The Eugene Lesbian Oral History Project collection consists of interviews of 83 people for the Eugene Lesbian Oral History Project, conducted by Professor Judith Raiskin and Curator Linda Long at the University of Oregon starting in the summer of 2018.
Abstract
Shoshana was born in 1950 in Charlottesville, Virginia. Until the age of twelve, she lived in Scottsville, Virginia, where her family had a dry goods store. Hers was the only Jewish family in Scottsville. As a child, she was mischievous and a tomboy, a temperament that bothered her parents. She went to the American University in Washington, D.C. in 1968, during the anti-Vietnam war protests. She protested at Nixon’s inauguration. She transferred to the University of Denver where she received a degree in sociology. She moved further West to Eugene and attended graduate school for a short period. She discusses her impressions of Eugene, and the many cooperatives and collectives operating at that time. She talks about working at Starflower Natural Foods & Botanicals as a bookkeeper, and the nature and character of this cooperative. It was a volatile place, and those who worked at Starflower felt they were outsiders and outlaws. Shoshana talks about the changing character of Eugene after Ballot Measure 9. She got involved with the synagogue in Eugene. She discusses the break-up of the Soviet Union, and Mao-tse-tung. She concludes her interview by discussing the Neo-Nazi protest in Charlottesville, aging, and her interest in fly fishing.
Subject
Acker, Joan; Accounting; Alcoholism; Baleboostehs; Bars (Drinking establishments) -- Oregon – Eugene; Book and Tea Bookstore; Collectives; Coming out (sexual orientation); Cormier, Margaret; Cormier, Thomas; Damselflies (women’s fly-fishing group); Drug use; Eugene (Or.) -- Social conditions; Glass, Charlie; Glass, Debbie; Gertrude’s Café (restaurant); Goldman, Marion S; Judaism; Sloan-Hunter, Margaret, 1947- ; University of Oregon. Department of Sociology; University of Oregon. School of Architecture and Allied Arts; White supremacy movements – United States; Willamette People’s Food Co-op; Women’s Press Collective.