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An Unauthorized
Biography of the World explores the practice of
engaged oral history: the difficult, sometimes
dangerous work of recovering fragments of human
story that have gone missing from the official
versions. Michael Riordon has thirty years'
experience as a writer and broadcaster in the
field. Readers will encounter a gallery of brave,
passionate people who gather silenced voices and
lost life stories. The canvas is broad, the stakes
are high: the battles for First Nations lands in
Canada; environmental justice in Chicago; genocide
in Peru; homeless people organizing in Cleveland;
September 11/01, and after, in New York City; gay
survivors of electroshock in Britain; the struggle
to preserve a people's identity in Newfoundland;
peasant resistance to a huge transnational gold
mine in Turkey.
MICHAEL RIORDON
teaches writing, and has written two books of oral
history: Out
our Way: Gay and Lesbian Life in the
Country
(BTL, 1996), and Eating
Fire: Family Life on the Queer
Side (BTL,
2001). He lives near Picton, Ontario.
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