Mi María: Surviving the Storm

Mi María: Surviving the Storm
Author: Ricia Anne Chansky
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2021-09-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1642596760

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When Hurricane María made landfall in Puerto Rico in September 2017, it left no part of the archipelago unscathed. The hurricane triggered floods and mudslides, washed out roads, destroyed tens of thousands of homes, farms, and businesses, caused the largest blackout in US history, knocked out communications, led to widespread food, drinking water, and gasoline shortages, and caused thousands of deaths. The seventeen oral histories collected in Mi María: Surviving the Storm share stories of surviving the storm and its long aftermath as people waited for relief and aid that rarely arrived. Zaira and her husband floated on a patched air mattress for sixteen hours while floodwaters rose around them. The road washed out in front of Emmanuel as he desperately tried to drive his pregnant wife who had begun labor to the hospital. Luis and his father anxiously counted the days that the dialysis clinic remained closed and lifesaving treatment was unavailable, while Miliana’s mother was sent home from the hospital —undiagnosed— only to fall critically ill in her own home. Weaving together long-form oral histories and shorter testimonios, the book offers a multivocal peoples’ history of disaster that fosters a greater understanding of the failures of governmental disaster response and the correlating perseverance of the people impacted by these failures, highlighting the colonial relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States. Ultimately, the ways in which these oral histories demonstrate the strength of community response to disaster in Puerto Rico are pertinent to other parts of the world that are being impacted by our current climate emergency.

Surviving the Hurricane: Hear My Story

Surviving the Hurricane: Hear My Story
Author: Heather C. Hudak
Publisher: Disaster Diaries
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2020
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780778769903

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In 2017, Puerto Rico was hit hard by Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island, buildings, and people, and knocked out power. Based on the experiences of many hurricane victims, this fictional story follows Antonio and his family who fled to a safer part of the island, then returning to their village where they struggle to rebuild with little help. Interspersed with facts and case studies about what causes hurricanes, this narrative tells a story common to many people who have had to flee and rebuild their lives after losing their homes, possessions, and sometimes, loved ones.

Surviving Hurricane Maria

Surviving Hurricane Maria
Author: Micah D. Renicker
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2017-11-26
Genre: Disaster victims
ISBN: 9781979770705

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Micah D. Renicker, a second-year medical student, was living a dream-come-true with his wife Carmen on a small Caribbean island, Dominica, when Category 5 Hurricane Maria ferociously devastated the tropical paradise. Surviving eight hours in the very teeth of one of the most violently powerful storms on earth, Micah shares the gripping details of their experience in this romantic, heartbreaking, hopeful tale of their ultimately epic adventure of a lifetime.

Tossed to the Wind

Tossed to the Wind
Author: Maria T. Padilla
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2020-03-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1683402170

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Framed by the stories of Hurricane Maria evacuees, Tossed to the Wind is the gripping account of the wreckage, despair, and displacement left in the wake of one of the deadliest natural disasters on U.S. soil. It is also a story of hope and endurance as Puerto Ricans on the island shared what little they had and the diaspora in Florida offered refuge. Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico as a high-end Category 4, and the storm surge, flash flooding, and countless landslides created widespread devastation. One hundred percent of the island lost drinking water and electricity. More than 3 million U.S. citizens lived for months without power, making it the worst blackout in American history. The slow recovery led to a mass evacuation. Thousands gathered what they had left and traveled to Florida—already home to 1 million Puerto Ricans. In Tossed to the Wind, María Padilla and Nancy Rosado interview Puerto Ricans from all walks of life who now live in Orlando and Kissimmee, who fight every day to pick up the pieces of their world after Hurricane Maria. In their own words, evacuees describe families living temporarily out of motels, parents anxious about providing for their children, children starting new schools, and everyone worried about the families and friends they left behind. Told from the midst of chaos and incomprehensible loss, these are the stories—filled with pain and wisdom, sadness and laughter—that showcase the strength and resolve of Puerto Ricans.

The Voice of Witness Reader

The Voice of Witness Reader
Author: Dave Eggers
Publisher: McSweeney's
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2015-06-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1940450837

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For ten years, Voice of Witness has illuminated contemporary human rights crises through its remarkable oral history book series. Founded by Dave Eggers, Lola Vollen and Mimi Lok, Voice of Witness has amplified the stories of hundreds of people impacted by some of the most crucial human rights crises of our time, including men and women living under oppressive regimes in Burma, Colombia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe; public housing residents and undocumented workers in the United States; and exploited workers around the globe. This selection of narratives from these remarkable men and women is many things: an astonishing record of human rights issues in the 21st century; a testament to the resilience and courage of the most marginalized among us; and an opportunity to better the understand the world we live in through human connection and a participatory vision of history.

Unheard Voices of the Pandemic

Unheard Voices of the Pandemic
Author: Dao X. Tran
Publisher: Voice of Witness
Total Pages: 120
Release: 2021-09-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781642597134

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Unheard Voices of the Pandemic reveals through first-person narratives what happened the year the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the United States. The seventeen stories included in this collection speak to the precarity, uncertainty, and injustice of that year, but also to bravery, solidarity, and generosity. Although the shadow cast by the COVID-19 pandemic is long, the insights gleaned through listening can last longer.

Solito, Solita

Solito, Solita
Author: Steven Mayers
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2019-04-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1608466205

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They are a mass migration of thousands, yet each one travels alone. Solito, Solita (Alone, Alone) is an urgent collection of oral histories that tells—in their own words—the story of young refugees fleeing countries in Central America and traveling for hundreds of miles to seek safety and protection in the United States. Fifteen narrators describe why they fled their homes, what happened on their dangerous journeys through Mexico, how they crossed the borders, and for some, their ongoing struggles to survive in the United States. In an era of fear, xenophobia, and outright lies, these stories amplify the compelling voices of migrant youth. What can they teach us about abuse and abandonment, bravery and resilience, hypocrisy and hope? They bring us into their hearts and onto streets filled with the lure of freedom and fraught with violence. From fending off kidnappers with knives and being locked in freezing holding cells to tearful reunions with parents, Solito, Solita’s narrators bring to light the experiences of young people struggling for a better life across the border. This collection includes the story of Adrián, from Guatemala City, whose mother was shot to death before his eyes. He refused to join a gang, rode across Mexico atop cargo trains, crossed the US border as a minor, and was handcuffed and thrown into ICE detention on his eighteenth birthday. We hear the story of Rosa, a Salvadoran mother fighting to save her life as well as her daughter’s after death squads threatened her family. Together they trekked through the jungles on the border between Guatemala and Mexico, where masked men assaulted them. We also meet Gabriel, who after surviving sexual abuse starting at the age of eight fled to the United States, and through study, legal support and work, is now attending UC Berkeley.

From the Ashes

From the Ashes
Author: Sarah Jaffe
Publisher: Bold Type Books
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2024-09-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1541703510

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The politics of grief, in an era marked by loss, shows us how we can find our humanity once more. From one of our most vital and far-seeing social critics. Our era is one of significant and substantial loss, yet we barely have time to acknowledge it. The losses range from the personal grief of a single COVID death to the planetary disaster wrought by climate change. We are in an age of unraveling hopes and expectations, of dreams curtailed, of aspirations desiccated. What can we do? This is capitalism’s death phase. It has become clear that the cost of wealth creation for a few is enormous destruction for others. The marginalized and the vulnerable have been feeling the crisis for a long time, but it is increasingly coming for all of us. At the same time, we are denied the means of mourning the futures that are being so brutally curtailed. At such a moment, taking the time to grieve is a radical act. Through in-depth reporting intertwined with memoir, Sarah Jaffe shows how public memorialization has become more than a refusal or a protest: it is a path to imagining a better world. When we are able to mourn the lives, the homes, the worlds we have lost, we are better prepared to fight for a transformed future.

Chasing the Harvest

Chasing the Harvest
Author: Gabriel Thompson
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2017-05-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1786632209

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Lives from an invisible community—the migrant farmworkers of the United States The Grapes of Wrath brought national attention to the condition of California’s migrant farmworkers in the 1930s. Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers’ grape and lettuce boycotts captured the imagination of the United States in the 1960s and ’70s. Yet today, the stories of the more than 800,000 men, women, and children working in California’s fields—one third of the nation’s agricultural work force—are rarely heard, despite the persistence of wage theft, dangerous working conditions, and uncertain futures. This book of oral histories makes the reality of farm work visible in accounts of hardship, bravery, solidarity, and creativity in California’s fields, as real people struggle to win new opportunities for future generations. Among the narrators: Maricruz, a single mother fired from a packing plant after filing a sexual assault complaint against her supervisor. Roberto, a vineyard laborer in the scorching Coachella Valley who became an advocate for more humane working conditions after his teenage son almost died of heatstroke. Oscar, an elementary school teacher in Salinas who wants to free his students from a life in the fields, the fate that once awaited him as a child.

Staying Strong

Staying Strong
Author: Sandra Roman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 118
Release: 2018-04-18
Genre:
ISBN: 9781987480726

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September 20, 2017 changed Sandra's life forever. She survived category five Hurricane Maria at her home in Puerto Rico, but for the following three months she has to use every ounce of creativity, patience and perseverance to survive without power, water or access to most basic services. Her concern for family and friends in the United States encouraged her to write a journal, many times on her cell phone, to keep them aware of her situation. Her journal entries opened doors to opportunities for humanitarian aid, but unbeknownst to her, it also becomes a catalyst that will allow her to heal from the worse catastrophe her country has ever experienced. Her diary of survival will inspire you to move on and find a way to overcome your personal storms.