ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the interrelationship of emotions with an oral history approach to family history, from dating to catastrophe, based on both academic literature and interviews for this book. The explanation of salient memory is added to memory types discussed in the previous chapter whether pleasant or painful. Several stories and quotes from interviews conducted for this book serve as examples of sensitively and ethically interviewing those who may tell painful stories inadvertently triggered by salient memories. It also addresses cautionary approaches to listener effects of generations who later access archives and find troubling content, be it a pained voice or family secrets. The chapter starts with a story of hardship in a war-torn regime and ends with its happy resolution, both told by an elderly man tapped by a college of art with students hearing personal oral histories of experiences unfamiliar to them and then illustrating them.
