Listening to Arab American voices in Dearborn, MI

After spending a wonderful month in downtown Detroit, from July 3 to August 8, 2012, thanks to WDET and the Virgil H. Carr Cultural Arts Center, the StoryCorps Mobile Booth headed west to visit the Islamic Center of America in nearby Dearborn, MI. From August 10 to August 11, we partnered with the Islamic Center, the Arab American National Museum and the Yemeni American News to record stories of Dearborn’s diverse Arab American community during the holy month of Ramadan.

StoryCorps’ Mobile Booth outside of the Islamic Center of America

Two of our first participants, Ali Nasrallah (21) and Jaber Saad (21), best friends and college students at the University of Michigan, came to the MobileBooth to discuss their friendship and their identity as both Muslims and Arab Americans in the United States. (more…)

Coming Full Circle in Columbus

In early August StoryCorps Door-to-Door traveled to Columbus, Ohio, for three days of recording with the Columbus Metropolitan Library (CML), a 2011 awardee of the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ National Medal.

It was fitting that the scope of our participants’ conversations was wide, as members of the CML community were invited to share the stories of their lives. Parents and children shared family histories. Two women discussed their children’s marriage to each other. Best friends talked about the bonds of their relationship. And two of our participants, April Johnson and her fiancé, Michael Dornbusch, discussed their life together during their cancer diagnoses. (more…)

Another Kind of 9/11 Story

While our peers in Brooklyn, New York prepared for the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Facilitator Mariel Gruszko and I traveled to Dearborn, Michigan to record a different group of 9/11 voices. StoryCorps Door-to-Door partnered with the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS), a non-profit organization committed to advocacy and empowerment, to record the stories of Arab and Muslim Americans.

We heard from a variety of community activists, family members, and friends who talked about how their lives changed after 9/11 and how they worked to build bridges in their communities in the 10 years since the event. The slideshow includes photos of StoryCorps participants and the Arab American National Museum, where they shared their stories.

(more…)