Essential Questions: How to Uncover Family Stories with Dr. Elizabeth Keating
Dr. Elizabeth Keating, Professor of Anthropology at
the University of Texas at Austin.
Meet Dr. Elizabeth Keating, an anthropology professor at UT Austin and author of Essential Questions: Interview Your Family to Uncover Stories and Bridge Generations. In this special bonus episode, Dr. Keating shares insights on how to spark meaningful conversations with your elders to uncover the rich stories and lessons they carry. Inspired by her own experience of loss, she offers practical advice on preserving family legacies through thoughtful questions with the people you love.
Hear her talk about:
Why she wrote Essential Questions after losing her mother
The importance of knowing our elders beyond their family roles
How culture influences the way we think and share stories
Using specific questions to spark descriptive stories
Her advice for starting meaningful conversations at your next family gathering
See all episodes of Wisdom of Age.
Find Dr. Keating’s book here: Essential Questions: Interview Your Family to Uncover Stories and Bridge Generations
“We love them in their role [as parent or grandparent] ... but they sometimes don’t get to tell us about themselves—the person they were with hopes and joys and expectations for the future.”
Read the Transcript for the Bonus Episode
Wisdom of Age, Bonus Episode
Essential Questions: How to Uncover Family Stories with Dr. Elizabeth Keating
Stacy Raine: Welcome to the Wisdom of Age podcast. I'm Stacy Raine here with a bonus episode for you. In the intro episode to this podcast, you heard me talk about my great aunt Gloria. It was a conversation with her many years ago that got me thinking about a podcast like this. And even though she and I had had lots of good conversations over the years, when she passed away, I started to think about all the questions I hadn't asked her and all the conversations we wouldn't have.
And apparently, according to Dr. Elizabeth Keating, an anthropology professor at UT Austin, this is a fairly common experience. It's why she wrote her book called Essential Questions, Interview Your Family to Uncover Stories and Bridge Generations. As I was preparing for the interviews for this show, a friend of mine suggested her book to me.
I bought it and read it and found that Dr. Keating gives really good ideas for how to bring about stories from our elders, and in doing so, get to know them on a whole new level and learn more about the people we love. One of my hopes for this podcast is that you'll be inspired to have meaningful conversations with the elders in your life, even if this conversation begins for just a few minutes at a family gathering.
Our elders tell incredibly rich and interesting stories, especially if we ask the right questions. So who better to help you think of those right questions than the author of essential questions, Dr. Elizabeth Keating. Here's our interview:
Dr. Elizabeth Keating, welcome to Wisdom of Age. Thank you so much for joining me.
Elizabeth Keating: I'm so happy to be here and have a chance to talk with you about your project and also about the book.
Stacy Raine: Well, your book was a really important part of my preparation for Wisdom of Age, so I want to start with why you wrote it. I know that you too have experienced a loss where you thought about all the questions that you didn't ask. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Elizabeth Keating: Yes, I lost my mother, and I realized after she'd gone that there was so much I didn't know about her. And this was made especially poignant when I was going through her things and lots of questions arose. And what I realized was I only knew her in the mother daughter role. And I didn't really know her as a person, and particularly I didn't know what it was like when she was growing up, and what were some of the experiences and challenges she had, and what were her best friends like, and things like that.
And the ironic thing is I had interviewed her a couple of years before she died, but I hadn't asked the right questions. And I became really curious, what would be the right questions, what would have gotten me to understand my mother, the person, before she had five kids and a whole different life. And I relied on my anthropology background, because when an anthropologist goes to the field to learn about a different culture and a different way of life, they have certain questions they ask about that place and the people, and they do a lot of observations.
So I relied on that to develop a set of questions that people can ask that are really focused on description. And it's so easy for people to describe things from their childhood and it sets the stage for all kinds of other stories.
Stacy Raine: I love how you say, you know, I knew her as a mom and I wanted to know her as a person. Can you tell me why that is so important for us as children or nieces or nephews of someone. Why is it important to get to know them outside of, I think you called it a box. Why is it so important to get to know them in this different way?
Elizabeth Keating: are So much more than that. Of course, we love them in their role, and we owe them a huge debt of gratitude, but they sometimes don't get to tell us about themselves, the person they were with hopes and joys and expectations for the future. Those aspects of their personality are still there, but they often don't come out for us if we stick them in this role of grandparent, or parent, or aunt, or uncle, and get so trapped in those role relations. And it's particularly fun, one of the questions in the book, Essential Questions, asks about, well, the focus is marriage and kinship, but asks it about dating practices.
And so this takes your family member right back to that time that was so vulnerable. You know, we are all trying to make the right decision and we're all very, very, naive in many ways about what a relationship is, what a commitment is, and yet we have to make these very important life decisions. And that doesn't change between generations. So it's something that, a younger person, when they're interviewing an older person and hearing about their dating life, even though it might have been not really a dating life if their elder family member came from somewhere where there were arranged marriages, but still during that arranged marriage process, I heard wonderful stories about really the negotiation between the elders and the youngers about, you know, which, which was the person who was going to be put forward or selected.
And it's just a process that reveals so much about a particular cultural time and also something about ourselves as individuals that's timeless.
Stacy Raine: I want to hit on this topic of culture, and I know that's a big part of anthropology. So if you'll just tell us, you know, what does an anthropologist do and why is culture so important to that? And also when you talk about culture, is it a different culture from where, where I grew up, from where my parents grew up?
Elizabeth Keating: Yes, for anthropologists, culture is the main focus of what we're interested in understanding better. One of the most famous anthropologists, Margaret Mead, said that when an infant is born, they are born without any knowledge of language, without any knowledge of behaviors and all of this, they learn from the people who are tasked with socializing them and it's very complex process.
But yet, when they achieve adulthood, they are extremely competent in terms of knowing what the culture around them is and how to behave properly in it and what to expect from it, and even how to think so culture influences the way we think, of course, and this is what makes it difficult in cross cultural communication.
Sometimes is that people are socialized into such different patterns of observation and drawing certain conclusions and inferences from those observations that we sometimes don't realize we're on different wavelengths, so to speak. So culture is that set of practices that, as we wake up in the morning, it structures our day, and it structures our wants and our needs, and even something that you would think was as biological as eating, because, of course, all animals need to eat to survive, but that has very strong cultural components to it.
So one of the people that I interviewed told me, about her experiences as a child in World War II growing up in the U. K. And they had food rationing during that period, and they're really, food was very scarce, and it was really hard to, for mothers who were tasked with the evening meal to come up with something that was nutritious.
So one night, her mother, all she had in the cupboard was some eggs and some cheese, And she put together a cheese souffle, and her father came to the table, the mother served the cheese souffle, and the father said, he got very angry and said, this is not a meal fit for a man. So even though they were hungry, there wasn't much food, the cultural symbolism about how, what that food meant to him, that it was something that really wasn't real food in his mind, still overcame the, you know, the need to eat.
So, that's how strong culture can be and how it can impact our behavior.
Stacy Raine: That's fascinating. And our elders, you know, they, they almost grew up in a different culture. I believe you've said,
Elizabeth Keating: That's right. Yes, it surprised me when I started to hear accounts of what it was like to live when they were children of the various people that I interviewed. I was very, very surprised at, you know, riding a horse to school and keeping a shotgun by the door because the coyotes and wolves would be threatening the livestock.
And the mother, you know, being very, well-equipped in terms of protecting the farmstead if the husband was out in the fields, and that was just a couple of generations ago. And when I started interviewing people to find out the right questions, I was having such a good time interviewing people and learning so much, that I didn't want my students at the University of Texas - Austin to miss out. And so I gave them as one of their assignments in the semester for about, ten different classes I had over five years. I would give them the assignment to interview one of their grandparents using these questions. And the students really loved the project, and they learned so much.
And what they brought back to class convinced me of the hardships of, in Texas, in their grandparent’s time. They brought stories of their grandparents only having, you know, one pair of shoes, and going barefoot in the summer, and also having to make do with hand me downs from other people or older siblings, not knowing necessarily where the next meal was coming from.
There was really a widespread hardship in those times and now, of course, we're so prosperous by comparison.
Stacy Raine: It really, I can say, having done these interviews with these five different people for Wisdom of Age, it really, shows you, you know, where we've been as a society and how far we've come and that people can go through really tough things and come out on the other side, stronger, more okay.
Elizabeth Keating: That's right, that's one of the big lessons that's learned when talking to older people is people often don't tell these kinds of stories unless they come up in conversation or unless they're discussing other aspects of their childhood in one of these interviews, so people have no idea of the courage that they've shown in, in former times.
And that can be very, very heartening to younger people to hear. That it’s possible to live through these kinds of challenges and grow stronger from them.
Stacy Raine: Absolutely. I know another thing that you've said is, some people can be reluctant to want to sit down and share their life because they think, Oh, I just had an ordinary life, but what I found is nobody's really ordinary, you know, just even like you said, the dating practices, I, I asked a couple of people like, what was it like? How did you meet your spouse? And it's just interesting to hear what that time period was like and how, how they met, how they ran into each other, how, what their courtship was like.
Elizabeth Keating: Yes, it tells you so much about the rest of culture and what everyday life was like as they tell just that one account of how they met their spouse.
Stacy Raine: I will say that when I originally started this project, I thought, you know, I'm just going to sit down maybe for an hour and a half with each person ... that did not happen. It turned into a couple of calls or a couple of meetings. And when I finished, I thought, you know, I would prefer having an entire day with someone or multiple conversations because when you've lived 80 or 90 years, you're just full of stories.
And I feel like in our role as children or grandchildren, we do often forget that. We forget to almost, you know, for lack of a better term, mine people's stories of their lives. I mean, just sitting down with someone was so fascinating. So I will start by saying I wanted many, many hours, but what I would love to talk with you about is how do we begin this relationship with people?
I had a lot of people reach out to me and say, Oh, either I wish I had this with my grandparents or I want to have this with my grandparents. To me, a perfect place to start is just whenever you next see the elder in your life, it, any family gathering, holidays, birthdays, there are so many opportunities. What would be some of your strategies to, to start more of an informally with someone in your life to, to, to get them thinking about sharing their stories with, with you.
Elizabeth Keating: Any informal gathering will do to start these conversations, and any question will, will do to start as long as you focus on the description of the way times were, the description of their life, because I think that's something that's easy for people to talk about. It's sometimes hard for them to talk about things like, uh, what they wish they had done, or looking back, what do they regret? Those are difficult conversations, I think, but just conversations about what did you see when you walked to school can be a very happy memory for them and can take them back into a particular time and set the stage for having a conversation about lots of things, even about school and about neighborhoods and about what kinds of friends, what, what people did after school and things like that. So things that give you a sense of that particular person who you care a lot about and what they were like when they were young and how their time and place formed them as a person, which, of course, influenced who you became because all of us are influenced by other people's experiences, those people who had a role in socializing us.
And so it not only provides a window into their particular world, but also it helps to helps us to understand who we are.
Stacy Raine: That's so interesting you say that because I can clearly think of some stories that my mom has told me about her childhood and just, she was the fifth child. They didn't let anything go to waste. And how she raised me, like we, we scrape everything out of this bowl. I do that still, you know, and every time I do it, I think back to these stories she's told me. So it's a real connection with her past, even in the things that I'm doing now in my kitchen today, I think.
Let's talk about some of these – you mentioned one initial question of what was it like going to school? Let's say you're sitting down at the table next to your grandparent at, at Thanksgiving, let's say. Could you ask them something about Thanksgiving when they were growing up? Would that be a good way to start?
Elizabeth Keating: Yes, certainly. Or even something more broad, like, did your family eat together in the evening? And what was, what was your favorite meal that your mother cooked? Or something like that, that they would be able to describe who was there and what went on, And Thanksgiving is fine too. I think that a lot of history that's written down concentrates on these big events, these big life events, like births and deaths and marriages, and not so much focused on ordinary everyday life.
And that's the sort of thing that anthropologists are really interested in, the ordinary. So what is a typical day like, and that's often what's left out of the history books.
Stacy Raine: And it's something that's so rich, I’ve found. What are some of the pitfalls or things that you might not get into in, in more of an informal setting? Are there any things that you should avoid when you're starting these conversations with your elders?
Elizabeth Keating: Well, I think if you frame things as if, if you frame things that you want to find out more about them as a person and what they're, what it was like for them growing up, that's a good way to frame things. Sometimes people will be reluctant to talk about something, but I've designed these essential questions to be quite broad so that people can choose whatever they want to talk about, because I think it's very important that the person being interviewed controls the conversation, that they get to decide what to talk about.
And as far as taboo subjects, I think that can usually, I mean, I think you might know some of that as a family member. But really, in terms of describing childhoods, as long as the focus is on everyday matters, I don't think that will get you into too many problematic topics. Of course, it's very, very important to, to be a good interviewer in a sense that you want to be able to hold a silence and give them a chance to remember what they're thinking about as a response to your question.
So sometimes we rush in to fill silences in conversations. But you're asking someone to first imagine themselves back in time, and then they have to translate that image into words. So it might take a little bit of time. So patience is probably, something to keep in mind. And as far as don'ts, one thing would be not to rush them and give them some time to think.
Stacy Raine: I loved that point that you made. I remember that because that is a good interviewing technique in general. But when you explained that, well, people are thinking and they're going way back in time and, and remembering and putting the pieces together for you. It's, it's such a gift that they're thinking through. That's, I loved that point.
Another one that I remember specifically, and I thought, Oh my goodness, I'd never really considered this. You mentioned pointing out objects and saying, well, what is, what is this about? Can you talk about that a little bit?
Elizabeth Keating: Yes, part of all of our histories, our personal histories, are material culture. And material culture is something that I was very interested in as an anthropologist. So what are those objects that we keep and that we imbue with a certain significance? And so I asked people about objects that had been passed down to them that they still kept.
And that was a way to understand personal relationships because the objects that we keep, we don't usually keep them because of their aesthetic value. But we keep them because they connect us to a memory or to a person. And those relationships are really interesting to hear about too. I was surprised that a lot of the people I talked to who were in their 80s and 90s didn't have a lot that they had kept in terms of material possessions that were meaningful to them.
Usually it was photographs or it was something that their mother made. And one particular person told me about sweaters that his mother had knitted for him and he still had them and he still wore them. He brought them out actually to show them to me. So those were, those were very meaningful to him. And you could imagine how it would be wrapped in a sweater that your mother had made all those years ago.
Stacy Raine: Oh, absolutely. And I just think when you're going to visit somebody in their home, you're surrounded by their objects and one single object could probably get you into a whole host of conversations. It's just, it's sort of fascinating to think about the stories that exist, just, just in those objects themselves.
Elizabeth Keating: And people really are flattered by your interest as well. I think that's an important part of this interview is that you're taking someone seriously enough to sit down with them and ask them about their past. And older people nowadays often feel as if they're somewhat alienated from the modern technologically high-speed communication life. And doing these interviews is a way of telling them how important they are.
Stacy Raine: Yeah, I remember you've said that a lot of times we focus on the younger generations in the conversations with our elders. It's mostly Oh, what are the kids doing? And how's your work going? And we don’t think about all these things that our elders could tell us, even if it's not something that happened yesterday. It's fascinating to know what happened 40, 50 years ago.
One of my hopes in doing this show, Wisdom of Age, was that it, you know, bridges generations a bit more and helps us remember that there's extraordinary conversations to be had with the people in our lives, especially our elders. What do you wish people knew about their elders?
Elizabeth Keating: Well, I wish people would not have the experience I had where I didn't ask my mother questions about herself and her childhood. I would wish for everyone that they had a chance to interview people before it was too late. And I absolutely know with a high degree of confidence that most of the things they learn from these interviews, they will be surprised that they'd never heard about before.
In fact, one person who interviewed her mother, I was with the two of them during the interview, and they were very close, they had a great relationship, they lived not far from each other, and saw each other a lot. And the daughter said to the mother, Why didn't I know all of this? And the mother said, All you have to do is ask.
So it seems clear that we just don't ask, and it's time to ask.
Stacy Raine: You mentioned you were with her for the interview. Was that as part of this book?
Elizabeth Keating: Yes, yes, it was part of the book to, as I was designing the questions, I was very lucky that people allowed me to record them with these intergenerational interviews.
Stacy Raine: Yeah. The thing I think some of these questions can do, as you mentioned, it's a different set of questions and it leads to different stories. And I did have people say to me, throughout this project, Oh, I learned things about my mom I didn't know. And so they too could find these out.
Your book is divided into chapters and different chapters cover different questions that you could ask. Do you want to talk about that quickly?
Elizabeth Keating: Yes, the topics each follow what an anthropologist would like to know in trying to understand a way of life. So the topics range from how is space organized, time organized, how are interactions organized, and what are the fears that many people have? Beliefs, marriage and kinship, material culture, but to address those particular topics, I ask questions that are linked to people's lives. For example, to find out about the organization of space, which tells us a lot about a culture's ideas, I ask people to describe the home they grew up in. What was the house like you grew up in, or what was the apartment like, how many rooms did it have, what took place in what room. And people then start to talk about the way their house was arranged, and they, as they're passing through, in their mind, through the basement, they remember, oh, that's where their mother did the washing, and they came home every Wednesday to help with the washing, and their job with the washing was to put it through the ringer that squeezed out the water from the clothes, and you just learn so much about the life in that house, because people that springs to mind when people are describing the house.
And then in terms of interactions, I ask people to ask, how do you think interactions between people have changed since the interactions that you had when you were young? Now some people will say, some people will say, well, nothing's changed. But other people will. Tell you things like, well, you know, children were only supposed to speak when spoken to, and they'll give some examples of that.
And they'll say that they actually prefer now, you know, when children have, are a bit more, let's say, interactive with adults. But they say that was the way it was then, and they all accepted that. And they'll tell you things about interactions maybe at school with teachers that were quite different from today.
And it all fills in the picture of the culture and how the culture has changed in all these years. And then of course, as I mentioned, the question about marriage and kinship, I asked something about dating practices. And each chapter has a very broad opening question, like describe the home you grew up in. And then there are follow up questions that I provide in case the person hasn't provided much detail.
So some people can talk an hour on that question, and they've said things to me about 20 minutes in. They'll say, oh, I'm way off track. And I say, well, just keep going, because really, I'm fascinated with what, what you are remembering.
But some people, of course, are much more succinct in their answers. And so in that case, you'll want to ask some of the follow up questions or make up your own follow up questions that occur to you as they're answering the question. And the broad topical questions are meant, of course, to give the person the freedom to talk about whatever they want to talk about, because those are pretty broad opening questions.
Stacy Raine: You know, the one about the house you grew up in, in episode one, I talk with Hubert Seipel about that and he talks about remembering when they got electricity. That's a whole different world than the world that I grew up in. He remembers getting electricity in his house and then he would go to his uncle's house in the summer and they didn't have electricity and he would go back and forth between having it and not having it and the lamps that they would light before they had it.
It just, it's, it's truly like, it's, it's a whole world. You can envision someone walking in their house and flipping a switch and thinking, wow, we have, there's light here now with just the flip of a switch.
Elizabeth Keating: And not just light, but all of the mechanical equipment that's available then, too.
Stacy Raine: Yes. I mean, it just, it was really, it just was so cool to hear someone talk about this time period that I will never, I cannot experience.
So why do you feel like people, why do you think it's so interesting to sit our elders down and hear their stories? What do you find fascinating about it?
Elizabeth Keating: I've always been fascinated by the uniqueness of each individual and the words that are unique to each person to describe their experiences. And it just adds so much richness to the human experience to have these individual stories and to see how unique each of us is. It's just a wonderful experience to re-experience some of someone's childhood with them.
A childhood that is directly related to ourselves in a kind of legacy fashion.
Stacy Raine: Yeah, I really think it brings people closer, being able to share their stories and on the other side, hear their experiences and stories. Was there any part of your book that was really hard to write? Was there a chapter that you found particularly challenging?
Elizabeth Keating: The chapter on belief was challenging to write because each of the chapters has a little bit of anthropology background about that topic. Just a short background to give readers a sense of how anthropologists approach this topic. And belief was tricky because there are two different kinds of belief, if you will.
There's the kinds of belief that we accept on faith, and there's the kind of belief that we keep changing our lives, during our lives, because new information becomes available. Like we know now much more about how cancer progresses. Whereas at one time, people were afraid of people who had cancer because they didn't know whether it was contagious or not.
So as our beliefs change with science, then we can see those differences. But some beliefs are that are based on faith, won't have changes based necessarily on new evidence. And I was more interested in the beliefs that change because of new evidence or because of experience that people have. So, a lot of times people's beliefs changed over their time, over their lifespan about women, let's say.
So, some of them said to me, well, I used to think that women should be the ones who raised the children and kept the home. And now I realize that women can do different kinds of roles in society. So that's a change that they experienced over their lifetime. And there are many beliefs that people can talk about, about work. You know, how do you get ahead at work? Well, that's certainly changed because nowadays young people will go from job to job quite frequently, but 20, 30 years ago, it was thought that you should stay at the same job and work your way up and differences like that that people can talk about in terms of how their beliefs might have changed over their lifetime are really interesting to hear.
Stacy Raine: I totally agree. And the other thing this makes me think about is you know, one of the things I set out to do with this, with Wisdom of Age is, is to gather advice and life lessons, which you've said, those are really kind of hard to sit down and say, what's your advice? But I did find that lessons came out of their stories. You know, in the last episode, Mr. Herbert Sweat, he was a Vietnam veteran and he's had an extraordinary life, a life filled with challenges and there weren't necessarily, here's my advice or here's my life lessons, but, but you can hear that throughout his whole episode. There's so much that I learned from him just by sitting down with him and hearing his stories.
Elizabeth Keating: Yes, and, and those life lessons, when they come through stories, they're so much more powerful because the situation is provided as well, not just the lesson.
Stacy Raine: Right. You also have a set of questions in there, a question that says, what can people learn from you? I thought that was just such a nice question. What are some of the answers that you would get to that when you were doing about your research?
Elizabeth Keating: I got many different answers about what do you, what they wished people knew about them. And, I started asking that question because I felt that so much of who they were in their earlier childhood, teenage years, wasn't really reflected in them as an adult. Partly because they had so many responsibilities along the way that edged out their own delight in some particular pastime.
And so sometimes they would tell me things like, well, they actually were in a lot of theater productions when they were young, and they would list the characters they had played, or they might say they were actually very good at singing, and they'd put on some performances, or they would say things like they wish they had not thought that they had to do everything all by themselves.
They wish they had realized that they could reach out to other people for help, but they felt that they, in those days, they just had to go it on their own.
Stacy Raine: I've often thought how much I've learned over just the decades that I've lived and especially what I know now that I didn't know when I was, you know, 20. But the thought of the history and the lessons that people have who are 80 and 90 is just incredible and to me a treasure. What is your goal for this book? What do you hope people take away from these conversations?
Elizabeth Keating: My real hope is that people will not find out after their grandparent or parent or favorite aunt or uncle has died how much they don't know about them. And my hope is that through these interviews, they will develop a closer relationship with them, not just during the interview, but for all the time after the interview as well.
Stacy Raine: I'm very excited for people to hear our conversation so they can begin this relationship with the people that they love in their lives, just sitting down and asking a few of the questions that we've talked about throughout this conversation. But I also hope that they go out and read your book and take it and have these more detailed and deep conversations. Can you tell them where they can find your book and how to learn more?
Elizabeth Keating: Yes, the book is available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble and a lot of the both online booksellers and brick and mortar booksellers. I think it's very important, too, for people to read a little bit of the anthropology background that's in every chapter, because I think they'll find that interesting.
And I think they'll be able to realize, then, how rich and diverse the human cultures are.
Stacy Raine: Dr. Elizabeth Keating, I really loved your book. It was such an important part of preparation for this show. Thank you so much for joining us to give us some advice on having these conversations with the people in our lives on Wisdom of Age.
Elizabeth Keating: You're welcome. It was a pleasure to be here.
Stacy Raine: That was Dr. Elizabeth Keating, Professor of Anthropology at UT Austin, and author of Essential Questions, Interview Your Family to Uncover Stories and Bridge Generations. If you've enjoyed this season of Wisdom of Age, please be sure to share it with your friends and leave a rating and review. You can visit wisdomofagepodcast.com to learn more about the show and share your thoughts, and follow us on Instagram at wisdomofagepodcast. Wisdom of Age is a Raine Media production produced by me, Stacy Raine, with editing and sound design by Sandra Levy Smith. To discuss how we can help you bring important stories to life through sound, visit rainnmediaco.com.
Thanks for listening.