Thoughts on the Interview Process
From the very beginning of this course, we students read articles about and engaged in discussions about how much of a responsibility it is to represent the life history of another person, to present to an audience as respectfully as possible the intimate narratives someone has entrusted to the interviewer. While I was aware that this would be a responsibility of great magnitude, one that I hoped to approach in a mindful and ethical manner, I did not give it as much thought at the time as I should have. I was too preoccupied with my excitement at being able to explore someone else's life stories with her/him as well as helping to raise awareness about the difficulties of being a small-scale farmer.
Presenting the life stories of Wade to an audience has been the hardest thing about conducting this entire project. Representing another person's life is always a problematic undertaking in anthropology, and the most valuable lesson I learned from this course was how conscientious one has to be when shaping someone else's words into a form that may be widely read. Interviewing Wade opened many doors for me. I assumed that I would be able to relate to Wade's life to a certain degree because of the farming background of my father's family. Although this did aid in my understanding of some of Wade's experiences, I definitely cannot presume to know Wade's experiences myself, especially from mere vicariousness. I have to take his experiences on their own terms, and these experiences of survival and a way of life with which many of us are unfamiliar profoundly moved me.
I am very grateful to Wade for sharing his stories with me, and to him and his family for allowing me into their home and making me feel welcome. Nevertheless, in my own mind there were times I felt the intruder, entering someone else's intimate space and asking him personal questions for a class grade. I only hope that I have presented Wade's story in a manner that honors him, and one that makes others aware of some of the realities of being a small-scale farmer.