Questions to ask
35 questions to ask about leaving home and arriving somewhere new
General questions get general answers: *what was your childhood like* produces *we were poor but we were happy*, and then a silence. These 35 questions about leaving and arriving are specific enough to open your grandmother up. Leaving somewhere is rarely a single decision, and the questions that work ask about the practical detail — the paperwork, the money, the first week — rather than the feeling. Grandparents are often the easiest people to interview and the ones with the least time. Both of those are reasons to start this weekend.
Before you start
35 questions in 7 groups. Pick eight or ten; do not try to get through them all.
- Ask if you can record. Almost everyone says yes, and almost everyone forgets the recorder is there within ten minutes.
- Sit beside them rather than opposite. It is easier to remember something difficult when nobody is watching your face.
- Have a photograph to hand. A picture unlocks more than a question does.
- Let silences run. The useful answer usually arrives about four seconds after you would normally rescue the pause.
- Do not correct dates. Being wrong about the year is not the same as being wrong about the memory.
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Before you start
Most people ask your grandmother about leaving home once, get three sentences, and never ask again. Not because there is nothing to say — because the question was too big. "What was it like?" is impossible to answer. The questions below are small on purpose: they ask for one thing at a time, and they ask for detail rather than summary, because detail is what memory actually stores.
There are 35 here, in 7 groups. Pick eight or ten. You will not get through them all in one sitting and you should not try.
The questions work the same whether you are asking grandmother, grandfather, mother, father, parent and grandparent. What changes is not the question but how much they will say to you, so start with the group you think they will enjoy rather than the first one here.
Before
- What was the place you left actually like?
- Who decided to go?
- How long had it been talked about?
- What was the thing that made it certain?
- Who didn't want you to?
Leaving
- What did you take?
- What did you have to leave that you still think about?
- Who came to see you off?
- What did you say to them?
- What was the last thing you saw?
The journey
- How did you travel, and how long?
- What was the worst part?
- Who else was travelling?
- Were you frightened?
- What did you eat?
Arriving
- What was the first thing you noticed?
- Where did you sleep the first night?
- What did the weather do?
- Who was kind to you?
- Who wasn't?
Language and difference
- What could you not say that you needed to?
- What did people assume about you?
- What did you get wrong that everyone found funny?
- When did you stop translating in your head?
- What did you change about yourself to fit?
Work and building
- What was the first job?
- How long before it felt possible?
- Who helped, and were they from home or not?
- What did you send back?
- When did you stop planning to return?
Two places
- Where is home now, honestly?
- What do you miss that has no English word?
- Did you go back, and what was that like?
- What did your children lose that you had?
- What do you want them to keep?
When they stop talking
Stop. Say that was hard, and mean it. Offer tea, change the subject, and come back another day — the recording will still be there. A conversation that ends kindly can be continued; one that ends badly usually cannot.
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These question sets are free to use and free to download, with no account. They are here because the recording is the part that cannot be done later, and it should not sit behind anything. When you have the recordings, Transcription turns them into clean verbatim and Themes from Bulk Audio finds what the material is actually about.
A professional oral historian at £150–£400 a day brings judgement about what to follow that a question list does not. What a list gives you is the courage to start, which is usually the actual obstacle.
Record their answers
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