By: Christiana Best, Ph.D.
May 23, 2025
My journey into oral history began with a sense of quiet desperation—a need to recover what was slipping away. Long before I trained as a researcher, I was a daughter listening to fragments of family stories passed down through generations. These stories, often incomplete, sometimes contradictory, were my inheritance.
The words of Simone Schwarz-Bart —’when an old person dies, a whole library disappears’—felt increasingly urgent as I watched my mother’s memory fade. Diagnosed with dementia at seventy-three, she began to forget the names, places, and relationships that once anchored her world. Her memory loss was not just a medical condition; it was a cultural and emotional unraveling. I realized that her stories, and those of so many others like her, were in danger of being lost if not captured in time.
This realization marked the beginning of my work as an oral historian. What started as a personal project to reclaim my family’s history evolved into a broader mission—a call to document the voices of those whose lives have been lived outside the margins of official record, yet who carry the wisdom, resilience, and cultural memory of entire communities.
My search began with the enigmatic figure of my maternal grandmother, Avis Munro. Despite meticulous inquiries at some of the churches in St. George’s, Grenada—her birthplace—and thorough searches of the island’s registry, no official record of her birth could be found. It was as if she had lived just beyond the grasp of history, held only in memory.
Avis’s life was complicated from the outset. Born out of wedlock, she was relinquished by her mother and later taken in by her estranged father. She spent her formative years in a household where she was never fully accepted, a reality that laid the foundation for a life marked by abandonment, longing, and perseverance.
One of the most telling chapters of her story—passed down through my mother—involves her decision to entrust her infant daughter (my mother) to a friend who worked as a cook in her father’s home. My grandmother left Grenada for Trinidad, pursuing the father of her child and the love of her life, seeking employment, independence, or perhaps simply escaping. She never returned. Five years later, after giving birth to a fifth child under tragic circumstances, she passed away. Her life and death, barely acknowledged by those who should have mourned her, left behind a legacy of pain—but also of endurance.
A Legacy of Orphanhood and Resilience
Her children—my mother among them—were scattered across two countries and families, navigating orphanhood with the resilience that often defines those born into silence. My mother, raised by her informally adopted parent felt like an outsider. She never knew the fullness of her heritage. Still, she remembered enough to pass along glimpses—stories of relatives with memorable nicknames, vivid tales of rural Grenadian life, family sayings, and fragments of folklore.
But over time, those stories faded too. Names were forgotten. Places blurred. The oral threads that bound us to our ancestors began to unravel. It became clear that what had been passed to me was not enough to pass on.
From Personal Loss to Collective Mission
Motivated by the gaps in my own family’s story, I turned to genealogy. But the official records offered little. What I needed—what so many of us need—was not found in archives but in voices. This realization led to the creation of the oral history project — Rising from the Waves: Carriacou’s Stories of Survival and Strength, a growing initiative designed to document, preserve, and honor the stories of Grenadians, with a focus on Kayaks following Hurricane Beryl, especially those who, like Avis, risk being lost to time.
Building an Archive of Belonging
Oral history, I have learned, is not only about the past—it is about creating a sense of belonging for the future. Each story we collect becomes a cornerstone in the house of memory. For me, this practice is a sacred act of reclamation. It is designed to gather not just dates and names but songs, smells, expressions, prayers, and proverbs—the intangible fibers of identity.
As Rising from the Waves: Carriacou’s Stories of Survival and Strength grows, I envision it as both a healing and educational resource: a repository for intergenerational wisdom and cultural survival. And just as my own journey began with Avis, I hope it inspires others to begin with their own forgotten names, whispered lullabies, or half-remembered recipes.
My mother, Pearl Munro, embodies a powerful story of migration, sacrifice, and quiet strength. She arrived in the United States at age 28, in 1969, leaving behind her children to take advantage of a work visa. Although her decision reflected the limitations imposed by immigration policies that valued economic productivity over family unity—what many feminists would call reproductive labor—her journey shaped the trajectory of our family in profound ways.
A devout Christian and active churchgoer, my mother raised generations of children and cared for the elderly for 20 years before transitioning into a 22-year career with New York City’s Human Resources Administration (HRA). She also earned an Associate’s degree, became a homeowner, a landlord, and enjoyed taking cruises with her colleagues and friends.
After retiring at age 70, my mother’s world began to change. Three years into retirement, she was diagnosed with dementia—a condition she has now lived with for ten years. Today, she is bedridden, unable to speak, and fully dependent on her caretakers, medical providers, and me. And yet, even in her silence, she remains a living archive of our family’s hopes, displacements, and resilience. Her story is central to mine—and to the spirit of the Oral History Project — Rising from the Waves.
Conclusion: Keeping the Library Alive
When my mother can no longer remember, I will. When records fail, stories will hold. Oral history has become more than a methodology—it is a form of care, a way to accompany memory when it falters and to hold space for those whose lives have gone unrecorded.
The oral history project, Rising from the Waves, was born from this impulse: to preserve voices like my mother’s and grandmother’s, to ensure that the experiences of women, workers, migrants, and elders are honored not only within our families but in the wider cultural memory of our communities. Every recorded testimony, every recovered narrative, is a step toward cultural justice—toward ensuring that future generations inherit not just names, but stories rich with meaning, struggle, and survival.
By listening with intention, documenting with humility, and sharing with care, we breathe life into the libraries within each person. And through this work, I continue to walk alongside my mother—not just as her daughter and caregiver, but as her witness, her archivist, and her voice.
Note: if you are interested in learning more about the oral history project- Rising from the Waves, contact Dr. Best at: bstwshs153@aol.com
Dr Christiana Best is an Associate Professor at the University of Saint Joseph, Connecticut
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