Digital Storytelling

Project Rationale

I chose “Global Goans” as the topic for my digital story because I was fascinated by all of the digital stories we looked at on migration. The ones that made me think the most outside of the box was “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals,” and “Criminalization of Childhood Arrivals,” by Lizbeth de la Cruz and Robert McKee Irwin. There was a lot of discussion on what constructs one’s identity and how they perceive themselves. This connects to my digital story because Goans have such a rich history of blended identities. They were part of a Portuguese territory, then part of India, with the Goan diaspora spreading to every continent.

In “Digital Stories of Transnationalism and Transmigration: El Salvador to DC,” Ana Patricia Rodríguez, University of Maryland, does a deep dive into the Salvadoran diaspora in Washington D.C. Again, the question of identity and community are brought up. One of the people that I talked to in Tavira, Portugal told me that there “was not much of an Indian community” in Tavira when I asked him. I did not press him about the matter because we did not know each other well, but if I were to continue to research this topic, I would be eager to learn more about his reasoning behind this. It raises the question of what constitutes a sense of community and is this feeling different for different people? In this reading there is a lot of discussion utilizing a digital story as “a way to make visible a community made invisible in today’s transnational labor market” (Rodríguez, p. 326). I am not by any means saying I did that or that it was my goal, but again, it would be an interesting discussion to have if I were continuing this research.

In “Storytelling in a Digital Age: Digital Storytelling as an Emerging Narrative Method for Preserving and Promoting Indigenous Oral Wisdom,” by Willox, Harper, and Edge power dynamics were discussed. I struggled with this a bit in my digital story, because I wanted to facilitate a conversation, rather than a formal interview. I wanted to steer clear from the “teller-listener” and “researcher-researched” relationship. My goal was to listen and learn. I honestly had such little knowledge on the relationship between Portugal and India and Tej Kumal, one of the people I spoke to, to hear their story, is the one who told me to start at learning about Goa and go from there. I went in pretty blindly, mostly on purpose, because I wanted to know where locals, and those who had lived it, wanted me to start.

Sources –
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://gato-docs.its.txst.edu/jcr:35841a9e-cd04-4e05-9ac2-3a359cd2666d/2016-02-05%20Rodr%c3%adguez%20(with%20image).pdf
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://ashleecunsolo.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/storytelling-in-a-digital-age_cunsolo-willox-et-al.pdf
https://globalmigration.ucdavis.edu/criminalization-childhood-arrivals