When it comes to sharing stories of family experiences, there isn’t a Latino family who hasn’t had at one time or another sat mesmerized listening to abuela or tio relive memories that are either funny, sad or scary — but never boring!
LatinaLista — These stories are so good and offer such insight into Latino life that it seems a shame that the stories aren’t told to a wider audience — now, they can be.
Launching Sept. 24, a new oral history initiative, funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, called StoryCorps Historias aims to find those family stories and record them for posterity.
The program allows friends and family to interview each other, with help from StoryCorps facilitators, for 40-minute recordings that are saved on two CDs, one for the family to keep and the other for the Library of Congress. Sometimes stories will be aired on public radio.
The goal of the initiative is to record more than 700 interviews from across the country to reflect the diversity that exists within the Latino community.
The interviews will be collected in one of three ways: Door-to-Door, MobileBooth or StoryBooth services. Each of these methods will be available in select cities across the country but communities can bring the initiative to their communities by visiting the website and making a request.
Families who want to participate in the initiative can explore a variety of options from renting a story kit to downloading a do-it-yourself guide.
It’s important that the Latino life experience be included in any national project about American life. Otherwise, history will forget.
