During the time when China allowed U.S. parents to adopt girl babies, many Oak Parkers did so. There are now many little Chinese girls about the same age living in this community. Because many parents were concerned with their Chinese children growing up in a place where almost no other Chinese lived, they have hired a tutor to teach these children the language and culture of their birthplace.
Leaving Oak Park
This is the last monthly update. I leave Oak Park on May 15th after 11+ months of fieldwork. I will start quarterly updates with a July-August-September report. I leave here with over 120 hours of videotape, 100 hours of audiotape interviews, hundreds of photographs and several feet of clippings, documents, fieldnotes, etc. At this point the amount of material I collected seems overwhelming. I will be teaching summer school - the trade I made with my dean for a year long leave. The first task is to inventory and order the material into five basic units - an introduction to the community and the project, a "film" about the Housing Center and Oak Park's unique approach to integration and three family "films." In addition, I will produce a "autobiographical/self-portrait" as the final product of the work. This attempt at self-understanding was the original impetus for coming to Oak Park but will be the last thing I do with the material I collected.
The sound track from all interviews will be transcribed - allowing a paper edit of the interviews. Right now I think that the film about the Taylor family - a solidly middle-class African-American family newly arrived in Oak Park will be the first I will tackle. I have the least amount of videotape and the outline of this work is the clearest to me. In addition, Matt Durington, a Ph.D. student of mine who is finishing his dissertation and teaching part-time locally, will assist me in the work. If he has the time, he will become co-director/producer of the piece. Through the lives of the Taylors, I can explore the history of African-Americans in Oak Park and a middle-class African-American family living in the suburbs - a topic much neglected.
My plan is to return
to Oak Park next summer - 2002 - for three months to show partially
completed segments to the people involved to obtain their response
and to gather the pieces that I will discover I missed. I assume
my summers will be spent in Oak Park for sometime in the future.
This work will engage me for the next 4 or more years. My 50th
high school reunion is scheduled for the fall of 2003. I hope
to have completed major pieces of the work by then.
Collaborating
with the "Natives."
As I have noted, one of the real advantages in doing ethnography in a highly educated community within your own culture is the potential for feedback and critical commentary from "natives" who also happen to be colleagues. From the beginning of my stay, I have had the benefit of numerous conversations with Evan McKenzie, a political scientist for the University of Illinois, Chicago and Oak Park resident. Evan is engaged in a study of the role of the schools in Oak Park's attempts to remain integrated. An activist, Evan along with several others, urged the school board to explore the consequences of the "racial" makeup of the elementary schools and its relationship to residential patterns in the various school districts. A Task Force on Diversity resulted. Evan is also a member of the board of directors of the Housing Center, a focus of my research. As a consequence of Evan inviting me to come to a committee of the Housing Center board to outline my observations about the working of the Center and to make some suggestions about needed changes, I found some of the Center staff not receptive to my comments and for a time I found myself in a situation that made me extremely uncomfortable. Fortunately my relationship with the Center was not damaged and I was able to complete my work there. In retrospect, I might have crossed the line between researcher and advocate.
As our conversations
continued, it became clearer and clearer that the information
we were collected was nicely complimentary and added together
produced a most interesting view of the community. In April we
have a joint talk at his university. We then decided to jointly
author a scholarly paper for a periodical like the Journal of
Urban Affairs. At the writing of this update, we are engaged
in discussions with the Village government about accessibility
to certain crucial information that the Village seems reluctant
to make available. As I have never conducted research that had
such potential "real world" implications for public
policy, I am fascinated with this process. Stay turned for an
update.
Extending the Experiment
As readers of these updates are aware, I have tried to expand the way in which I conduct my ethnographic studies with my web pages and these monthly updates. I have circulated several preliminary papers to Oak Parkers for their critical feedback. As I leave the field, I add one additional venture. Robert Trezevant is someone I collected a life history from as part of a piece about his mother-in-law, Helena McCullough, and family. It is because of Bob that I joined a men's group that he has been involved with for over a decade. He was a constant source of information and introduced me to many people that became important to the study including the Taylors who became the subject of one of my "films." In addition, Bob and Katherine, his wife, has become friends with us - myself and my wife, Janis. We have shafred many enjoyable social occasions. The intertwining of the personal and the professional has been amazing and will undoubtedly be the subject of some writing by me.
As anyone who has done fieldwork knows there is no logical end to the research. I could stay here for years collecting more and more useful information and adding greater and greater depth to the ethnography. Reason dictates that I stop now as it will take years to adequately deal with what I have already collected. I have asked Bob to assist me in filling some gaps in my data. I have purchased a Canon mini-dv ZR10 camera for him to use while I am gone. There will be a "diversity" parade on the 4th of July organized by Rebekah Levin, the subject of another family "film." I would love some footage of the event. The "Day in the Village" in June is an incredibly important event for the village. I had just arrived last June when is occurred and I failed to videotape it. For both events, Bob will provide me with coverage.
In addition, I felt
that the history of Oak Park's Gay and Lesbian Community is important
and relatively unique. I was able to interview a few people but
not in depth. In addition, there is no archive of the ephemera
of this community. As a founding member of the Oak Park Area
Lesbian and Gay Association and long time Oak Park resident, Bob
knows many of the historically important figures and events.
He has agreed to gather materials and conduct video interviews.
He is not a trained social scientist and wishes to locate a collaborator
to assist in the writing of this history. Ideally we will find
a bright and eager graduate student interested in producing a
thesis or dissertation about this community. At the very least,
Bob will produce an invaluable archive of research materials.
