ORAL HISTORY: MIGRATION AND LOCAL IDENTITIES - Academia

Migration and Narrationin 1991. They have had to create a collective narrative not only for thenext generations, but also for their compatriots „back home” in Latvia,who have had very different life experiences and societal structures.In her latest paper Professor Carpenter takes psychology ProfessorErik Erikson’s concept of generativity (Erikson, 1959; Kotre,1984) „which he describes as the midlife stage of the human life cycleduring which individuals seek to create a legacy that will outlive theself,” (Carpenter, 2007, p. 318) and extends it beyond the individual„to the socially valued work of creative individuals who seek to instillcultural knowledge and values” (Carpenter, 2007, p. 318) in a receptivecommunity, thus helping it to reimagine and recontextualize its story.She calls it cultural generativity. The subject of her paper and a primeexample of memory-theater as cultural generativity is a play on theDP camps in Germany, Eslingena: a Musical, created and performed byémigré professionals and amateurs, both in Toronto and in Riga.In reading her descriptions of the emotions, reactions and reevaluationsseen both in the audience and among the performers of Eslingena,I was struck by the similarity between the events and the behaviorof the participants in our focused discussion groups on exile history atthe cultural immersion camps, called „3x3” 1 , our interviewees in theALA oral history project (Hinkle, 2001, 2005, pp. 122-124), and theparticipants involved in Eslingena. Thus I would like to extend the conceptof cultural generativity to include not only the „socially valuedwork” of „officially” creative individuals, but of everyone, who fostersthe reevaluation and recontextualization of memory and the collective1The camps are called „3x3” to indicate that they are meant for all threegenerations, parents, grandparents and children, and that they cover thebasics in Latvian traditions, history, crafts, etc. under the guidance ofexperts in their fields. In a typical year 10 different daily workshops maybe offered in parallel sessions, each at least 1 ½ hours long, some craftsworkshops lasting the whole day. In any one year some 150-250 peopleparticipate in the Catskills camp. Most come from the East Coast of theUSA or Canada and are repeat campers. Since the language of lecturestyleworkshops is Latvian, most are Latvian-speakers of the middle andespecially the older generation, although increasingly efforts are beingmade to accommodate non-speakers and attract children. Thus campparticipants form a rather homogeneous group of emigre Latvians, whomight live apart, yet form a community of individuals, interested in theirLatvian heritage.56