Below is an excerpt of a guest post on the Library’s Of the People blog comprised of notes, observations, and an interview by Sami Haggood (Project Assistant Director) with Phanat Xanamane (Project Director) on their project, the Louisiana Lao New Year Archive, as part of a blog series featuring the 2022 awardees of the AFC’s Community …
In March, the Library announced the ten recipients of the AFC's Community Collections Grants, officially launching this new, multiyear program. The Community Collections Grants program is part of the Library’s Of the People: Widening the Path initiative, which seeks to create new opportunities for more Americans to engage with the Library of Congress and to add their perspectives to the Library’s collections, allowing the national library to share a more inclusive American story. The 2022 recipients' projects are now well underway. To get to know them better, we are featuring each of the recipients and their projects on the Library's Of the People blog over the course of this first, grant program year. And kicking off this series is an interview with Junious Brickhouse, the founding director of Urban Artistry (Silver Spring, Maryland), one of the ten awardees of the Community Collections Grants program.
“Now, this tablecloth,” Taissa Decyk says, “I was in a camp expecting my first child, who is now thirty-one, when I made this tablecloth.” In September 1979, Mrs. Taissa Decyk was interviewed in her Providence home about her extensive knowledge of Ukrainian embroidery traditions. Conducted by folklorist Geraldine Niva Johnson, the interview was for the …