "The Healing Power of Story" is a powerful series of classes about the therapeutic value of journaling and writing life stories.
Paula is an active member and past vice president of the Association of Personal Historians, an international trade organization of professional writers, videographers and oral historians. She also is a member of the Texas Oral Historians Association and serves as editor of the Story Circle Network Book Review Website. Paula's home is east of Dallas, Texas.

Pat McNees, Editor
After graduating with honors from UCLA, and two years' graduate work at Stanford University, Pat McNees began her career as an editor in book publishing for Harper & Row and Fawcett. Then Pat began freelancing as an editor, rewriter and writer of service pieces, personal and humorous essays, profiles, and narrative nonfiction.
In Washington, DC, she edited and rewrote documents of varying lengths and also wrote several thousand executive summaries, developing a special niche: analyzing and summarizing reports and conference discussions. She has written about business, economics, the developing world, women's issues, education, health, medicine, and medical research. Pulling together a book about global public policy, she realized that public health policy was far more compelling to her than other areas and has been writing about medicine and health ever since.
At the Writer's Center in Bethesda, she teaches a workshop on Life Stories and Legacy Writing, a nontraditional workshop of short personal writing designed to help participants capture their personal and family legacy for the next generation.
Her feature articles have appeared in New York Magazine, Parents, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. She has edited four literary anthologies and has written several life stories and organizational histories. Her 2003 book for the National Science Foundation ("New Formulas for America's Workforce: Girls in Science and Engineering") which sold out its first printing in five weeks. A later project had Pat writing stories about patients in research, drawing on her experiences writing a prize-winning history of Building 10, the Clinical Center at the National Institutes of Health. She is now working on a history of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Pat, who has received several awards for her writing, is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, Association of Health Care Journalists, Authors Guild, National Association of Science Writers, PEN, STC, and the Association of Personal Historians. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Personal History Press; First edition (February 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 098201340X
• ISBN-13: 978-0982013403
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #779,544 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book was so inspiring!, May 2, 2009

By 

Linda S. Burhans (Seminole, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Words Are Gonna Linger: The Art of Personal History (Paperback)

I am so glad I read this book. Once I started, I could not put it down. In fact, it touched my heart so that it has inspired me to write a book about my dad. Our history is so important! Get yourself a copy and I promise you too will be inspired!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Celebration of LifeStory, May 21, 2009

By 

Story Circle Book Reviews - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Words Are Gonna Linger: The Art of Personal History (Paperback)

What is a personal history? Paula Stallings Yost and Pat McNees ask, in the preface to their rich, engaging anthology, My Words Are Gonna Linger. A personal history is a story from real life, they say, related in the real, authentic voice of the storyteller. But more than that, personal history is a "vital link between the past, present, and future--a wisdom-keeper" that represents not just the individual spirit, but the spirit of families and communities.

And so it is in this collection. These stories open a window into the pasts of forty-nine individuals, but also into the cultures that shaped them and the families and communities that gave them life. Whether it's a woman's story about the fruit her father grew in Brooklyn, or a man's story about photographing the beaches of Iwo Jima from a submarine, or the oral history of an itinerant longshoreman who "used to be as mean as a snake in mating time" or a maker of wooden toys who "cain't read," all these stories (some illustrated with personal photographs) celebrate lives lived with purpose, sensitivity, and hope through times and in circumstances that were often dauntingly, dangerously difficult.

But in their selection and arrangement of these individual stories, Yost and McNees have created an even more meaningful whole. The stories are presented in three sections. Part One contains stories that illustrate a variety of reasons why stories are told: to explain our ancestry, to celebrate an event, to memorialize a person, to record what the world was like, to communicate the past to the future. Flavia Fernandes' story about her parents' arranged wedding in India, for instance, illustrates all these reasons.

Part Two contains stories that demonstrate some of the methods of creating personal stories that capture the voices and experiences of the narrators: journal excerpts, interviews, audio recordings, project collections (such as the Veterans History Project for the Library of Congress), videotapes, and in reminiscence writing groups. These stories bear a powerful stamp of authenticity. "You want to know about when I met Daddy? Let me tell you," Meta Bejzer begins. "I used to be kind of a rough dude to handle, you know?" says James Jermany. Real people. Real voices. Strong voices.

Part Three--"The Many Faces of Personal History"--contains my favorite story: "Coffin Couture," Sally Steinberg's tribute to her father, the "King of Donuts," a flamboyant dresser who wanted to be buried in his Pucci jacket, "a velvet number in a bold, busy, colorful print." It's a story to be savored, remembered--along with a murder mystery, a recollection of Pearl Harbor Day, and the tale of a cake that saved a college (Abilene Christian College), complete with a recipe.

My Words Are Gonna Linger was very much a collaborative project, envisioned and nurtured by Jeanne Archer, the president of the Association of Personal Historians. In 2006, Archer convened a group of volunteers to get the project moving. Stories were submitted by members of the APH, and reviewed and selected by Archer and others, then edited by Paula Yost, who also worked with the graphic artist on book design. Pat McNees served as project manager and assisted with editing.

If you're a fan (as I am) of stories rooted in real life, you will very much enjoy this book. It would also make a delightful gift for the storytellers in your family--and might even give them a few valuable ideas (and some important motivation) for telling their own stories. And if you're a teacher of memoir, reminiscence, or personal history, it would make an excellent addition to your classroom teaching or to your students' reading list. Imaginatively conceived, thoughtfully arranged, and professionally edited and presented, My Words Are Gonna Linger: The Art of Personal History will be a source of pleasure, information, and instruction.

by Susan Wittig Albert
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling Reading, August 28, 2009

By 

Libby J. Atwater "Biographer" (Southern California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Words Are Gonna Linger: The Art of Personal History (Paperback)

"Once I began reading 'My Words Are Gonna Linger: The Art of Personal History,' I could not stop reading," said retired nurse Willa B. DeLay, my former personal history client and friend.

Willa is a woman who recognizes the value of telling one's story. She asked me to help write her life story in 1998, thinking she was nearing life's end. Two years ago we published an updated version of her book, "Still Serving," because this nonagenarian continues to be involved.

Like Willa, I found "My Words Are Gonna Linger" to be a compelling read, filled with true stories that made me laugh, cry, and see life through others' eyes. This well-edited anthology confirms the need we have to tell our stories, while the tales help us better understand our humanity.