Sharing Their Stories: Latinx Immigrant Activists’ Oral Histories
A HumanitiesX Course Showcase
This online showcase is part of a series designed to capture the work of the 2021–22 HumanitiesX cohort at DePaul University. In Spring 2022, three teams of HumanitiesX Fellows created three unique project-based courses. See the other courses’ showcase posts here.
The Course
Sharing Their Stories: Latinx Immigrant Activists’ Oral Histories engaged students, community organizers, and faculty in a public-facing project that centered on the oral histories of Latinx activists within the community of Brighton Park, a largely working-class, immigrant community on Chicago’s Southwest Side. Each of the activists who participated in the project were directly impacted by their–or the family’s– undocumented status. The anthology of stories that we co-created helps the public see that undocumented immigrants are infants, children, parents, and grandparents…and activists with their own voices, inspiring action that will empower and uplift the voices of Chicago’s undocumented immigrants.
Throughout the course, taught by English professor Chris Solis Green and History professor Amy Tyson, students read poems, memoirs, and histories about undocumented Latinx immigration. Alongside engaging with these readings, students worked directly with the activists from the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council (BPNC), a community based, nonprofit organization serving a predominantly Latinx and immigrant community. Early on, staff from BPNC visited the course several times to help students understand the Illinois immigration reform campaigns on which they were working.
After receiving training from Prof. Tyson in oral history ethics and practice, HumanitiesX students interviewed directly impacted community activists from BPNC, activists at the forefront of campaigns related to advancing the rights of undocumented immigrants in Illinois. Each of the activists who shared their story was directly impacted by undocumented immigration, either through their own migration or through their parents’.
Students collected and transcribed the eight interviews with BPNC activists according to oral history standards. Following transcription, these interviews were shared with the class who worked in collaborative learning groups to discuss themes and suggest possible avenues for shaping the interviews into stories that would come together in both a print and online final deliverables.
Students then, guided by Prof. Green, drew on principles of editing and storytelling to condense and edit those stories for publication in an online and print anthology. The overarching goal of the project was to help move the needle on immigration reform and inspire future activists through sharing these stories.
The Course Project
For this project, eight activists working with Brighton Park Neighborhood Council shared their stories with DePaul students. Students transcribed the interviews then edited them into compelling stories told by the narrators. The professors made final edits and worked with the two HumanitiesX Student Fellows to design the final website and print book (cover, right) for the anthology of stories.
All of the activists featured in the anthology were directly impacted by their own, or their family’s undocumented status. In raising up these stories that don’t often get shared, we hope to inspire other activists both to join in the struggle, and to in turn share their stories. According to Andrea Ortiz of BPNC, “We hope to use the anthology of stories to continue to uplift the community that is fighting for the liberation of immigrants in the US. Most importantly, humanizing the stories of immigrants in this country.”
This anthology humanizes undocumented people and their families, and recognizes that each person’s story is unique, valuable, and worthy.
The Course Team
Amy M. Tyson (she/her) is a public historian who teaches courses on oral history, U.S. History, U.S. women’s history, and Museum Studies. Many of these courses connect students with community organizations to collaborate on a range of projects that have resulted in oral histories, archival arranging, research dossiers, interactive online mapping tours, exhibits, audio documentaries, and walking tour development.
Chris Solis Green (he/him) teaches poetry writing, editing, and publishing classes in DePaul’s English department. He’s co-founder of DePaul’s Big Shoulders Books whose mission is to give voice to communities in Chicago that don’t normally have one and then give the books away for free.
Andrea Ortiz (she/her) was born and raised on the southwest side of Chicago’s Brighton Park Neighborhood. Daughter of Mexican immigrants, Andrea is a Chicago Public Schools alumna. She has two bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and Latin American and Latino Studies from DePaul University. Currently, she is a graduate student in Public Policy at Northwestern University. Andrea is the Director of Organizing for the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council (BPNC). Throughout her 7 years with BPNC, she has engaged leaders and community members around the following campaigns; #PoliceFreeSchools/ #CopsOutCPS, #EraseTheGangDatabse, #FreeTheTIFS, #FreeTheFunds, #ReimagineChicago, #NoCopAcademy, #CashAssistanceNow, #ERSBNow, #RightsToRecovery, and others.
Esmeralda Montesinos (she/her) received her BA in Sociology and Criminology from Dominican University in 2019. She is now an Immigration Organizer with Brighton Park Neighborhood Council and leads both state and federal level immigration campaign involvement with the organization.
Lauren Rosenfeld (she/her) is a HumanitiesX Student Fellow. In June 2022, she received her BA in History and BS in Computer Science from DePaul University. Her interests as they relate to immigration include: the geopolitics of the border, forced migration, transnational labor, and surveillance. Lauren helped co-teach one of the course sessions with Juliana (below), co-authored an article about the course on DPU’s Immigration and Migration Medium.com site, and was the lead on the design for the final website.
Juliana Zanubi is a HumanitiesX Student Fellowellow and a third-year undergraduate student in the BA program of International Studies at DePaul University. She is an international student from Colombia who is interested in immigration, international relations and diplomacy, social justice and education. Juliana helped co-teach one of the course sessions with Lauren (above), co-authored an article about the course on DPU’s Immigration and Migration Medium.com site, and assisted with the Spanish/English language translations for two of the stories in the anthology.
NOTE: Vanessa Dominguez, youth organizer for BPNC, facilitated communications between DPU students/faculty & BPNC youth participants in the project.
Lessons Learned
- There is a hunger in our world to be part of something bigger than ourselves.
- Real-world projects that connect communities with university students can be deeply rewarding.
- These courses take careful planning and a lot of front-loaded work, but with commitment on all sides it can provide students with a meaningful experience helping their community.
Next Steps
- Profs. Green and Tyson plan to apply for internal grant funding from DePaul’s Public Service Council to allow for a revised iteration of the course to run in 2023–2024. They are also investigating additional funding options that could support an exhibit of the existing oral histories and stories in 2022–2023.
- The team plans to use this project as a launching pad for:
- Archiving and sharing the stories of undocumented immigrants living in Chicago. As a result of their HumanitiesX partnership, Green and Tyson have begun working on a Big Shoulders Books project called Chicago Mosaic.
- Extending BPNC’s Student Voice Committee to include a charter college chapter at DePaul to promote a space for undocumented college students to organize.
Read More
- Juliana Zanubi and Lauren Rosenfeld, Creating Oral Histories That Humanize Immigration (Medium, May 23, 2022)
- Emerson Sherbourne, HumanitiesX Students Speak About Community Engagement (Medium, June 22, 2022)
- BPNC Organizers’ Stories
- Print Book: https://bit.ly/SharingOurStoriesBPNC
