Spanish and Portuguese, 2002-2025

For my senior thesis in the Spanish and Portuguese (SPO) department at Princeton University, I’m working with Alberto Bruzos Moro to use oral history methodology as a means of sharing unknown stories about marginalized people. It will not provide any generalizable claims about any of the communities involved, namely Afro-Colombians from the Caribbean coast and Afro-Puerto Ricans. The stories collected from the interviews will be used in the creative portion of my thesis, which will have two parts as I pursue the creative arts track of the Spanish concentration. The first section will discuss the purpose of oral history along with historical and social context regarding the African diaspora in the West Indies. The second portion will be an original, bilingual play that demonstrates the differences and shared experiences throughout this diaspora.

I was inspired by my previous project which investigated Benkos Bioho: an important figure in San Basilio de Palenque (located in Colombia). While locals believe Bioho founded their beloved land and fought for their freedom as the first free town in the Americas, scholars claim that historical evidence negates this story and have downplayed his significance to the community. To argue that the story of Benkos Bioho has academic and cultural value, I synthesized journals related to critical fabulation, oral traditions, and cultural memories to support the cherished narrative. This work is important because the majority of enslaved people’s stories are only known through the voices of colonizers and enslavers. Therefore, their memories and stories often died when they did. Although the circumstances aren’t the same today, black people still experience racial discrimination that silences them. Additionally, I’m motivated by my family history. My parents immigrated to the United States from Trinidad and brought many stories of their homeland with them. However, they don’t know a lot about their ancestors since they were enslaved as well. Even though I recognize that I’m not latina, Trinidad was also colonized by Spain and participated in the Atlantic slave trade, so I feel united in the struggle of silenced voices through disaporic connections.

I chose oral history for this project because it will allow marginalized people to choose which stories they want to share with others in their own voice. The audience will be able to hear their intonation, pauses, dialects, volume, etc. which reveals a deeper layer than just the words. Other reasons that support the value of oral history will be described in methodological portion of the thesis, which is divided into three subsections. The first will be used to discuss the motivation for the thesis as detailed above. Then the contextual section will follow. This is where the history of slavery and race dynamics in Puerto Rico will be explained. The last subsection which will explore how scholars combine oral history and theater to present powerful works and will discuss their corresponding processes.

The interviewee will have a very important role in this project. I ask that they fully review the consent form to ensure they feel comfortable doing everything they are asked to do.

The Hispanic Community in the United States is highly diverse in age, country of origin, and English competency. Despite this, on average, Hispanics in the United States exist farther outside the classic healthcare system and face particular challenges when attempting to obtain healthcare. These challenges are rooted in sociodemographic characteristics like immigration status, language, culture, occupation, economic status, and more. Because of these challenges, Hispanic individuals are more likely to exist farther outside the healthcare system and rely on self-medication and self-management of illnesses, chronic and acute. Because of this, this population is more reliant on health knowledge and health literacy regarding common illnesses, over the counter medications, and emergencies. Health literacy researchers, though, have failed to find adequate and appropriate measurements for health literacy for Hispanics in the United States. Based in the Hispanic health context in the United States and the immigrant experience, this thesis has the goal of developing a new way to assess and address health literacy based in Nutbeam’s theoretical understanding of health literacy and its relationship to empowerment. To assess health literacy, I developed a new assessment that was distributed to more than 75 Hispanic respondents living in a rural area of Northern Michigan. Participants were recruited via verbal communication, snowball sampling, or posters, and the assessment was administered in an electronic format. Demographic information, ratings of health efficacy in various contexts, and various clusters of knowledge were assessed. These questions provided insight into some of the most important gaps in health skills for this group: selecting medications and interpreting medication labels, communicating with physicians, and navigating the healthcare system. Knowledge of the U.S. healthcare system and understanding of medications and their uses was also limited for this group. These results allowed for the creation of a health literacy tool that directly addresses these needs. To do this, it provides individuals with tangible resources to improve their abilities to interact with the healthcare system, obtain healthcare information, and make health decisions. With the ultimate goal of empowerment, these resources hope to be a stepping stone in creating adequate Spanish educational materials in healthcare settings and a valuable resource for the health disenfranchised Hispanic population in Northern Michigan.