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Library

Lila Grey Miller

June 24, 2025

|

Hudson, NY

Song

Recorded by

Shannon O'Neill

This interview is available in-person only. Please get in touch if you would like to listen.
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Summary:

This interview was conducted on June 25, 2025, in Catskill, NY, in the home of Lou Thorne, an alum of the Oral History Summer School program. In this interview, Lila Grey Miller discusses their childhood growing up in New York City, their choice to attend a boarding school in Southern Vermont for high school, and their eventual enrollment at Smith College. Lila shares about their relationships with their grandmothers, both of whom offer Lila equally as important though differing life lessons. Lila offers up to the listener what it was like for them to witness their grandmother, Virginia’s, death following a slow decline in Virginia’s health. Lila also names their queer aunts, and chosen family, as other teachers in their life and discusses what it was like to spend their childhood summers in queer community.

This interview may be of interest to individuals who are interested in end of life narratives, stories of New York City childhoods, and histories that discuss queer family relations and chosen family.

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Themes:
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Interviewer Bio:
Shannon O'Neill

Shannon O’Neill is an archivist, curator, and public historian. She currently works as the Curator for the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at NYU Special Collections. She makes ceramics and lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her partner and their cat, Oliver.

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Additional Info:
Interview language(s):
English
,
Audio quality:

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Permissions: 

This interview is hereby made available for research purposes only. For additional uses (radio and other media, music, internet), please click here to inquire about permissions.

Part of this interview may be played in a radio broadcast or podcast.

Oral history is an iterative process. In keeping with oral history values of anti-fixity, interviewees will have an opportunity to add, annotate and reflect upon their lives and interviews in perpetuity. Talking back to the archive is a form of “shared authority.”

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