Men and women connected with the Croatian American Cultural Center share their stories and their songs in recorded interviews. These oral histories highlight the “up close and personal” stories of growing up Croatian American.
About the Oral History Project
The idea for this Project grew out of our awareness of the wealth of untold stories among the Slavonic Cultural Center’s membership. Men and women of all ages have a treasure trove of stories and songs relating to their experiences as immigrants and children of immigrants with roots in the Former Yugoslavia. We wanted to document their lives and to share their stories with a wide audience. We’ve tried to use both the influence of music and experiences at the Croatian American Cultural Center as common threads in the interviews.
The participants in this project have such delightful stories to tell, songs to sing and photographs to share, that we knew right away we wanted to present their oral histories in audio and visual formats as well as the interview transcript. We believe the combination of formats presents a deeper, more interesting and more accurate profile than the transcript alone. We currently have sound clips, music and photographs on the web site, and are working to supplement the oral histories with more musical examples, longer excerpts from the recorded interview, and family photographs.
We also want to take full advantage of the Internet’s ability to reach a wide audience and are excited about the possibility, for example, of relatives in Croatia hearing an interviewee’s voice on the Internet.
For further information, or if you are interested in being interviewed for the Project, please contact Nancy MacKay, Project Director.