Oral history connects us when we're too often shouting

A decade ago, when my husband and I brought our now 13-year-old daughter home to Texas we had a clear understanding of our decision to adopt from China. The One Child Policy, enacted in 1992 as a population control measure there, had collided with a long-held cultural preference for boys, leaving thousands of girls abandoned in a country where adoption was little understood.

I encountered this story in 1993, when I read an article written by an adoptive father about bringing his daughter home from China. What I read moved me. I knew that one day I, too, would adopt a daughter from China, that the writer’s story would become my own. The stories we encounter shape our lives, strengthen our sense of ourselves, and build our communities. They change us and they change as we learn more about them. What I have learned since my daughter came home is that parents who live in a government system that controls reproductive decisions can never be understood to “abandon” their children.

Whether my daughter was “relinquished” by her birth parents or ripped from them by family planning officials enforcing a draconian law is the part of the story we still don’t know. That question propels my work collecting, archiving and preserving the stories of adoptees from China. This weekend, when St. Edward’s University hosts the eighth annual Texas Oral History Association conference, I, along with colleagues from Southwestern University and the University of North Texas libraries, will share the voices, essays, photographs and videos from my oral history project, Our China Stories. This ongoing digital storytelling project, launched in 2016 and housed at the Munday Library at St. Edward’s, is my way of both celebrating my daughter’s adoption and atoning for it.

The adoptee voices will comprise just one part of the chorus that will emanate from the conference. Oral historians will present a fascinating range of life stories and experiences highlighting the diversity of Texas. Investigating Central Texas History, a discussion led by Dan K. Utley, lecturer and chief historian at the Center for Texas Public History, will shine light on three Central Texas stories. A project documenting the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Houston, Harris County and Southeast Texas, one exploring segregation of black children in a Latino school district, and another the experiences of Latino firefighters in the Houston Fire Department, are all part of the conference.

Since my work involves listening to young people as they explore their origins and identity, I am excited to hear Life Stories from Seagoville, a project by middle school students who carried out life history interviews with family members, friends and teachers. Melinda Maulucci, Sierra High School’s Oral History Society sponsor, will present Emerging Oral Historians: The Sierra High School Project. The conference will conclude with a keynote presentation by Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas and director of the Voces Oral History Project (formerly the U.S. Latino and Latina World War II Oral History Project), which has videotaped interviews with more than 960 men and women throughout the United States.

The Texas Oral History Association conference is free (if you stay for the luncheon, it’s $10-$15). Those who wish to come listen with us can still register.

Oral history and digital storytelling connect us at a time when we are too often shouting. My world has become bigger with oral history. Yours can, too.

Heath was a journalist for two decades before joining the faculty at St. Edward’s University, where she is an associate dean in the School of Arts and Humanities and associate professor of journalism and digital media. For more information about the Texas Oral History Association conference, contact her at jenaheath@stedwards.edu