Search Interviews

As a celebration of Black History Month, February 2018, Middlebury College's Davis Family Library has initiated a series of oral interviews, "In Your Own Words." In them, Literatures & Cultures Librarian Katrina Spencer engages members of the community who trace...

Wendy Thomas (47) and Thajilah Olaiya (30) are classroom teachers in Washington D.C. who got to know each other through karate class, and talk about their beginnings as educators and the future of classroom education.

Ellie Bryan (21) talks to her friend Jeanne Boutang Croud (59) about her upbringing in Minneapolis and her racial identity - her mother is white, her father is biracial. Ellie is usually assumed to be white by people.

Rev. Thomas R. Noon (66) talks with his daughter Jessica Estrada (32) about his time leading a black Lutheran congregation in Birmingham, AL.

Raphael Pantet, 24, visiting San Francisco from Brazil, talks with facilitator Frank Kingman, 64, about his several trips throughout the U.S., having dual Swiss/Brazilian citizenship, and compares how race is talked about in the U.S. and Brazil.

Ivette de Pool (37) interviews father Pedro de Pool (64) about family heritage and about his experience as an actor and announcer in Cuba and in the U.S.

Dilcia Morales, 42, talks to her friends Monica Alvarenga, 41, and Mei Lai Wong, 49 about how she crossed the U.S.- Mexico border with her mother at the age of 13.

William Silva, 63, and his daughter, Laylah Silva, 38 talk about William’s life growing up coming back an d forth from Cuba to the United States, and their unconventional family.