The American Indian Library Association and the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association is pleased to award a $500 grant to each of the following institutions to host Talk Story: Sharing Stories, Sharing Culture programming. The 2024 Talk Story Grant recipients are:
Waialua High and Intermediate School (Hawaii) will foster collaboration with key community partners to honor their kūpuna’s stories. They will partner with the Hale’iwa Senior Citizens Center, Kūpuna Home O Waialua – Elderly Housing, Waialua Public Library, North Shore Chamber of Commerce, and Hale’iwa Waialua Historical Society. They will also contact the University of Hawai’i’s Center for Oral History and O’ahu North Shore Field School who have already begun recording their kūpuna’a stories and archiving them for public access. These collaborations will provide resources and spaces for storytelling sessions for AANHPI and AIAN communities.
Cobb County Public Library (Georgia) will partner with the Marietta Tamil School (MTS) to enhance its programming. With 400 students and 30 classes, MTS will play a crucial role in providing storytellers, programming materials, and guidance in collection development. This collaboration will not only strengthen the library’s outreach efforts, but also ensure their program is inclusive and resonates with the Indian American communities in Marietta and Kennesaw. The library hopes that by working with MTS, they aim to create a meaningful and impactful program that meets the needs of their diverse community.
Canby Public Library (Oregon) will collaborate with the Confederated Tribes of the Grande Ronde Community of Oregon to host an event called “Do You Know Oregon’s First Peoples? A History of the Grand Ronde Tribe”. It will be held in October-November and is a way of directly sharing stories from Indigenous people about their histories with Canby Public Library’s community. This work is further supported by a planned special story time with Todos Juntos geared toward children and families. Crafts and new library materials will further support the work of sharing Indigenous stories with Canby Public Library’s patrons.
Hoke County Public Library (North Carolina) will be expanding their brand new bookmobile services to meet the needs of Lumbee community members. One contact will be with the Hawkeye Child Development Center and the other will serve the Hawkeye Sands community. Beyond providing mobile library services, Hoke County Public Library will also incorporate a literacy-based family story time program called “Carpets & Canopies Storytime” into bookmobile stops over the summer. November will see the Hoke County Public Library engaging with a local Lumbee historian and Lumbee artist to present at a community-based Indigenous Day at the library as well.
Talk Story: Sharing Stories, Sharing Culture is a family literacy program that reaches out to Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI), and American Indian and Alaskan Native (AIAN) families and their intergenerational community members. Talk Story celebrates and affirms Asian, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and American Indian intersectionalities through books, oral traditions, art, and more to provide interactive and enriching experiences. Talk Story grant funding supports library and community organization opportunities to highlight AANHPI and AIAN stories through programs, services, and collection materials. Children and families can connect to rich cultural activities through Talk Story in their homes, libraries, and communities while challenging mainstream Anglocentric literacy practices. We welcome libraries and community organizations to develop their own Talk Story: Sharing Stories, Sharing Culture project to serve family literacy needs.
To learn more about Talk Story programming, follow us on Instagram @talkstory_together, Facebook @talkstorytogether, or visit our website.