32 years, RYAN JOBSON was feeling nauseous. His father, 62, was just beginning to recover from a heart attack at his home in Woodstock, NY. The pair had always intended to spend time writing the story of the elder Mr. Jobson – 1970s Jamaica with a particular focus on his years as a student protector. But now Ryan, a professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago, worried that the time would never come to put pen to paper.
A former student introduced him to Storyworth. For $99, the company will send weekly prompts to the email address of your choice. Each email contains either a question that you have written or selected from the Storyworth library. (Sample questions: “Who are your favorite artists?”; “Do you have any regrets in life?”) The recipient types their answers, and has the option of attaching related photos. Year after year, it’s all bundled up in one hardcover book.
Mr Jobson gave it a shot. He hoped to hear the specific stories he already knew, but was shocked to find that his father opened up more than ever.
Debriefing relatives to trace ancestry has taken a back seat as archival and genetic-based efforts have become more accessible and common, says Evitar Zerubavel, a professor emeritus of sociology at Rutgers. As a result of these discoveries, Prof. Often it feels more “real” than what you gather from a call with your grandma, says Zerubavel. “But I think there’s something cool about the ability to experience history through social proxies that were actually there, or maybe a generation or two away.”
For example, Prof. Jerubavel’s great-grandmother was born in 1876, in what is now Minsk. “When Napoleon entered Russia his own grandparents and great-grandfathers were around. Beethoven was alive. Haydn was alive. Suddenly the history of classical music is personal.”
There are free tools from organizations like StoryCorps to help you facilitate these conversations, and of course you can always record and transcribe your subject’s memories. And with these, you won’t face a problem experienced by some Storyworth customers: The company can only print your final book in English, Spanish, French, and “most other Western languages.” to translate.
Some online reviewers want the company to offer the option to type responses, which can be difficult for writers with mobility issues or who never learned to type.
In retrospect, 66-year-old Bernard Slack says he would have appreciated the option to record his responses, but says he didn’t have trouble typing them. The retired financial services professional based in Littleton, Colo., enjoyed giving cheeky succinct answers to some questions to “get advanced” from daughters who bought memberships as gifts. “How is your life different from when you were a kid?” He wrote, “I have more money.”
Dave Costan, a 47-year-old podcast producer based in Atlanta, struggled to connect his 79-year-old father with the signs the service initially suggested. But when Mr. Custon began to adapt the questions, focusing on the details he knew from his father’s life, the answers improved dramatically. Eventually, he unearths a story about his grandmother selling counterfeit cancer drugs in the 1950s and discovers how his death inspired his father to become a doctor. “The story really helped me understand his dedication to the field,” said Mr. Costain.
Jalissa Whitley, a 32-year-old director of a nonprofit living in Brentwood, MD, said her 67-year-old mother immediately took to Storyworth. Ms Whitley felt an urgency to seek membership after losing several family members during the pandemic. “I was thinking a lot about the stories that couldn’t be told about his life,” she said.
Her mother’s elaborate reactions changed how Ms Whitley saw her childhood. She said, “It helped me give her more grace. It allowed me to give more context to how she appeared as a parent.” And it gave her clarity on ancestral history she doesn’t believe she could have gotten by using a service that relies on official records. For black families in America, she notes, those records don’t always exist.
Storyworth’s entries can be accessed at any time on your account page, but people who have received their book say it can be a mighty tangible item. Mr Jobson recalls that when his father saw the bound volume he said, “I don’t know how I did it.”
Later, Mr Jobson was surprised by the number of people outside his family who asked to read it, most of whom were friends from Jamaican expatriates. He sees it as a way to document history through the eyes of families who live through significant historical events and democratize recorded history. “I think it’s an invaluable resource with stories from ordinary people of the time,” he said.