The Now Not-So Forgotten Shore

In Hurricane Sandy on New Jersey’s Forgotten Shore, Abigail Perkiss of Kean University, New Jersey, employs oral history to explore how Hurricane Sandy affected New Jersey residents. More specifically, she works to chronicle the emotional effect of the storm, the ensuing clean-up process, and efforts to maintain hope and cultivate community amongst themselves. Cumulatively, her oral histories produce a work that is both striking emotionally (through the heart-wrenching stories of hurricane survivors) and informatively (through the concerning stories of government ill-preparedness). 

Due to its traumatic subject matter, and the interviews given a year to three years after the event itself, Perkiss’s work pushed me to consider how trauma might be handled in an almost “in-between” period between the event and the interview: not directly after the event, similar to an after-action or on the street interview, but also not decades later, when the trauma has been more fully processed and integrated into memory. I was nine years old when Hurricane Sandy happened, and I have vivid memories of watching the news coverage with my parents who had grown up near the shore in New Jersey. I can’t imagine how those faced with the physicality of the event would have reacted only a couple of years afterwards, half having processed it, and half still trying to survive it. I’m curious about where Perkiss and her students carried out the majority of their interviews: Were they in their houses, a community space, etc.? How might the space possibly helped to serve as a memory aid in their interview, especially if it was an emotional/physical reminder of the hurricane? In addition, I was fascinated by the way in which many of the interviewers themselves also happened to be processing the same trauma as their interviewees. Mary Piasecki, one of Perkiss’s students, mentions that conducting the interviews helped her to reframe herself as a survivor of Hurricane Sandy, rather than a victim (94). This project provides a unique lens into a scenario where both interviewer and interviewee often experienced the same traumatic event, and raises questions of how that should be navigated. 

As a specific takeaway for our project, what I found most useful from Perkiss’s work was the inclusion of the various appendices at the end that explore the project interviews, its origins story, and student reflections. As the project was a collaborative effort between Perkiss, her undergraduate students, and various institutional supports, it was markedly reminiscent of our current project. From the blog posts and crash course in oral history, to the fact that her students were broadly trained in oral history while not having an in-depth understanding of specific topics, Staring Out to Sea serves as an effective model of some of the productive moments and pitfalls that come with trying to do an oral history within the confines of an academic setting. One of the challenges that Perkiss mentions caught my eye — that they struggled to find people to interview as many folks were still rebuilding their homes (98). I’m curious as to how that might have affected the demographic of people that they were able to interview (perhaps wealthier, more resourced individuals), as well as the results of the interviews themselves. 

Perkiss, Abigail. Hurricane Sandy on New Jersey’s Forgotten Shore. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2022. 

Questions for the author/discussion: 

• You interviewed people for this project one–three years after Hurricane Sandy, not directly after the action as in a news interview, and not decades down the line after the event had been processed further in memory. How do you see the time frame of your work as impacting its results and the way in which it was carried out? How might you have altered your approach if you were to have begun interviews sooner/later after the event? 
• How do you think that oral history as a methodology was effective in telling this story, and where do you think it falls short? In other words, I’m curious to know what you think oral history can and can’t do well as a methodology.  
• At the end of the book, you lay out a structure and guide to your project, Staring Out to Sea. Looking back, is there anything that you would now add to that oral history plan? Is there any advice that you would share with us knowing our project (history of a Philadelphia cultural institution with a museum employee)? 
• Who did you intend for your audience to be? Did it include the communities affected by Hurricane Sandy? How did you share authority with them?