Researching Personal Narratives at NYPL: Getting Started

As a potential resource, personal narratives are advanced materials; much prior research should be exhausted before a first-person account finds its place in your bibliography. Any applied use of a personal narrative emerges in the research process. For example, in genealogy, if you know your relative was a cop in the 1870s, or the 1970s, you might then pursue not only books about the history of the NYPD, but any memoirs of ex-cops in that date range. How any of it might be applied to researching your subject individual will rely on information collected in prior research, and your intended research goals. The personal narrative might put what was previously just a bare fact into a more meaningful context.

Or another example: you have the names of two historical medical institutions in New York City, and want to get a sense of what the personal experience might have been for patients in different time periods. You have a vague idea of the full name of both institutions, but know that one was a drug rehabilitation center in the 1960s, and the other was located on an island in the East River in the 1880s. Once you determine the precise names of the institutions using local history resources, researching the personal experiences prompts a handful of recommended questions:   

• Has anything been published related to the experiences of patients who spent time in each hospital?
• What form might a "personal narrative" related to these places take?
• If nothing was published, are there alternatives?
• Would an annual report published by the institution, or the city, count as an alternative if it provided enough information about the experience of patients? In the absence of a personal narrative, it might.

Personal narratives are one of the most direct sources of historical research. You might question the reliability and subjectivity of the narrator, but that is a key element in approaching these resources. The writer may be reminiscing, but as a source of research material, personal narratives are not simply records of events, but of experience, the feeling and detail. What novelist Henry James referred to in the title of his unfinished novel as “the sense of the past.” Personal narratives serve the study of history, but are not works of history. At the very time one is living an experience, it isn't history, yet; and if one is remembering something and writing about their experiences of it, is it history? Answerable or not, at least it is “historical” – at some point, everything is, and many things much sooner than later.

Some considerations related to personal narratives as works of history:

Impressionistic. Personal narratives cast a perspective and are influenced by personal emotions. These works are relative and fallible. They often provide a compelling comparison with the contemporary collective memory, in addition to the popular opinions of the times.

Subjectivity. It is the human condition that two people often see the same thing differently, and this variance in perception is often the benefit of a personal narrative. Though reliable as a first-person account, they are unreliable as a factual record. Such issues of reliability invoke the strategy of cross-referencing. Often writers in first-person sound a certain way because they want to sound a certain way about what they want to say they experienced. Keep in mind the subjectivity of the author.

Historiography. Or, the history of "history." Is history simply a list of dated facts? What does it mean? “The past is never dead, it is not even past," said novelist William Faulkner, who often wrote fiction in the voice, style, and persona of a personal narrative. Historiography is the subjective objective of revisiting the past. It demands context, avoids judgment, questions what seems problematic and why, and benefits from exploration of the periphery.

If the availability of personal narratives initially hinges upon the actual existence of a physical text, then the use takes on an extra dimension with an open mind. Adjacent subjects are often worthwhile, and play a role in supporting the crux of your research.

Adapt. If your research revolves around personal accounts, your approach might require a certain amount of elasticity depending on what is and isn't available. For example, maybe you are researching the early Pacific Northwest, but encounter many more accounts of the Southwest and California and very little of northern territories. All in all, they are accounts of “the West”, but in disparate locales. Are there parallels? Is there an iota of relevance? That depends on your subject – if you want details of the flora and fauna, or accounts of indigenous cultures specific to regions, then the work might be a low priority for the bibliography. But if you are studying attitudes of frontier travelers, westward pioneers, etc., the specific locales might not make the biggest difference; and the commonalities may yield more sense in the origin of the personal narrator than in the destination – for instance, the perspective of a colonial easterner, or a transatlantic passenger from Western Europe heading west of the Mississippi River.

Elaborate / Round Out / Supplement. A record of a direct experience might also serve as a source of indirect research. Researching the 1865 Draft Riots in New York City, instead of a personal narrative by a rioter or victim, you find the diary of a Union soldier from New York City, which may not reference the riots, but as a Union draftee, the direct personal experience might serve a corner of your research canvas.  

Open Mind. These resources might seem to inform your research only marginally, as a tangent to the crux of your subject. Personal narratives often operate by intellectual osmosis. Absorb it, take it in, and explore the effect. But as a researcher open the valve, let it in. It's not mysticism, but neither is it Aristotelian logic. These resources take on new life for the researcher with an open mind.

How might a personal narrative inform your research? Three reflections before locating actual sources:

• Individual. What might a personal narrative convey that cannot be found in other sources? What makes it unique?
• Perspective. Does the narrator have an agenda? What is the context of the narrative? For example: the differences between a description by a rioter outside the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, and the recollection of the experience of a Congresswoman inside.
• Time. Bias is often inevitable; total objectivity is nearly inhuman. How, then, might the angle, light, and voice of contemporary views play a part in researching historical subjects?

Depending on your research subject, there are at least 3 considerations in approaching the potential availability of these resources:

• Void. Note that the type of personal narrative you are looking for may not exist.
• Lost. One may have been recorded in some format, at some historical date, but over the generations did not survive.
• Relevance. Maybe a personal narrative exists, but doesn't seem, on the surface, appropriate to your subject.

The chief problem in using these materials for research is finding them in the first place. For example, Kitchen Confidential by NYC culinary swashbuckler Anthony Bourdain, is a well-regarded, action-packed, richly edifying memoir of a young chef breaking into the Manhattan restaurant world in the 1980s and 90s. A researcher of that period in New York City, focusing on any number of subjects, including Mayor Ed Koch-era Manhattan, substance abuse, celebrity chefs, or the trenches of high end gastronomy, should benefit from at least a dip into the rolling boil of this book, even as brief as dunked pasta in the madhouse kitchen of "Gino's" uptown. But unless you knew of the book already, the only subject heading related to "personal narrative" assigned to this title is the generic and inaccurate "Cooks -- United States -- Biography." Kitchen Confidential is an autobiography; and though New York City is a principal character in the personal and professional experiences that constitute the work, the city is not featured in the subject headings. In a bibliographic situation like this, your most effective approach is to employ a targeted keyword search in the catalog, using alternative search terms to cast a wider net.