For generations the engaging and important stories of lesbian, gay and transgendered women and men were not shared publicly in newspaper articles, magazines or the history books.
As part of the Royal City Pride Festival, the New Westminster Public Library is holding a free lecture on the relatively new Archives of Lesbian Oral Testimony — housed at Simon Fraser University — which aim to bring the long hidden stories of lesbians to light.
“I will be talking about why oral history is important and why in particular it is important to LGBT people,” said SFU archivist Nailisa Tanner, who will be presenting the lecture.
“LGBT people and lesbians especially, they have a really rich and fascinating history and their voices have often been excluded from official historical documents. For example, you can’t find any census information from 50 years ago about what lesbians were up to,” she said.
The project just got underway last October. So far, there are five collections of stories and many more left to be digitized. There are at least 100 cassettes tapes, 10 to 20 VHS tapes and many video clips still to be converted.
“The collection is growing all the time,” Tanner said.
Stories come from research projects and community groups, but also from individuals who took it upon themselves to interview lesbian, gay or transgendered relatives or friends at some point and now want to add those stories to the collection.
Tanner said the great thing about oral histories is anyone can be a part of collecting them for posterity. All it takes is a cellphone, computer or tablet with a voice recorder.
“You don’t have to be an academic,” she said. “You can go out and talk to a queer elder in your life or just talk to your grandma with a tape recorder.”
Tanner said having the story collections not only helps fill in important gaps of history, but also creates continuity between generations.
“By archiving the stories of older queer people we can sort of facilitate intergenerational dialogue and connections between younger and older queer people,” she said.
One of Tanner’s favourite collections includes stories about “butch and fem” relationships in Toronto in the 1950s and 1960s, before civil rights.
“There were these really strict social codes about how you kind of projected what your sexual identity was in order to evade the notice of the police, but make other queer people notice you,” she said.
In addition to talking about the collections, Tanner will be showing video clips and giving tips on how people can get started collecting stories of their own.
The seminar will be held at the Main Library at 716 6th Ave., on Monday, Aug. 11 at 7:00 p.m. Registration is suggested, phone 604-527-4667.
To view the archived collection, go to alotarchives.org.
