Recently those plans became a reality. At the library, students from youTHink came with family members and friends to talk about their experiences living in Los Angeles. Iabeth Briones came with his brother, Eliseo Monclova, and talked about the time he spent living on the streets with his mother.

“I remember we lived in a car for a while and we were parked across [from] my favorite taco spot [called] ‘Chavelitas’, and we were there for one or two weeks. I was the smallest one and I slept in the back seat with all of that space and I think it was a way that [mom] was still trying to give me the best that she could by trying to keep me comfortable. I’ve always been with my mom, but I never really grew up with a father and I always looked at my mom as a pillar of strength. She kept us going and we kept each other going.”

Iabeth is currently a junior in high school and he’s also a poet. He has recently begun attending workshops with Street Poets Inc., an organization dedicated to the creative process as a force for individual and community transformation.

I want to give a special thanks to Shifra Teitelbaum for bringing this wonderful day of recording together, and to the Southern California Library for allowing us to record and for answering all of my questions about this very unique independent library!

The conversation took a turn when Loana asked her mother about her love of music.

Pilar said, “Empezó cuando escuché a Elvis Presley por primera vez en Acapulco, MX.” [It all started when I first listened to Elvis Presley in Acapulco, MX.] “Mi mamá me decía, ‘¡Pilar, ni entiendes lo que está cantando por que no entiendes inglés!’ Y yo le decía que no me importaba. ¡Me gusta la música!” [My mom would tell me, 'Pilar, you don't even understand what he's singing because you don't understand English!' But I would tell her, 'I don't care. I love the music!']

Pilar had eight children, one of whom is Loana, now a successful music publicist in Los Angeles. Of her mother’s musical influence, Loana said, “There was never a day in our house when music wasn’t playing. If there wasn’t any music, then the house would feel cold.”

After the interview, Loana sent StoryCorps staff in East Los Angeles an email that read,

“The CD has already made its rounds. So inspired are my mom & I that my two younger sisters are now committed to ALL of us meeting ONCE A MONTH to tell & listen to each other’s stories…”

That sounds like Rock ‘N’ Roll to us!

StoryCorps Historias will be recording in East Los Angeles from Feb 11, 2010 to March 20, 2010. Reserve here or call 1800-850-4406.

Guest speakers included KPCC reporter Patricia Nazario; Southern California Public Radio President and CEO Bill Davis; Center for the Study of Los Angeles Director Fernando J. Guerra, of Loyola Marymount University; UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Director Chon Noriega; East L.A. Public Library Chicano Resource Center Librarian Daniel Hernandez; our inaugural StoryCorps Historias participant in East L.A., Luz Herrera; and your blog post writer and StoryCorps facilitator Alejandro De La Cruz.

The second interview of the day featured father and daughter participants Carlos and Cindy Mosqueda, who talked about Carlos’ emigration at age five from Salamanca, in Guanajuato, Mexico, to the United States. He recalled his time living on a dairy farm near Brownsville, Texas, and particularly the farm work he did for his father. Now, he says, “I look for dairy farms to visit in Southern California, so I head down to Chino to see them.”

Since opening day, we’ve seen Latinos come from all parts of Los Angeles and from all regions of Latin America. As a native Angeleno, I can’t fully express how excited I am to be listening to conversations in a community that is truly part of my identity. Our team will record over 100 conversations over the course of six weeks and we’ve already seen fantastic support! Keep tuning in for more from East L.A.!

StoryCorps Historias will be recording in East Los Angeles from Feb 11, 2010 to March 20, 2010. Reserve here or call 1-800-850-4406.

Teofil Schintee and his friend, Jordan Sugar

The year was 1979. The place was Romania. Teofil Schintee made a decision to leave. He did not tell his parents. He did not tell his friends from the University. He did not tell a soul. Secretly he began to practice swimming. After work, on the weekends, any spare moment he had, Teofil would swim in the Danube near his childhood home in Caransebes. Late one evening, Teofil watched from the river bank as the Romanian border patrol boat chugged upstream and out of sight. He dove into the Danube. “As a child I would swim in the Danube and I would always look at the other side and I was curious to see what was on that other side.” More than three hours later Teofil crawled ashore to the former Yugoslavia. He had nothing but the clothes on his back, all of his savings in a plastic bag, and a Bible.

Jordan Sugar, a close friend of the Schintee family, brought Teofil into the WestBooth to record the story of his escape. After many months, and many close calls with the authorities in Yugoslavia, Teofil was able to come to the United States as a refugee. He credits his journey to the grace of God. During the months spent in refugee camps and in those cold moments paddling across the Danube in the dark he never stopped believing. He never lost faith.

Ron’s parent’s generation, the Nisei, second generation Japanese Americans, encouraged their children to go away to college, and most left the land, never to return to the life of farming. After the last death of the last Nisei at Yamato, Ron says, “We will have no reason to go to our little little Yamato Colony, but to visit the graves of our parents. Ultimately, it will be no more… a memory. But its passing is a tribute to the Japanese Americans who provided well for their children, so that they would not be stuck in the same circumstances over and over again. Its children no longer need the protection of that all Japanese community. Because of the success of their grandparents and parents, they can find a larger and wider place in the American society.”

Last week MobileWest pulled into sunny southern California and parked at the East Los Angeles Public Library. The trailer sits in an idyllic spot next to a pond where Angelenos fish, toddlers waddle after ducks, high school students turn up the radio, and one can always find a cart selling elote (corn-on-the-cob) or shaved ice.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, along with the great folks from our partner station KPCC, welcomed the booth to this historically diverse neighborhood. East L.A. is home to the largest Chicano and Latino communities in the United States.

We look forward to hearing mas historias del barrio and sampling some of the best tamales and tacos in California or dare I say, the United States.

Rueben Martinez, longtime owner of a Latino literature bookstore, and his granddaughters Samantha and Sabrina had a lively conversation about their love of literature.

Rueben became a barber shortly after moving to Los Angeles from a small mining town in Arizona. At the barber shop Rueben gave reading lessons to parents so they could go home and read aloud to their children. Many years later, a man visited Rueben’s bookstore to thank him for teaching his parents to read, a tradition he had kept up with his own children. Rueben works to keep his philosophy alive.  “Books are el mejor regalo en el mundo (the best gift in the world),” he says.

On Wednesday, StoryCorps facilitators Brianna and Yuki recorded at Keiro, an assisted living facility for the Japanese American community located outside Little Tokyo. Many of the residents are second generation Japanese Americans born in the Los Angeles area, who were relocated to desert internment camps during World War II. Robin Nakabayashi (pictured first in slideshow, with friend and Keiro Administrator, Beverly Ito) is a long-time volunteer at Keiro. He was ten when he and his family were sent to live in a camp built on the Colorado Indians’ reservation near Poston, Arizona. They lived in long barracks made of wood and tar, and grew small gardens in the desert ground in between the rows. When Robin returned to Poston for a reunion many years later, he was surprised to find that the desert landscape where the camps stood was quite lush. The Colorado Indians told him they had learned from the Japanese how to cultivate the dry soil and over the years had created a green landscape out of the once barren area.

Facilitators Brianna Hyneman and myself opened the West MobileBooth’s doors in MacArthur Park in the Westlake neighborhood of downtown L.A. Westlake is currently the most densely populated neighborhood in Los Angeles, with most of its community originating from Central America. In the 1980s and 90s, MacArthur Park was notorious for its high crime rate and gang activity. Now the park is a much safer place where people bring their children to play. Soccer fields (just outside our booth) attract hundreds of players and spectators on the weekends, and the police station that once stood watch in the park is no longer in use.