The OHL was built on a first mass-listening oral history project Mi María: Puerto Rico after the Hurricane, which collects and circulates stories of Puerto Ricans who survived Hurricane María despite innumerable humanitarian concerns and social justice issues.
Growing from that project, Listening to Puerto Rico, included over 100 undergraduate students from UPRM recording oral histories about Hurricane María and its aftermath.
Recovery from Hurricane María was complicated by the 2019 onset of an ongoing earthquake swarm that brought thousands of tremors, the largest being a 6.4 earthquake that rocked Puerto Rico in January 2020. Sheltered in Place furthers the OHL’s work in crisis oral history, exploring how people creatively survive and respond to stratified disasters, especially as they are situated within the contexts of economic depression, intergenerational colonial practice, and systemic racism.
The project Speaking into Silences: Building Community Archives across the Puerto Rican Archipelago works to center underrepresented communities in both the archives and the networks of representation that extend from them.
All of our projects are fully bilingual.