An Oral History Interview

For this week's blog post, reflect upon your experience interviewing your oral history subject. 

How did you feel about the experience?

I feel like it was a learning experience. It was also very fun. I liked it a lot and think that in the future I would like to do it again. 

Do you think it went well - why or why not? 

I think it went well. We asked all our questions, and more questions. We got all the information we wanted, plus more. 

What do you think you might do differently in future oral history interviews?

I would definitely do it inside, and in a quiet space. That way, you could more clearly understand the audio. You can hear ours, but there's a lot of noise in the background, unfortunately. 

What was interesting about your subject's story? 

Everything! How they moved to Houston, how they met, what they're doing currently, what they've done in the past. Everything was so interesting, and seeing the dynamic between both of them was also really cool. 

Two Different Fates

The story that I listened to on StoryCorps was StoryCorps 442: Hostage. It was about two different hostage stories with different outcomes. The first was about a plane that was hijacked and everyone who was on it died. The son of the pilot and the daughter of the hijacker were the ones being interviewed. The second story was about a junior in high school who had scizophrenia and pretended to have hostages so the police would shoot him. He survived, but was shot in the face. The police officer who tried to talk him down and the guy himself were the ones being interviewed. 

Three follow up questions that I would have asked are:

1) Are you (the police officer) close to the boy? Do you see him regularly?

2) Do you (the son of the pilot) see her (the daughter of the hijacker) regularly? Are you friends with her?

3) Do you (the son of the pilot) feel that the FBI has been doing a better job with mentally ill hijackers since your mother sued them?

I'm Only Human

For your final blog post on Persepolis, you may write about anything else that interested you about the novel that you have not yet had a chance to write about.

One thing that I found interesting was when Marjane would poke her eyes to give the illusion that she was high. She did this because her friends did drugs, but she didn't want to, and yet, she wanted to be accepted. 

I liked this because it shows that even a child who had seen war and whose family was torn apart is still human. She still wants to be accepted by someone, anyone. She needs to be accepted. In fact, Marjane goes to great lengths trying to be accepted throughout the course of the book, including becoming a drug dealer. 

It just goes to illustrate that no matter who you are and what you've been through--you're still only human and we're all doing the best we can with what we have.