D.E.A.M.
Casting A Wider Net: A Community Oral History Project
Casting a Wider Net is a community oral history project developed to collect and share the stories of Cape Verdean, Vietnamese, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Guatemalan, and Salvadoran members of the commercial fishing industry. The project provided ethnographic training for 9 individuals from those communities who led the documentation effort, conducting 14 interviews in English, Spanish, Kriolu, and Vietnamese.
Casting a Wider Net is funded in part by a Wicked Cool Places grant from New Bedford Creative, a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and an Expanding Massachusetts Stories grant from Mass Humanities, which receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and is an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Samantha Mendez
Ellen Huggins
In this interview, DEAM speaks of his evolving relationship with the fishing industry, from growing up with various family members involved in fish processing and delivery (including his father), to working as a truck driver for the fishing industry to finance his college education, eventually leading to his current job as a product manager at a food packaging company. He also speaks about his experience as an immigrant moving to the United States from El Salvador at the age 5, and how his immigration status has affected various aspects of his life up until now, including his educational journey and his decision to marry his wife at a relatively young age.
Notes: The narrator chose to be identified by his initials: DEAM
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