Resisting the Trauma Story: Ethical Concerns in the Oral History Archive

This short article presents an oral history project undertaken with refugees resettled in Southwest Virginia. From this project has emerged an understanding of refugees as curators of a personal archive of stories. A birth-to-present oral history approach can resist the reductive trauma narratives refugees are often expected to tell, yet oral historians and archivists must also be aware of the story told by the archive framework itself. The authors explore the ethical challenges of amplifying oral histories from refugees in a way that inspires action without centering the trauma story, and leave readers with questions for reflection.