The Oakton Library invites you to join Mirelsie Velázquez, Ph.D., author of Puerto Rican Chicago: Schooling the City, 1940-1977, for a thought-provoking discussion on the importance of community-driven narratives in challenging historical erasure. Mirelsie Velázquez will explore how, as a community of people still contending with settler colonialism, displacement and historical erasure, our stories become even more important in order to challenge monolithic readings of our lives.

Both stories (oral histories, for example) and community-led and organized archival spaces allow Puerto Ricans to lead much-needed conversations on the future of our communities by allowing the past to serve as a prologue to the future. Archives, at times, serve as monuments that remind those living on the margins of their dispossession and the many ways they have been disempowered. For the Puerto Rican student, this dispossession is embodied through their schooling, whether in K-12 or higher education.

This conversation speaks to the need to center community-based stories (oral traditions and community archives) to serve as pedagogical tools in engaging in radical, transformative, justice-oriented educational practices. Chicago’s Puerto Rican community is central to this work.

If you cannot attend the event in-person, you can sign up in advance to join virtually and check out a copy of the book.