Exploring Personal History: A Case Study of an Italian Immigrant Woman

This paper is a study of an Italian immigrant woman based oninterviews conducted with my grandmother in 1996. Her testimonyalongside traditional conceptual frameworks shows that interpretingoral history is a work that must be handled with care. Withthis article, I have tried to give validity and context to theuniqueness of the experience of an Italian-American immigrantwoman. I also argue against Virignia Yans-McLaughlin's interpretationof interviews and the basis of her comparative work. FollowingJürgen Habermas's call for self-knowledge in Knowledgeand Human Interests (1968), this paper is a work of personaldiscovery as well as an attempt to liberate and take responsibilityfor the ways in which interpretation of immigrant testimonycan enforce presuppositions and suppress careful and interesteddialogue about gender difference and ethnic diversity.