Within an archive you’re throwing in all this raw material that for generations afterward can be used to make new meanings, to make new words, to have new definitions of certain experiences, certain identities, that if you don't get in there will just be lost forever … Having worked as an oral historian before, for me the most concrete thing that I could see … what mattered most, was for someone to realize that as ordinary as they thought their experience was, as regular they thought their life history has been, say the person was female, the person was low caste, the person has never been asked by their husband or any male in their family, ‘What mattered to you? Why did you remember this?’ … For many of them, for a little American boy to come ask them, ‘What happened to you when you had to leave home?’ ‘How did that feel?’ And to have that second of recognition, and of value for their story in and of itself, as an end, was incredible to experience, and also, the way that they would react was infectious and the way that their daughter would join and start chipping in her own part of the story. And the daughter would ask her own questions, the daughter would ask things she didn't know about her mother, and all of the sudden, you have the whole family there asking grandma about all of these things. And all of the sudden I’m like, outside of the space, I’m still the oral historian sitting back in my chair and watch ing the discussion that has unfolded around grandma, but the idea of an archive I’ve now left behind with this family, that now values asking grandma, maybe a difficult question, maybe about something that's kind of traumatic, but knowing that she has something to share, and has wanted to share for a long time, but nobody has ever asked her….