In the tenth and last episode of this Queens Memory Podcast season on migration, we turn to the topic of terminals—where we’ve arrived and where our stories go from there. We’ve listened to oral histories from our archives, reflecting on the relationships we have to our own and each other’s histories. In our oral history workshops, we suggest volun…

To begin our ninth episode, we’re reflecting on returns: the places to which we find ourselves coming back and how we get there. We opened this podcast season with our episode on origins saying we want to think about the many circumstances that shape personal migrations and stories. In our sixth episode on residence, we also considered our relation…

In this eighth episode, we're thinking about visits—receiving family, friends, and others as guests. In terms of legal procedures, visiting the U.S. requires paperwork, fees, and interviews to apply for visitor visas. Depending on national laws and an applicant's travel documentation and history, we learned in our research for this episode that the…

For this seventh episode, we’re tracing traditions. As part of our oral history workshops, we suggest volunteer interviewers ask about family traditions, both in daily life and for special occasions. Listening through our archives, we began to think of ways that traditions travel, between people, through places, and over time. While we listen, we c…

We're thinking about residence in this sixth episode, and the connections we form with the places we inhabit. This includes processes of establishing what U.S. immigration law refers to as permanent residency, involving family or employer sponsorship, applications, interviews, fees, and numerous other requirements. We also thought about the many ex…

For our fifth episode, we collected stories of work. After listening through our archives, we began to think about connections between labor and migration. We considered histories stretching back centuries in the U.S. in which work has remained a major factor in deciding who gets to stay where. Naturalization processes in the U.S. going back to 179…

In this fourth episode, we’ve gathered memories from school. While deciding on themes for each episode, we remembered the many stories in our archives of navigating public and private schools in Queens. We began to reflect on the political, economic, religious, and social forces that shape what and how we learn. We thought about classrooms and text…

The oral histories in this third episode move, by trains, boats, and planes, across oceans and land. In this episode, we’ll hear stories about travel—physical movements and how we embody our histories. We found two collections in our archives that we decided to feature in this episode. These interviews struck us in the detail and specificity they o…

For our second episode, we consider paperwork: the relationship between documents and the day-to-day. Before beginning the podcast, we’d been listening to stories in our archives of applying for visas, school enrollment, and work authorization. We began to think about how these documents become part of migration, and of deciding who goes where. We …

To start off the Queens Memory Podcast series, we reflect on origins: where our stories come from and how they begin. In our archives, we hear about many points of departure, from countries and places, to periods of time, to relationships with others. All together, these points of departure shape the migrations described in these stories. We listen…

Legendary Hip-Hop pioneer KRS-One talks with Video Music Box founder/Queens Library Hip-Hop Coordinator Ralph McDaniels in front of a live audience at Queens Central Library. They discuss his early days before making music, when he was homeless and he watched domestic violence at the hands of his mom, his self and his brother Kenny Parker.He also t…

Legendary Hip-Hop pioneer KRS-One talks with Video Music Box founder/Queens Library Hip-Hop Coordinator Ralph McDaniels in front of a live audience at Queens Central Library. They discuss his early days before making music, when he was homeless and he watched domestic violence at the hands of his mom, his self and his brother Kenny Parker.He also t…

Hip-Hop Legend Darryl "DMC "McDaniels talks with Ralph McDaniels (No relationship) at the first Queens Library Hip-Hop talk series. DMC discusses his love for comic books and his own graphic novels. He tells the live audience about how he connected with Joseph "RUN" Simmons and how they broke ground with music, style and content. DMC is an original…

Hip-Hop Legend Darryl "DMC "McDaniels talks with Ralph McDaniels (No relationship) at the first Queens Library Hip-Hop talk series. DMC discusses his love for comic books and his own graphic novels. He tells the live audience about how he connected with Joseph "RUN" Simmons and how they broke ground with music, style and content. DMC is an original…

Legendary Hip-Hop pioneer KRS-One talks with Video Music Box founder/Queens Library Hip-Hop Coordinator Ralph McDaniels in front of a live audience at Queens Central Library. They discuss his early days before making music, when he was homeless and he watched domestic violence at the hands of his mom, his self and his brother Kenny Parker.He also t…