Many teacher educators recommend that preservice teachers examine their own backgrounds and experiences to identify assumptions, beliefs, and values, as well as cultural contexts in which they grew up, which impact on how they understand schooling and students. Commonly, Social Foundations courses initiate self-examination through processes such as life history and autobiography. Self-examination is particularly important as a part of learning to teach students who are culturally different from oneself, and to address institutionalized inequities that permeate students' lives both inside and outside of school. Recently, out of personal rather than professional interest, the author began to research her own family history. In doing so, she explored how this process can work as an entree into historical memory about race, ethnicity, and identity--revealing the ways in which power and privilege have been constructed, the prices people have paid for that, and the ways in which ordinary people have challenged inequities. In this article, she describes the process she used for researching family history, situating that process within a discussion of self-excavation through critical life history. (Contains 2 notes.)