Oral history is a vital tool for maintaining community cohesion and memory, especially for groups of people whose histories have been disrupted by oppression and forced movement. This is Dewa Nimbo's concept in Oral History of the Mongols, as she explores the modern history and culture of the Oirad Mongolian community in western China. The central focus of the book is the return of part of the Oirad community from southwestern Russia to Xinjiang in the eighteenth century, and how memories of that event are entangled with other histories and forms of knowledge. Throughout the work, Nimbo focuses on how oral historians mobilize a diverse array of genres, including personal and family memory, political genealogy, demography, legends, ghost stories, and song to present a vibrant history that encapsulates a variety of different aspects of Oirad life.
The bulk of the work draws from oral history interviews Nimbo conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s with middle-aged and older Oirad men in Xinjiang. Each oral history chapter is broken into two sections: a brief description of the person being interviewed with an overview of the topics they discuss followed by a direct translation of the interview's transcription. Nimbo examines her dual position as an ethnographer and as a member of the Oirad diaspora throughout the interviews, exploring how her presence as a researcher in Xinjiang affects local politics, and how her family history in the region comprises part of the oral history of the community itself.
In chapter 1, Nimbo details the political history of the Oirads from the thirteenth century to the early tweentieth century, tracing how conflicts with eastern Mongolian groups and the Qing empire forced them to move west, and how oppression within Russia drove many to return to western Mongolia and China starting in the eighteenth century. Chapter 2 focuses on the narration of a well-regarded local intellectual as he describes the Oirad's movement back to Xinjiang, interweaving genealogies of local princes with historical songs that trace the movements geographically and convey the emotional weight of leaving one's birthplace for an ancestral homeland.
In chapter 3, Nimbo provides a local professor's detailed demographic account of Mongolian-speaking people in Xinjiang. The author points out that this oral source was her only access to demographic information that treated ethnic minority populations in the province with specificity, as official records from before 1987 were restricted at the time of her research. Chapter 4 takes a slightly different form, in which the transcription is styled as a back-and-forth between the author and the interviewee, a former editor-in-chief for the Xinjiang Daily News. This chapter stays on the theme of historical demography with an expanded consideration for the author's presence as an ethnographer and her own family history in the province.
Chapter 5 covers a broader range of topics than the previous chapters, as the narrator, a Buddhist lama, gives a legendary version of Oirad history. Here Nimbo directs the reader's attention to the presence and power of omens and spiritual labors in the political histories this narrator recounts. Chapter 6 continues to broaden the scope of the work, providing the translated transcription of a tape sent to the author by an anonymous contributor who provides an overview of Oirad customs, horse culture, lullabies, and ghost stories. Chapter 7 returns to the core discussion of the migration from southwestern Russia back to Xinjiang. As in the first chapter, the interviewee brings together demographic and historical information with song to present a history that is rich in both detail and affect.
Finally, in the conclusion, Nimbo brings together the various themes presented throughout the interview chapters. Two points emerge in this brief analysis that are worth highlighting here. First, Nimbo argues that the oral histories presented in this work give insight into a suppressed history of diaspora and forced movement from the perspective of a group that has been historically overlooked. Second, the form and presentation of the study, as a collection of oral histories with little commentary from the author, is a reproduction of the style of history-making within the Xinjiang Oirad community and is mobilized according to the Oirad concept that the spoken word has power for determining the future.
The strength of this work is in the richness and detail of the data. Each chapter presents a unique perspective, and the multi-modal nature of the oral histories gives a vivid picture of the modern history of this community. For example, the ballads and lullabies presented in chapters 2 and 6 provide evocative, emotive counterpoints to the densely demographic and political narratives given by the professor and journalist in chapters 3 and 4. Nimbo carefully lays out her interviews throughout the course of the work in ways that weave a richly textured account of the Oirad diaspora.
This focus on data, however, leaves the book light on theory. Nimbo's analyses of the content of her interviews are brief, and she does not connect her argument to a body of literature outside of the region. It would have been interesting to see how her argument fits into broader discussions on memory and diaspora, or how the Mongolian ethnic minority histories in Xinjiang that she presents relate to other ethnic politics in the province. Despite the book's relatively weak treatment of theory, Oral History of the Mongols should be useful for those interested in oral history and diaspora. Furthermore, the richness of the work's data makes it a valuable resource on the history of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang and Mongolian communities around the world.
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[Review length: 921 words • Review posted on March 6, 2019]