Across Borders: Immigration and Emigration

For our project, we interviewed a total of four people, Ximena being one of those people, and the others being her mom, grandma, and brother. The overall subject of our project was to interview the four people and find out about their immigration experience. We wanted to find out details such as: when they immigrated, where they immigrated to and why, why they immigrated in general, and any specifics about their journey with immigration, positive and/or negative. When it came down to preparing the actual project, we did run into some difficulties. One of the difficulties was that Ximena’s brother was not easily accessible, so to solve that issue, Ximena called her brother on the phone and recorded the interview using another device. Another difficulty we had was decided how we wanted to present the project. We felt like there were so many options that we could do, but we knew we ultimately wanted to make some kind of video or slideshow so that the visual and audio media could be seen and heard at the same time. Jessica thought that the best way to do that would be to use the app, “iMovie”, but it turned out that the app was too complicated for what we wanted to do. So at the end of all of this, we decided to use PowerPoint to display the visuals and to add the audio of the interviews into the slides so that they can play as well.

We had a lot of fun working on this project. For Jessica, she really enjoyed learning about Ximena. Her family and their past. Jessica does really have any migration in her family, so she always approaches this subject with an open mind. She was able to get an inside scoop on a family that was different from hers and was able to hear about the hardships that they  endured and overcome. Ximena had fun interviewing her family members and being able to see the more personal side to their stories. She felt that the fact that her family was so willing to be interviewed and share with her added to the fun and enjoyment of the project.

When interviewing, we were able to make some comparisons of parts of Ximena’s grandma and brother’s stories and with some of the films and novels from class. Ximena’s brother, Esteban chose to stay in Mexico when the rest of his family had already immigrated to the United States. This is similar to how the mom in Nuovomondo decided to go back to Sicily while her son and her grandsons were going to stay in North America. Another example is how Ximena’s grandmother moved from Palo Alto, a city on the outskirts of Guadalajara, to a city in the North. She did this because the North had more opportunities for her to be able to get a job. This is similar to how in Rocco and His Brothers, the family moved from South Sicily to North Sicily so that the Rocco and his brothers had opportunities to find a job and provide for their mother.

References

Andrade, Elvia. In Person. 12/10/2018

Andrade, Hilaria. In Person. 12/15/2018

Betancourt, Esteban. In Person. 12/17/2018

Campos, Ximena. In Person. 12/12/2018

Crialese, Emanuele, et al. Golden Door. Optimum Releasing, 2006.

Visconti, Luchino, director. Rocco and His Brothers. Titanus/Les Films Marceau, 1960.