Highlights from the Monterey County LGBTQ History Collection

Oral Histories

In the introduction to their book exploring the practice of queer oral history, Nan Alamilla Boyd and Horacio N. Roque Ramirez argue that queer history methods include the “creation of new materials, new sources and new records,” often due to the silences in mainstream archives about LGBTQ people and communities. [1] This is even the case in LGBTQ archives themselves, particularly for marginalized communities. Oral history is one important way to capture such lived experiences, enhancing and expanding the limits of the archival record. And, narrators can share their own experiences in their own way, and on their own terms.

Because of the power of oral history to enhance an understanding of local LGBTQ history, this collection also includes numerous interviews, most collected by students in a CSU Monterey Bay Oral History and Community Memory service learning course offered by Kristen LaFollette through the Department of Humanities and Communication. Below is a sample of some of these interviews, designed to enhance the archival materials showcased in this exhibit. For those who are interested, there are several more selections of interviews available on the Monterey County LGBTQ History Project oral history Digital Commons site. More will be added as they are transcribed and edited.

Image source

Pride 1998 Organizing Committee, The Paper, Volume 5, Number 1, May-June, 1998. Monterey County LGBTQ History Collection, Archives and Special Collection, California State University Monterey Bay, https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/thepaper/20/.

Reference

[1] Nan Alamilla Boyd and Horacio N. Roque Ramirez, Bodies of Evidence: The Practice of Queer Oral History. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 5.