"Listening for the Story"

Yesterday I started reading Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot's book, The Third Chapter. In her introduction, the author shares her process for interviewing people for the book. She notes that she employed Eudora Welty's approach of "listening for the story": for its shape, intensity, rhythm, and texture; for its substance and content; for its metaphors and symbolism, for the light and shadows."

I loved how Lawrence-Lightfoot described her many roles: "I was the discerning connoisseur, developing a taste for the shape of their sentences, the cadence of their language, the arc of their stories. I was the artist, painting the landscape, drawing their portraits, sketching in the light and shadows. I was the spider woman, weaving together their life remnants, unsnarling the tangled threads of their stories, casting a net to catch them if they should fall. I was the probing researcher, patiently gathering data, asking the impertinent questions, examining their interpretations with skepticism and deliberation."

The author goes on to say that she "felt deeply engaged in new learning" while hearing the narratives of her interviewees, "echoing and reflecting the curiosity, vulnerability, risk-taking, and passion of their journeys in my own. I looked into their eyes and saw my reflection, the refracted images of my face in the mirror: a sixty-two-year-old woman with 'confessional moments' of my own."

I've conducted hundreds of interviews over the years and have often felt that I was "facing a mirror" as I heard people's stories. But I've never read such a beautiful description of the process. Thank you, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot!

###

"Listening for the Story"