Browse Items (17 total)

Soraya Valdez Place is a Spanish Professor at Lenoir Rhyne University and the Community Outreach Specialist for the Catawba County Library system in Hickory, North Carolina. She is originally from San Salvador, El Salvador and first moved to the United States in 2004. Soraya tells the story of her life and explains what growing up was like for her…

Monica Pagnini-Ibarra is a former business owner and family lawyer from Maracay, Venezuela and currently serves as the Client Services Advocate at El Centro Latino in Hickory, North Carolina. Monica begins the interview by sharing what life was like for her and her family living in Maracay, Venezuela and recounts her favorite childhood memories.…

Gianella Romero is the current Executive Director at El Centro Latino in Hickory, North Carolina. She begins the interview by talking about herself, her family roots, and her journey from being in the healthcare field to transitioning into her current role as Executive Director in the non-profit sector. Gianella also discusses her Mexican-American…

Abu Zaeem describes his position as the principal of Doris Henderson Newcomers School in Greensboro, North Carolina. He explains how the school serves immigrant and refugee students in grades three through twelve for one, two, or three semesters by helping them acclimate to English and the American school system before they are transitioned to…

Yesenia Pedro Vicente shares a second interview with the Nuevas Raíces initiative. Yesenia relates her experiences teaching in Phoenix, Arizona for several years after graduating from UNC in 2013. She draws contrasts between living in North Carolina and the Southwestern U.S., where there are much larger communities with Latin American heritage. She…

The interviewee, Juan Carrillo, is a professor in the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was born to Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles, California. He grew up in Los Angeles, then moved to Phoenix, Arizona, then Austin, TX, and then finally to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He received a PhD from the University…

Jacquelyn Gist talks about how she came to be involved with the local government of Carrboro and how she has attempted to use her position as an alderman to build community in Carrboro. She discusses how gentrification and “studentification” is changing the socioeconomic and ethnic diversity of Carrboro, as well as how she is attempting to use her…

Janell Smith interviews graduate student Felicia Arriaga in an effort to understand issues of diversity within higher education institutions, specifically as it relates to Latino faculty members. With the hope of becoming a professor, Arriaga is a graduate student in the sociology department at Duke University, where she began her undergraduate…

José Trejo describes the ten years he has spent in the state of North Carolina. He came here from Mexico with his family and faced some challenges as he progressed through high school. After graduating from high school, he worked for a time with family members in construction and went back to school to receive his Associate’s Degree in Accounting.…

As part of Kelly Pope’s investigation of the interaction of American public school systems with Latino students, Ramirez offers her opinion on what resources American public schools are lacking for parents who don’t speak English. Ramirez is the Vice President of an organization called Immersion for Spanish Language Acquisition (ISLA), and was…