Reminiscences on Migration: A Central American Lyric

By Fanny Julissa Garcia, 2017

Reminiscences on Migration: A Central American Lyric is based on the interviews conducted with Central American women who were held in temporary and long term U.S. immigration centers in Dilley, Texas. The women were interviewed months after they were released and had settled in New York. During the interview process, the women had pending asylum cases and their immigration status is still in limbo. This thesis is a multi-genre oral history and literary narrative project that uses lyric poetry, essays, short stories, and images to highlight the extraordinary in the seemingly ordinary lives of Central American refugees.

Excerpt-from-Reminiscenses-on-Migration-9.25.18

 

Fanny Julissa García is an oral historian contributing work to Central American Studies. In her most recent work, Reminiscences on Migration: A Central American Lyric, she intertwines her own migration story using lyric poetry and vignettes with oral history interviews conducted with Central American refugee women who had been released from detention centers at the U.S./Mexico border. She has worked for more than 15 years as a social justice advocate to combat the public health and socioeconomic impact of HIV/AIDS on low income communities, worked closely with organizations fighting for the end of family detention, and supported survivors of sexual violence. She has written plays about the impact of HIV on Latinas and their families, plus short stories and essays about the Central American diaspora. She serves as the Communications Coordinator for Groundswell: Oral History for Social Change, a network of oral historians, activists, cultural workers, community organizers and documentary artists that use oral history to further movement building and transformative social change. She also works at the New-York Historical Society, and is co-founder of Social Exchange Institute, a media and education company that uses multi-media tools to produce work that promotes social justice and equity. She’s also on the editorial board for the Oral History Association’s Oral History Review. In 2017, she graduated from the Oral History Master of Arts program from Columbia University where she received the Judge Jack B. Weinstein Scholarship Award for Oral History and the OHMA Oral History Teaching and Social Justice Award.