Personal Narrative: My Oral History Project

I am a Native American born and raised in Jamestown, Virginia. It was always just my father and I, my mother passed away when I was an infant, so my father raised me to be an independent woman. My father is the head commander of the tribe. He only allowed me to go to the village near our tents. I never went further than the village, till this one day that I was feeling so curious about what was out there, so I decided to walk beyond the village to see what there is to explore.

Writing is a key in everyday life, whether it is going unrecognized or not communication is largely dependent on writing rater then face to face relations. Growing up writing an essay or a story wasn’t always as important as sending that one text out to a friend. Many times instead of working on an assignment people tend to text, and write on social media instead. Although by doing this in the end, you are still writing, although for some it doesn’t count as that text maybe something they are passionate about unlike their assignment. The concept of writing then goes unacknowledged and isn’t looked at as a fun activity for many. This tends to happen after submitting assignments and not receiving the grade you may

For the oral history project, I interviewed my grandmother. Her full name is Imelda Laborce, while she is known as “Meldy” to most family members. She was born in a small town called Calapacuan in the Zambales region of the Philippines. She was born in 1955 and is 61 years old. Like me, she was born in the Philippines but eventually moved to America sometime in her life. I believed she was a good candidate because I knew she was one of the earliest members of my family to travel to America. Hence, she must have good stories and have a rich background. I also never really knew anything about her past, so I just thought it would be interesting in general to learn about it. She currently lives in Union, New Jersey and works in a hospital as a nurse.

My grandmother Lynne Murphy is who I chose to interview for my heritage project. This summer at a family birthday party I was speaking short phrases in Spanish while joking around with my dad. My grandmother, sitting beside us, joined in the conversation and starting speaking fluent Spanish. I had no idea she could speak Spanish, so I asked her, “How can you speak Spanish?” Before answering my question she laughed. She went on to tell me that she lived in South America for many years as a teenager. I didn’t have the chance to learn anymore about her childhood until this project was assigned. When I learned we were to focus on a family member’s experience growing up, I immediately thought about my grandmother and the interesting life she seemed

One evening, my sister named Bella was trying to get a cup from the cabinet. She had to sit on the counter to reach it. In the process of getting down she caught her pants on the microwave. When she attempted to get down from the microwave, her feet couldn’t touch the ground. Trying to get her pants loose from the microwave, the microwave door came open. The microwave dish fell out and shattered when it hit the floor. She did finally get free and she was fine.

I am a true country southern bell from Georgia with roots that goes back to the Cherokee tribe. I am the daughter of Beanbug and Mann although they have real names where we are from we do not use them. Beanbug started off working at the chicken house but after gutting chicken for a couple of years she decided to get a degree. This is how I came to be. I come from a more rural area modern time and where I did not have to farm like my grandparents. I know who I am. I am come from a family that would cook Sunday dinner which include fried chicken, mac and cheese, collard greens, cornbread and many more food that sooth the soul. I am a special person that believed to see spirts at night that kept me up. One night I went to my grandmother bed and

Growing up with two different Heritages is like growing up in two different worlds, it was tough growing up being Native and Hispanic I would either get made fun of because I was Native or I was made fun of for being Hispanic. I guess you can say that I have somewhat of a different life, living with any Hispanic family but considering myself more Native, because just at home i just speak spanish, and eat amazing food made by my mother who isn’t even Hispanic who’s just Native American who didn’t consider herself Native American because she herself lived with my grandmother or she lived with a family friend who was Hispanic and showed her things about a culture that she didn’t know anything about.

As we continued along the trail, we were stopped by a very steep hill. Hunter announced that we should dump some stuff from our wagon in order to get on top of the hill. I dump my a tired that I bought recently and a barrel with nothing in it. The trip up the hill was a pain. It took so long to get up the hill I almost fell asleep. My leg was sore and I thinking about giving up. Finally we made it to the top of the hill and we realized that we had to go down the hill. We decided to use our own ropes and slowly descend our wagon one by one. When we descend Curtis’s wagon, Curtis almost fell. He was able to caught himself before he fell down the hill. Well all went down the hill and as we were going down the hill, we saw a divine blue spring

For my oral history project, I decided to interview my mother. I am pretty close with my mom, as we talk daily, and I am comfortable often to seek advice from her. A challenge that I faced was trying to find an appropriate date and time for the interview. My mom works six days a week, and I am often preoccupied with classes and school work. Another challenge was my mom’s hesitation with going into too much detail about her experiences. In addition, it was difficult to interview another family member such as a relative because I was not particularly close with my uncles or aunts, nor were any of them easy to contact due to variations in time zones. Furthermore, arguably one of my largest reason why I choose to interview my mom was because I never had taken the time or initiative to ask about my mom’s past. I had only knew of some general aspects, but never asked too much into detail. The oral history project was a perfect opportunity to dwell deeper into my family’s history and how they came to America.

A subject that inspires me U.S History. I have always wanted to learn more about our country. I have never been the best at math or science, but whenever I go to my history class I was always eager to learn more. I would always show up early to class and read the chapter we were learning about and ask questions to the teacher.

Many people have left legacies from when they were alive. Some are good, and some are bad. Those people may not agree with what they have left behind, and some may be perfectly okay with theirs. For me, I would like to leave behind a legacy that shows my family that I was a good person. I would want them to know that I had good intentions for my life and that I wanted to do good for myself and others. In this essay, I will explain what I would like my legacy to be like.

Caroline, my sister, is the type of person who loves animals and says she wants to save the world. She thinks her jokes are the best, but she’s the only one that laughs. She is always willing to help someone out if they are stuck. She knows how to put a smile on someone's face. Whenever Caroline answers the phone, even if it wakes her from a nap, she always smiles first and then talks. “Because a smile can change any meaning” she always says. She is a 20 year old junior at “UW-Madison for my undergraduate degree in anthropology with certificates in archaeology and classics” (C. Schlinsog, Personal Interview, May 31, 2017). She is very smart, she is taking summer classes so she can graduate early and go on to graduate school. She has a big future ahead of her.

Sitting on the plane alone, I wondered what the next three weeks would bring. The light hum of the plane’s engines seemed to go on forever and the dry stale air began to scratch the inside of my throat. My destination was The Netherlands, where the entirety of my family lives. Throughout my youth seeing my family was a rare occasion, once a year if we were lucky, but after my parents divorced, we stopped going altogether. It had been over eight years since I had last visited them and because of the many years of separation, I felt uneasy about it all. Throughout the flight I couldn’t help but to think to myself several questions like: What I might be able to learn and experience from these next three weeks? How I would feel when I would first arrive? And how different everything would be. Having been there only a

For most of my life growing up, I was extremely culturally unaware of even my own heritage. In recent years however, my life experiences have instructed me to gain a fonder appreciation of my own family’s culture and others around it. Specifically, the acknowledgement of my own cultural background and time spent as an emergency medical technician in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) have given me unique viewpoints to appreciate human culture on a grander scale.

When I was a junior we had a huge project for my U.S history class and it happened to be our final. I actually achieved greatly in other projects before that and felt confident in achieving our final. Our teacher recommended partners and actually enforced it. I held my pride and told her I could still do it myself and she stuck to her command and I was forced to have a group. I believed that it is best to not rely on others for help to truly get something done. But when it came to actually doing the project I recognized where I was wrong. I couldn't do research, find artifacts, construct, and buy materials for the project all by myself. My teammates actually helped me find more concrete info for the project that really got us the A for the