Getting beyond the Buzzwords: A Diverse Borough as It Really Is

This presentation features images and audio recordings that tell the story of the Queens Memory Project, a New York City based oral history program cooperatively run by the Queens Public Library and Queens College, CUNY. Its mission is to record and preserve the lived history of Queens residents. The borough of Queens in New York City is self-branded as the “World’s Borough,” and often cited as the most diverse county in the United States. Queens is indeed home to a diverse population of 2.3 million New Yorkers. The borough has an incredible variety of delicious food to eat from around the world; low crime rates; and children grow up with friends who share with them cultures and traditions different than their own. The Queens Memory team attempts to explore beyond those accepted truths in a deeper examination of public life and individual experiences to construct a more complete and complex story of this celebrated corner of New York City.

The program achieves these ends by leveraging the energy, talents and relationships of local volunteer interviewers who select worthy subjects from their own communities. This approach affords volunteers opportunities for meaningful, long-term social engagement with neighbors and editorial power in the development of the historic record retained in the archival collections of their public institutions. As skilled questioners, they can help interviewees re-examine their own stories. As residents of a borough with such a positive and widely accepted identity, it can be challenging for interviewees to acknowledge their own lived experiences that might not always adhere to the expected narrative of diversity and inclusion. This approach has immediate benefits to participants who can gain a deeper understanding of their own experiences and their family’s place in history, as well as leaving behind a more useful record for future researchers.