A Personal Memoir (and Parenthetical Comment) Summary and Analysis

In A Personal Memoir—a prologue of sorts—Studs Terkel explains his reason for conducting the interviews of this book: those that lived through the Depression are loath to speak of it. For this purpose, he includes the voices of younger people who know little of the hard times.

Terkel tells his own story of the Depression. He is young and knows nothing of the Crash. All he notices is that rooms in his parents' hotel are suddenly going vacant. Long term guests are—to their deep shame—losing work. Terkel attends the University of Chicago at this time. He learns about the blues and black culture. He eventually joins the Writer's Project of the WPA. Later he joins the fight to unionize newspapers.