Speaking into Silences
Ricia Anne Chansky, Oral History Lab @UPRM
Against archives that valorize colonization and silence stories of resistance and response, gathering to listen to the life stories of the peoples of Puerto Rico is a radical act.
Speaking into Silences will organize four mass-listening events across the Puerto Rican archipelago: on the west coast, in the mountainous interior, in an underserved neighborhood in San Juan, and on an island municipio. These events will center stories of surviving simultaneous stratified disasters—including hurricanes, earthquakes, political upheaval, economic depression, and the COVID-19 pandemic—within a context of colonial practices and institutionalized racism.
Community partners will be empowered with funding, equipment, and training to record their own narratives. Support from Assembling Voices will go toward organizing a day of mass-listening, activism, music, and food at community centers. Project outputs may include community archives, data visualization tools, digital exhibitions, and microdocumentaries.
About Ricia Anne Chansky
Ricia Anne Chansky, Ph.D. is a professor in the English Department at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez and the Director of the new Oral History Lab @UPRM. Her work is focused on decolonial storytelling projects as a means of amplifying the voices of disaster survivors for the purpose of mitigating the climate crisis within the Puerto Rican archipelago and around the world.