ABSTRACT
“The beauty and power of a tale told to an empathetic listener,” writes prominent feminist anthropologist Ruth Behar, “is at the heart of the most meaningful scholarship.” 1 It is also at the heart of my most meaningful teaching. Oral histories, life stories, and testimonios have the power to transform students, and the classroom more generally, into a unique space of empathetic learning, creativity, and personal empowerment. 2 This was my experience working as an oral historian with the El Barrio Popular Education Program in East Harlem, which recorded older Latina women’s life histories as part of an action-research project of educational empowerment. Writing about that project in Women’s Words, I argued that the acts of telling and writing one’s life story were key components to an empowerment process; that the classroom nurtured collective awareness of cultural rights; and that this awareness had the potential to translate into collective claims and action. 3
