Topic #1 Oral History – Immigrant

For this topic you will need to interview an immigrant concerning their experiences adapting to life in the United States. You will take field notes based on your interview and then write up your findings in a full, approximately 5-7 page (minimum 2000 word) ethnography. You will be expected to utilize and apply anthropological concepts, which you have learned in this class, to your findings. You will turn in your field notes with the final version of your paper. You will need to devise your own open-ended style of interview questions asking your informant to tell you about his or her socio-cultural experiences of adapting to American society. You may want to ask them what were the influences that caused them to migrate to the US, what sort of difficulties they faced and what, if any advantages they felt they gained through their immigration experience. Remember that you want to encourage your informant to talk as much as possible about what HE or SHE felt to be important about his or her immigration experience and what he or she would like the reader to understand about what they went through to adapt to life in the US. Also, be sure and ask your informant in what ways does he or she feel that his values have changed as a result of the immigration experience and does he or she view this as having a positive or negative impact on their life.

This paper should be a personalized narrative of your informant’s experiences. It should present actual, lived experiences, beliefs and values from your informant’s own life.