Abstract

Speak, Memory

The article focuses on the book The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History, by Alessandro Portelli. Although the title may suggest a new short-story collection, perhaps in the based-upon-real-life mystery genre, Alessandro Portelli's pioneering and spirited defense of oral history and its methods, The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories, represents detective work of another kind. In thirteen wide-ranging essays that examine oral history's practices and theories, Portelli's study illuminates and elaborates on his overarching claim that while "historical work using oral sources is unfinished because of the nature of the sources," "historical work excluding oral sources is incomplete by definition." This book is an ambitious and at times brilliantly original undertaking, one addressed to and deserving of a broad interdisciplinary audience.