The very best oral histories produced over a span of five years in the capstone course in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at York University have been selected and presented in this unique collection of stories of the lives of ten remarkable people in the region.

From Trinidad, Grenada, St. Lucia, and the Dominican Republic to Colombia, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Mexico, readers come to know individuals whose lives reflect the history and immense changes underway in these countries.

The impact of war and peace, independence struggles, natural disaster, economic upheavals and other forces of change are presented to readers through deeply affecting narratives of a broad range of Latin American and Caribbean people.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, many scholars agree that since there are well developed oral cultures there is value in the use of oral history, especially among the regions' unlettered, poor and marginalised; however, there has also been a gap between the recognition of the virtues of oral sources and using them. This collection provides clear evidence of the value of oral histories and how much we can learn from this kind of testimony.

-- Dr. Michele Johnson, author of "They do as they please": The Jamaican Struggle for Cultural Freedom after Morant Bay [with Brian L. Moore], (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2011).

Pdf version: Changing Lives and Changing Times in the Caribbean and Latin America: Ten Oral Histories