Uncover new sides of family members you’ve known your entire life with this indispensable guide that includes space for journaling.Just as the oral histories of people around the world are disappearing amid rapid change, there is a risk that your family’s personal stories, too, will be lost forever. In The Essential Questions , anthropologist Elizabeth Keating helps you to uncover the unique memories of your parents and grandparents and to create lasting connection with them in the process.As you seek to learn more about your family history, how do you get beyond familiar anecdotes and avoid the frustration of oppositional generational attitudes? By asking questions that make the familiar strange, anthropologists are able to see entirely different perspectives and understand new cultures. Drawing on her lifelong work in this field, Keating has developed a set of questions that treat your parents and grandparents not just as the people who raised you, but as individuals of a certain society and time, and as the children, teenagers, and young adults they once were. The Essential Questions helps you to learn about the history of your elders, to see the world through their eyes, and to honor the language they choose to describe their experiences.
Elizabeth Keating Books


Words Matter
- 192 pages
- 7 hours of reading
A recent study of corporate managers found that one out of five projects fail primarily because of ineffective transnational communication, resulting in the loss of millions of dollars. This book examines how communications between transnational partners routinely break down, even when all parties are fluent English speakers.