They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History (Oxford Oral History Series)

Made famous in the 1976 documentary Harlan County USA, this pocket of Appalachian coal country has been home to generations of miners--and to some of the most bitter labor battles of the 20th century. It has also produced a rich tradition of protest songs and a wealth of fascinating culture and custom that has remained largely undiscovered by outsiders, until now. They Say in Harlan County is not a book about coal miners so much as a dialogue in which more than 150 Harlan County women and men tell the story of their region, from pioneer times through the dramatic strikes of the 1930s and '70s, up to the present. Alessandro Portelli draws on 25 years of original interviews to take readers into the mines and inside the lives of those who work, suffer, and often die in them--from black lung, falling rock, suffocation, or simply from work that can be literally backbreaking. The book is structured as a vivid montage of all these voices--stoic, outraged, grief-stricken, defiant--skillfully interwoven with documents from archives, newspapers, literary works, and the author's own participating and critical voice. Portelli uncovers the whole history and memory of the United States in this one symbolic place, through settlement, civil war, slavery, industrialization, immigration, labor conflict, technological change, migration, strip mining, environmental and social crises, and resistance. And as hot-button issues like mountain-top removal and the use of "clean coal" continue to hit the news, the history of Harlan County--especially as seen through the eyes of those who lived it--is becoming increasingly important. With rare emotional immediacy, gripping narratives, and unforgettable characters, They Say in Harlan County tells the real story of a culture, the resilience of its people, and the human costs of coal mining.

History

Portelli, Alessandro

Americas

Oxford University Press

The Text and the Voice

Columbia University Press

Hard Rain: Bob Dylan, Oral Cultures, and the Meaning of History (The Columbia Oral History Series)

Bob Dylan's iconic 1962 song "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" stands at the crossroads of musical and literary traditions. A visionary warning of impending apocalypse, it sets symbolist imagery within a structure that recalls a centuries-old form. Written at the height of the 1960s folk music revival amid the ferment of political activism, the song strongly resembles--and at the same time reimagines--a traditional European ballad sung from Scotland to Italy, known in the English-speaking world as "Lord Randal." Alessandro Portelli explores the power and resonance of "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," considering the meanings of history and memory in folk cultures and in Dylan's work. He examines how the ballad tradition to which "Lord Randal" belongs shaped Dylan's song and how Dylan drew on oral culture to depict the fears and crises of his own era. Portelli recasts the song as an encounter between Dylan's despairing vision, which questions the meaning and direction of history, and the message of resilience and hope for survival despite history's nightmares found in oral traditions. A wide-ranging work of oral history, Hard Rain weaves together interviews from places as varied as Italy, England, and India with Portelli's autobiographical reflections and critical analysis, speaking to the enduring appeal of Dylan's music. By exploring the motley traditions that shaped Dylan's work, this book casts the distinctiveness and depth of his songwriting in a new light.

Arts & Photography

Music

Battle of Valle Giulia: Oral History and the Art of Dialogue

     History, we are often taught, is driven by vast social, political, and economic forces. But each political event, each war, each clash in the streets or at the picket lines, is experienced by individuals. It is this profound bond between public history and personal struggle, Alessandro Portelli contends, that gives oral history its significance and its power.      In The Battle of Valle Giulia—the title comes from an Italian student protest of the 1960s—Portelli reflects on how to connect personal memories with history, how to fittingly collect and represent the complexity of memory. Crossing cultures, classes, and generations, he records the private and singular experiences of Italian steelworkers and Kentucky coal miners, veterans and refugees of World War II, soldiers who fought in Vietnam, Italian resistance fighters and Nazis, and members of student movements from Berkeley to Rome. By listening to those whom others presume are "without historical memory"—such as youthful protesters, or the rural Tuscan women who saw every father, son, and brother killed by Nazi soldiers—Portelli clarifies the process by which narratives come into being as oral history, and he illustrates the differences and distances between story-telling and history-telling.      Portelli's articulate discussion of dialogue, representation, narrative and genre link historical analysis with literary and linguistic theory and with the concerns of contemporary anthropology.

University of Wisconsin Press

History, we are often taught, is driven by vast social, political, and economic forces. But each political event, each war, each clash in the streets or at the picket lines, is experienced by individuals. It is this profound bond between public history and personal struggle, Alessandro Portelli contends, that gives oral history its significance and its power. In The Battle of Valle Giulia—the title comes from an Italian student protest of the 1960s—Portelli reflects on how to connect personal memories with history, how to fittingly collect and represent the complexity of memory. Crossing cultures, classes, and generations, he records the private and singular experiences of Italian steelworkers and Kentucky coal miners, veterans and refugees of World War II, soldiers who fought in Vietnam, Italian resistance fighters and Nazis, and members of student movements from Berkeley to Rome. By listening to those whom others presume are "without historical memory"—such as youthful protesters, or the rural Tuscan women who saw every father, son, and brother killed by Nazi soldiers—Portelli clarifies the process by which narratives come into being as oral history, and he illustrates the differences and distances between story-telling and history-telling. Portelli's articulate discussion of dialogue, representation, narrative and genre link historical analysis with literary and linguistic theory and with the concerns of contemporary anthropology.

The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History (Suny Series in Oral and Public History) (Suny Oral and Public History)

Portelli offers a new and challenging approach to oral history, with an interdisciplinary and multicultural perspective. Examining cultural conflict and communication between social groups and classes in industrial societies, he identifies the way individuals strive to create memories in order to make sense of their lives, and evaluates the impact of the fieldwork experience on the consciousness of the researcher. By recovering the value of the story-telling experience, Portelli's work makes delightful reading for the specialist and non-specialist alike.

The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History (Suny Oral and Public History)

State University of New York Press

On March 24, 1944, Nazi occupation forces in Rome killed 335 unarmed civilians in retaliation for a partisan attack the day before. Alessandro Portelli has crafted an eloquent, multi-voiced oral history of the massacre, of its background and its aftermath

The Order Has Been Carried Out: History, Memory, and Meaning of a Nazi Massacre in Rome (Palgrave Studies in Oral History)

Europe

PALGRAVE~MACMILLAN

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Books by Portelli, Alessandro

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Portelli, Alessandro. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History (Oxford Oral History Series)

They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History (Oxford Oral History Series)

The Text and the Voice

Hard Rain: Bob Dylan, Oral Cultures, and the Meaning of History (The Columbia Oral History Series)

Hard Rain: Bob Dylan, Oral Cultures, and the Meaning of History (The Columbia Oral History Series)

Battle of Valle Giulia: Oral History and the Art of Dialogue

Battle of Valle Giulia: Oral History and the Art of Dialogue

The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History (Suny Oral and Public History)

The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History (Suny Series in Oral and Public History) (Suny Oral and Public History)

The Order Has Been Carried Out: History, Memory, and Meaning of a Nazi Massacre in Rome (Palgrave Studies in Oral History)