‘In Focus’ – An Interview with Fanny Julissa García
Fanny (she/her/ella) is an oral historian, narrative change strategist, and public speaker.
She currently serves as the Project & Communications Director for ‘Separated: Stories of Injustice and Solidarity’. She also works at New York City’s Asylum Application Help Center where she helps immigrants apply for asylum and other programs such as Temporary Protected Status. Her co-written article on narrator compensation “Money Talks: Narrator Compensation in Oral History” is now published in the Oral History Review. She has a Master of Arts (MA) from Columbia University.
Fanny Julissa García | Oral Historian, Narrative Change Strategist & Public Speaker
“Let’s work collectively to support each other by listening, witnessing, and championing. Let’s stay away from toxic gatekeeping and comparison, and help each other achieve our goals. There is room for everyone.”
Tell us about yourself and your work.
While my focus is on documenting the lived experiences of immigrants from Central America, I am equally interested in migration around the world; how immigration policies impact people, and how immigration experiences shape the trajectory of a person's life. I was born in Honduras and came to the U.S. with my mom in 1986. We were undocumented immigrants but were able to gain a path to citizenship through the 1986 Immigration and Control Act. I was raised in California and one of the political events that shaped my life occurred in 1994 when Proposition 187 was put on the ballot and it passed with more than 60% of the vote. The proposition meant to establish a state-run citizenship screening system and prohibit undocumented immigrants from using non-emergency health care, public education, and other services in California.
I was undocumented at the time, and so this proposition really scared me and made me realize how precarious my life and my mother's life were in the United States. This moment really shaped my life and put me on a path toward supporting immigration reform and immigration justice in the United States. We think that anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies only happened in the past but what we are seeing now with anti-immigrant sentiment is only a continuation of core values and beliefs about immigrants that have never been addressed and mitigated by our government and society. We have centered this exclusion on the idea that only certain people deserve the right to move from one place to another. I think it’s wrong and it is costing more money to deny people the right to move and migrate from one place to another in search of life, liberty, and happiness.
Last year, I received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to continue to work on an oral history project. ‘Separated: Stories of Injustice and Solidarity’ documents the lived experiences of parents and children who were separated at the U.S./Mexico border under an immigration deterrence policy called Zero Tolerance. The project began in 2019 in partnership with History professor Nara Milanich and received initial funding from the Oral History Association and the Mellon Foundation through a grant administered by Barnard College. In 2020, we partnered with the Women’s Refugee Commission, and in 2022, the project received additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Justice in Motion.
What are some of the challenges or barriers you have faced, and continue to face in your industry as a racialized woman of colour?
One of the most challenging aspects of moving through the world as a racialized woman of color in the United States is class and privilege. My mother grew up very poor in Honduras and in the United States, we were poor as well for a long time until we established some level of stability and became working class. Because of this, I identify strongly with the struggles of poor and working-class people. Navigating the world is very hard when you come from this background because you are often made to feel as though you don't belong in certain spaces. It often feels as though the whole of society is telling you that you do not belong if you are poor or come from a family with different levels of education or different ways of knowing. I am not ashamed of my family’s background, but society shames poor people and blames them for their poverty.
“Just because you gain a level of privilege through education doesn’t mean that the world stops categorizing you as the “other” or somebody who is a problem for the status quo.”
This made it really hard for me to move in the world and motivated me to educate myself and go to college. When I went to college and gained a bachelor's degree and then a master's degree, things kind of shifted for me because suddenly I achieved a level of privilege that no one else in my family to date has been able to achieve. This success then makes you different from your other family members and it becomes harder and harder to relate to them because they see you as accomplished even though you are still struggling due to choosing a career that is more connected to the arts with an unequal return on investment. Just because you gain a level of privilege through education doesn't mean that the world stops categorizing you as the “other” or somebody who is a problem for the status quo.
I am very lucky however that I grew up with a mom who reminded me that I was important; that I was smart, and that even though we were poor, we could and had the responsibility to achieve success, for myself and for my family. This messaging, and these core values are what have carried me through even though I still struggle with understanding and navigating class differences in the United States.
Speaking from the podium at the Oral History Association Conference in Baltimore this year. Photo credit is Jade LeBlanc-Ernest.
What are some tools, resources, strategies, and approaches you use to cope with these challenges?
I have often said that I did not achieve what I have been able to without the support of a lot of people and someday I'm going to sit down and write all those people's names because I don't want to forget them. Without them, I wouldn't have continued to push through even though it was very challenging to enter a college experience as somebody who grew up poor and working class. I struggled with the imposter phenomenon and challenges of feeling less than or not worthy and it was the love and support of my chosen family that helped me keep moving forward.
Without them, I would not have been able to complete school. Frankly, I would have given up. And I think it's okay to admit that I wanted to quit. Sometimes the message we get from society is that you're not allowed to show weakness or even think about quitting. The reality though, is that your brain totally wants to shut down when something is hard or painful. It’s okay to want to quit. But what matters is whether you find the courage and urgency to push through and move forward.
I don't think I would have been able to get past those moments when I wanted to quit without the support, love, care, and belief that other people had in me. It carried me through when things were really difficult. They reminded me constantly that there was an end in sight and that it might be great to get there.
I have also always been an evangelist of therapy. Even before it was popular, I always encouraged people to seek professional support for personal and generational trauma. I think it's important to be able to speak with somebody about the trauma that you've experienced in life and in a format that allows you to process and analyze how to adapt, make changes, and shift behavior. I think it's really important to be able to do that and you don't often get to do that by talking to your friends. I think talking to a professional is really helpful, and if that’s not the way, then find some outlet that allows you to externalize the things that you carry internally. I recommend journal writing and immersing yourself in books, art, leisure, travel, and all the things that facilitate the cultivation of joy.
“Sometimes the message we get from society is that you’re not allowed to show weakness or even think about quitting. The reality though, is that your brain totally wants to shut down when something is hard or painful. It’s okay to want to quit. But what matters is whether you find the courage and urgency to push through and move forward. ”
What advice would you give to younger women of colour in your industry?
Let’s work collectively to support each other by listening, witnessing, and championing. Let’s stay away from toxic gatekeeping and comparison, and help each other achieve our goals. There is room for everyone and everyone has their own unique perspective, strategy, and style that needs to be acknowledged.
For my Central American sisters, I say that we need to do this soon. We need more stories about us in literature, movies, oral history, and documentary work because complex and nuanced stories are missing. For the most part, stories about people from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala always have a lens or a veil of tragedy. I think we need to go beyond this because we have incredible stories to tell, ones that reflect resilience, power, and knowledge that need to be shared to ensure it is passed on to others. That said, I believe that there are certain stories and experiences that are meant only for our own people – our friends and family, our communities. Those stories are not meant for the general public. The general public may not deserve them. And this is totally okay. Don’t feel guilty about holding some things close.
Teaching an oral history workshop in Teatro La Fragua in El Progreso, Honduras. Photo credit Luis García.
How do you see the future of workplaces for women of colour?
I think things are changing a lot. Women of colour are building collective power and helping each other. Women of colour, in particular, I think are joining forces and advising, supporting, and encouraging fellow women of colour. We are providing spaces for women of colour to speak truth to power and to fight back against racism and inequality.
My good friend Cynthia Pong is a feminist career coach and her main mission is to empower women of colour. She provides the right tools to empower women of colour to negotiate higher salaries and harness the power within themselves to push back against inequality in the workplace and not accept less than what we are worth. I believe that the more we support each other the less isolated we will feel in the workplace and the less crap we will take from folks who continue to uphold racist, unequal, sexist, and patriarchal belief systems in the workplace.