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Redemptive Memory: Women Activists and the Search for Justice
This powerful last work by pioneering oral historian Fran Leeper Buss examines how painful memories of traumatic experiences can be transformed into positive action for social good. In her more than 40 years gathering the life stories of working-class women, Buss found commonalities in the ways in which her subjects faced structural inequalities of race, class, and gender, as well as sufferings caused by poverty, child abuse, gun violence and war. Some of these women subsequently went on to become participants and leaders in a variety of movements for social change. In this wide-ranging book, Buss shows how her subjects employed storytelling, art, spirituality and other methods to create sense and meaning from traumatic memories and then make positive contributions to movements for labor rights, sanctuary for Central American refugees, gun violence prevention, peace, and other causes. Buss also relates her own story of medical malpractice and disability and discusses the work of historical and contemporary thinkers on the concepts underlying her ideas. She provides unique and original insights into how women who have endured great trauma are able to redeem their memories through communal action for a better world.
220 pages, Hardcover
Published November 12, 2024
About the author
Fran Leeper Buss
8 books3 followersFran Leeper Buss was an American oral historian, ordained minister, author, teacher, social worker, photographer, and feminist. She dedicated her career to documenting the lives of marginalized women in the United States through oral history.
Born Francis Barker in Manchester, Iowa, she spent much of her childhood in Dubuque. She earned a teaching degree from the University of Iowa in 1964, a Master of Divinity from the Iliff School of Theology, and a Ph.D. in 20th-century American history from the University of Arizona in 1995.
In 1971, she co-founded the Women's Crisis and Information Center in Fort Collins, Colorado. She later served as a minister alongside her husband, David Buss, in the Campus/Community Ministry in Las Vegas, New Mexico, where she was ordained in 1976. She also taught women's studies at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, and the University of Arizona.
Buss spent over four decades collecting the stories of women facing economic and social struggles. Her first oral history project was with Jesusita Aragon, a traditional midwife, whose life story she published as La Partera: Story of a Midwife (1980). She continued her work by traveling across the country, documenting the lives of lower-income women, leading to books such as Dignity: Lower Income Women Tell of Their Lives and Struggles (1985), Forged under the Sun: The Life of Maria Elena Lucas (1993), and Moisture of the Earth: Mary Robinson, Civil Rights and Textile Union Activist (2009).
In 1991, she published the young adult novel Journey of the Sparrows, which depicts the experiences of undocumented Latin American migrants in the U.S. The book has been translated into multiple languages, adapted into a play, and won the Jane Addams Children's Book Award in 1992.
Later in her career, she reflected on her decades of oral history work in Memory, Meaning, and Resistance: Reflecting on Oral History and Women at the Margins (2017). The original transcripts of her interviews, along with her research materials, are housed at Harvard University’s Schlesinger Library.
Buss received the first annual Catherine Prelinger Prize in 1998 for her contributions to women's history and was recognized by the American Library Association in 2018 for her academic work.
Born Francis Barker in Manchester, Iowa, she spent much of her childhood in Dubuque. She earned a teaching degree from the University of Iowa in 1964, a Master of Divinity from the Iliff School of Theology, and a Ph.D. in 20th-century American history from the University of Arizona in 1995.
In 1971, she co-founded the Women's Crisis and Information Center in Fort Collins, Colorado. She later served as a minister alongside her husband, David Buss, in the Campus/Community Ministry in Las Vegas, New Mexico, where she was ordained in 1976. She also taught women's studies at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, and the University of Arizona.
Buss spent over four decades collecting the stories of women facing economic and social struggles. Her first oral history project was with Jesusita Aragon, a traditional midwife, whose life story she published as La Partera: Story of a Midwife (1980). She continued her work by traveling across the country, documenting the lives of lower-income women, leading to books such as Dignity: Lower Income Women Tell of Their Lives and Struggles (1985), Forged under the Sun: The Life of Maria Elena Lucas (1993), and Moisture of the Earth: Mary Robinson, Civil Rights and Textile Union Activist (2009).
In 1991, she published the young adult novel Journey of the Sparrows, which depicts the experiences of undocumented Latin American migrants in the U.S. The book has been translated into multiple languages, adapted into a play, and won the Jane Addams Children's Book Award in 1992.
Later in her career, she reflected on her decades of oral history work in Memory, Meaning, and Resistance: Reflecting on Oral History and Women at the Margins (2017). The original transcripts of her interviews, along with her research materials, are housed at Harvard University’s Schlesinger Library.
Buss received the first annual Catherine Prelinger Prize in 1998 for her contributions to women's history and was recognized by the American Library Association in 2018 for her academic work.
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