Michigan’s Immigrants and Their Stories

60 East Pike Street,Pontiac MI 48342

30 October, 2021

Description

Come to our library for a program with author Martha Bloomfield. Saturday, 07/30, 3:30-5pm, Auditorium: Come to our library for a program with author Martha Bloomfield. In an effort to dissipate prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination, award-winning author, Martha Bloomfield, passionately shares stories of immigrants based on oral history interviews in the greater social/historical context. Stories reflect personal/family memories of their life journeys and struggles—leaving home, coming to Michigan, adapting to new homes, their contributions to Michigan and dreams and hopes for future generations. She shares their stories to inspire others to discover other peoples’ stories and their own stories through words, personal artifacts, documents and photographs. Bio: Award-winning author, Martha Bloomfield, coauthored The Sweetness of Freedom, Stories of Immigrants, (2010) with Steve Ostrander, which won a national IPPY Award, an Independent Publisher Book Award, Silver Medal for Multicultural Adult Non-Fiction and a Michigan Notable Book Award, 2011. Her other books include My Eyes Feel They Need to Cry, Stories from the Formerly Homeless (2013); Hmong Americans in Michigan (2014), a first book about Hmong people in Michigan, and Romanies in Michigan (2019), a groundbreaking book as it is the first book in the United States to include oral histories of Romanies. Michigan State University Press has published all these books. This April (2021), The Stolen Narrative of the Bulgarian Jews and the Holocaust, by internationally acclaimed filmmaker Jacky Comforty with Martha Bloomfield, was published by Rowman and Littlefield, in their Lexington Studies in Jewish Literature. Martha has presented talks at the state Michigan Oral History Association meetings, the national Oral History Association meetings, the International Oral History Association meeting in Prague, the Czech Republic (2013), Columbia University (2019) and libraries throughout Michigan. She also organized a symposium on homelessness with Czech colleagues, sponsored by the American Embassy in Prague in 2010 and another symposium on homelessness with Bulgarian colleagues in 2013, also sponsored by the American Embassy in Sofia. Refreshments will be provided! Register Here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/michigans-immigrants-and-their-stories-tickets-162567135679