Midterm Exam: 100 points
Imagine the year is 1938. The US is in the midst of the Great Depression, and you
are an unemployed graduate of Arizona State Teachers College. You have been
recently hired by the Works Progress Administration, a Federal program that
employed artists, construction workers, scholars to create public parks, buildings,
and historical accounts of Arizona. You are excited to sign up for Professor Ow’s Oral
History Project, which is researching the small Chinese immigrant community in
Arizona, because you have the perfect person in mind to interview.
Armed with the following guidelines and questions, you conduct a great interview
with your subject on audiotape, who tells you their life story about the following 5
main topics
1. their life in China,
2. their decision to move /migration experience to the United States
3. their daily life in California
4. their decision to move / migration experience from California to Arizona
5. their daily life in Arizona
The professor asks you to summarize the person life story in a MINIMUM of4
double spaced pages. He gives you the freedom to tell this person’s story as a THIRD
PERSON SUMMARY (“Ioe Wong is a 78 year old immigrant from China, who
migrated to US in….) or as a FIRST PERSON NARRATIVE (“My name is Joe Wong. I
was born in China in 1860, and immigrated to the US in…) , and hopes this person’s
story is creative, yet historically accurate.
This project is due this Sunday by 11:3opm on my “Blackboard,”” he says.
For more info on the WPA, please see:
WPA stimulus still visible in Arizona, by Dianna M. Nafiez – Feb. 18, 2009
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2 009/02/18/2 00902 18
wpao218.html
Arizona WPA Pioneer Interviews – http: [ [www.infinet-
is.com[~jcarhartlarizona wpa pioneer interviews.htm
The Wpa Guide to the 1930’s Arizona – http://www.amazon.com/Wpa-Guide-
193os-Arizona/dp/0816510997)
