Sarawak State Library -

Life After: Oral Histories of the May 13 Incident

Call no.: : 959.5051 LIF
Author: : Members of the May 13 Oral History Group
Contributor: : Nur Farhan Bin Aini
Summary: Life After: Oral Histories of the May 13 Incident has a clear goal: to unearth what the mainstream narrative refuses to see or acknowledge, as well as flesh-and-blood stories buried by the abstraction of official reports and academic publications. Because the May 13 files have not yet been declassified, the complete historical truth is still unavailable. Even if they were, historical sources cannot represent the entire truth because every Malaysian who lived in the 1960s had direct or indirect encounters with May 13. Oral history is a method for gathering historical stories through talks and interviews with narrators who have first-hand, direct, and intimate encounters with a historical event of interest to the researcher. These stories are not solely historical in nature.