This was the first time I have done a project like this to be frank it sort of scares me how much power I have over what Mrs. Persinger told me.  I can use it and edit it in any way I like and then put it here on the internet for the world to see.  One of my greatest fears is that this finished product will not be a representation of Mrs. Persinger.  I have tried my best throughout the process to keep her words unfiltered.

Taking this course has made me aware of how scholars translate the narrations of their subjects.  This course had given me a new vocabulary to use but has torn down the term as 'problematic.'  I find I have fewer ways to explain what I am doing but more and more that I want to say about this project.  Girls dropped the class out of fear of the work load, I stayed because I wanted to create this history.

It was very important to me to do this life history.  Shortly before I began my interviews my maternal grandmother died suddenly.  She was a great source of strength to me and I was just adjusting to her death when I interviewed Mrs. Persinger.  Because of the intimate nature of the interview I felt as though for just few minutes I was able to be with my grandmother again.  In Mrs. Persinger I see my grandmother's strength and power.

One of my friends once told me, when I was marveling that Hollins accepted me while William and Mary rejected me on the same credentials, that "Hollins likes strong women."  My grandmother was such a woman, she lived through World War II, union strikes, the onset of blindness, the death of her husband and oldest daughter.  She also had great adventures and made friends wherever she went. 

"Hollins students are historically advocates of social change.  They create empowerment and no one has a right to be disempowering to us." ~ Kiki Lynskey