Ep. 106 Hispanohablante Communities & Your Library

Sunshine and Stories Episode 106: Hispanohablante Communities & Your Library

Episode Summary:
The Kates were thrilled to have Cristy Moran, Adult Library Services Senior Consultant at the Colorado State Library join them today to talk about summer library services and Spanish-speakers in our communities. Kate, Kate, & Cristy sat down to talk about why vocabulary matters, strategies for learning about who is speaking what languages in your community, and what this all has to do with designing more inclusive summer experiences for all our communities of service.

00:00 – Introduction
01:11 – Why use the term “hispanohablante”?
03:42 – Learning your community’s Spanish (or other language) speakers
11:45 – What does this have to do with summer?
16:02 – It’s ok to make mistakes, keep going
18:14 – Book and resource highlights
20:52 – Closing 

References:
Collaborative Summer Library Program
Colorado State Demography Office
US Census Bureau American Communities Survey Data
STARnet Community Dialogues Toolkit
Spanish for Libraries at CSL
En comunidad : lessons for centering the voices and experiences of bilingual Latinx students by Carla España, Luz Yadira Herrera, and Ofelia García
¡Sí! Somos latinos por Alma Flor Ada, F. Isabel Campoy, and David Diaz
Yes! we are Latinos by Alma Flor Ada, F. Isabel Campoy, and David Diaz
Me dicen Güero : poemas de un chavo de la frontera por David Bowles
They call me Güero : a border kid's poems by David Bowles
Le dicen Fregona : poemas de un chavo de la frontera por David Bowles
They call her Fregona : a border kid's poems by David Bowles

CO State Library Resources:
CSL Stories and Storytelling for Adult Emerging Readers Program Kit
CSL Book Club Resource & Colorado State Library Spanish Book Club Kits

Reach Cristy at: moran_c@cde.state.co.us  

Next Drop-in Chat:
Hey Colorado folks! Join us on Oct 22, 2024 - 11am to noon MT for our next Summer Drop-in Chat. Cristy will join us to further the discussion about summer library service and Spanish-speakers in your community. Come when you can, stay for as long as you can. See you soon! 

If you work in a library and gave us a listen, please let us know what you think by completing a short feedback survey for this episode. 

Podcast theme music by Transistor.fm. Learn how to start a podcast here. 

This project is made possible in part by a grant from the US Institute of Museum and Library Service. 

Transcript

Sunshine and Stories podcast transcript for Episode 106

[00:00] [music] 

Kate Compton: You're listening to Sunshine and Stories, a Kate-cast from the Colorado State Library's summer design studio with your hosts,  

Kate Brunner: Kate Brunner 

Kate Compton: And Kate Compton. 

Kate Brunner: Tune in every other week as we explore one summer reading topic. From colorful program ideas to community wide engagement to avoiding burnout, we have got you covered. 

Kate Compton: If you have other questions or want to dive into any topic further, check out Libraries Learn.org for our next live summer drop in chat date happening Tuesdays starting this fall. 

[00:44]

Kate Compton: The fun Colorado art fact for today is about baile folklórico. It's an umbrella term for a variety of styles of traditional Mexican folk dance from various regions in Mexico. Many of them have their own distinctive costumes and steps. Groups began performing folklórico in Colorado as early as the 1950s. Today, the bright twirling skirts and rhythmic steps are staples in many Colorado celebrations.

[01:11] 

Kate Compton: Today on our episode, we have Cristy Moran. Cristy is the Adult Library Services Senior Consultant for the Colorado State Library. Thanks so much for joining us, Cristy.

Cristy Moran: I'm happy to be here. Good morning.

Kate Brunner: So, Cristy, thanks for being here today because I'm really excited for us to talk about this particular topic and I'd love if you could maybe start us off by talking a little bit about this term hispanohablante and what that means. And what maybe is the advantage of using that term or thinking through that frame?

Cristy Moran: Thank you for asking that. When I present on Latine folks in Colorado and when I present just generally on Spanish services in libraries, one of the things I do is always start with terminology. And I always mentioned that my preferred term is Latine. That is, instead of the gendered Latino or Latina or the Anglicized Latin X. And I tell people use whatever it is you want to use, but this is a term that I prefer. And the same goes for hispanohablante. So, hispanohablante literally translates in English to Spanish-speaking. So, I use these terms as umbrella terms when umbrella terms are relevant and necessary and most useful. 

I think it behooves us to really be clear when we're talking about services to folks in our communities, linguistically or in other identity markers. To be clear, what we're saying, right? So, am I talking about peoples’ ethnic backgrounds, their experiences, their nations of origin? Am I talking about that? Because if I am, then I'm going to talk about Latine folks and Latine folks do not all speak Spanish the same way that not all Spanish-speakers are identified or self-identify as Latine, right? So again, say what you mean. 

For me, the power of using hispanohablante or Spanish-speaking is that what I'm talking about and centering is the linguistic diversity, and then perhaps the need to diversify the materials. Say for promotion of something or for programming something or for the collection of something. So, I mean to answer your question, say what you mean. Use the terms that are relevant to your need and to what you're talking about.

[03:42] 

Kate Brunner: Yeah, I love that too. Thank you for clarifying that because I think that's really an important mindset almost I think too, when you're thinking about language services. And I think another important piece of the puzzle that I'd love to learn from you about and share with our listeners about is what are the ways then perhaps that we can get to know the language groups that are present in our communities in Colorado? If we want to make sure that we are saying what we mean and providing services for the folks in our community, what are some ways that we can go about learning what language groups are present in our community?

Cristy Moran: There are two ways you can do this, and they're honestly -- I said could, but I really mean should. There is a very simple way anyone can do this, low effort --I mean it requires effort, but it's a low effort easy grab which is using population counts, statistics and demography tools that are available to everyone. Colorado has a State Demography Office and I can't imagine that's not the case in most states. They'll have stats and population demographic data that is pulled from the US Census Office and other state agencies and local agencies that feed into that state data. I recommend first and foremost, finding-- you could Google it -- your state demography office. 

Look for things like racial, ethnic, Hispanic is the word that is used in the census. As a result, that's the word that comes up most often. Look at that community makeup information. Try to drill down as much as possible. Chances are you're not going to get much smaller than county. You'll see census tract. And in places that are huge, sometimes geographically or sometimes population density wise, you'll find that the census tract and the county aren't really the same. That could be really useful. But I would say really county data is probably as small as you're gonna go, and that's cool and that's OK.

The other place you can go and a lot of this is fed into state demography offices, but you can go straight to it is the US Census Bureau and they have what's called the American Community Survey. The American Community Survey includes a question called languages spoken at home. 

So, all of this you need to appreciate with the lens of nuance and understanding that you're not going to get all this specificity that often we want, right? And I think that wanting that is great. We have to acknowledge that answering questions on a census is something that only some people do, even if it's the vast majority of people. Answering those questions honestly also, is something that most people do, but perhaps not all people do. And so you want to take it all with a grain of salt. But really consider that you're looking at a very general big picture of your community. It will help, I think, a lot of people identify and see things that they don't see with their own personal lived experience, because there are a lot of invisible things in our communities, I think no matter how vigilant we are, no matter how kind we are in our observation, we miss a lot of things. And sometimes because there are people, there are communities, there are spaces that we just don't have access to sometimes by their own choice, right? And that's OK. But something like this could be very useful. 

So, I mentioned there were two things and this was the lowest effort.  The most effort is to do real community dialogue. When I say community dialogue, I mean your institution, your organization, you as a library should be and could be, and Oh my God, I wish you were in direct communication and dialogue -- real listening, real asking questions, real understanding and attempts of understanding -- with stakeholder groups in your community and that sometimes is a stakeholder group you didn't even know existed.

The resident association at a mobile home park where transient and or just low income, and/or immigrant, and/or workers that go from place to place, migrant workers, could be living, and that could be such a useful such a rich source of information. And really a source of relationship building and that's what community dialogues ultimately are. You're going to hear a lot of things that are uncomfortable for you to hear, and I'm really glad when you do, because that means they trusted you enough to tell you. And note that that probably will take time. And note that that probably will take several instances and effort that is maybe a little beyond just Googling and looking at your phone. So that's what I would do. That's what I recommend.

Those are hard things, but there are resources for community dialogues, not the least of which is STARnet, which is from the Space Science Institute and a lot of our libraries engage with them. Anytime you get eclipse glasses you're probably getting it from them. They have an amazing, amazing community dialogues toolkit, including one for teens FYI, that are tried and true and have really helped a lot of libraries and a lot of communities, a lot of different kinds of communities, learn and come into real deep meaningful relationships with groups that otherwise were invisible to them or weren't using the libraries for any number of reasons.

Kate Brunner: I really appreciate how you're highlighting this go after the data, right? Go after the quantitative information, but also really equally value and make an effort to collect that anecdotal and more qualitative information in a process of relationship building, right? We will include these resources that Cristy's mentioned in the show notes for this episode for sure.

It also makes me a little curious about perhaps asking your local school district about the language data for families of school age children, right? I mean, that's a small subsect of your whole community. But that might also be a place, I think maybe to collect a little bit of information.

Cristy Moran: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'm kind of sorry I failed to mention that. Some of the most robust data you're going to get in a community is from your public school district office. You're going to find that as a result of the way that they need to fund and the way that they need to build curriculum, they have a lot of data on very specific things related to the families in those communities, including dialects of languages that you didn't even know existed.

You're going to find that in migrant communities or communities that now are serving migrants and those who have recently crossed for example, there's going to be some population shifts. So don't marry those numbers for a long time. Instead, revisit those numbers regularly as school years go and kind of pass. I think that's really useful.

And to that end, not every state has a clear communication stream between the local school districts and the State Department of Education. But you may want to explore the State Department of Education to get some information like the languages spoken in a more broad sense, in a more regional area, various kind of school districts. You might actually find that the State Department of Education will have a bigger reservoir of that kind of information for you to pull from.

Kate Brunner: Yeah, you'd be looking at it in the aggregate anyway, most likely, right? Because you know, school districts also typically have very, very specific, very strict protocols around the amount of information they can give out. Getting that snapshot, that picture, it's like another piece of the puzzle as far as what language groups might be present in your community.

Cristy Moran: Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you for mentioning that.

[11:20] 

Kate Compton: So one of the things Cristy, we've heard you say in presentations is yes, it's important to know who's in your community and the why. And when we're thinking about this through a summer reading lens, I was thinking if you know your community is mainly Colombian, when we're talking about art and coloring your world, how do you show that? In your marketing for summer reading? How do you show that in your programs? Or if you're finding that most of the community is actually Korean, what kind of music are then you showing? What food do you have in these different programs? So, I just want people to think through, like we're getting the how and then but the why with that kind of summer reading perspective too. I don't know if you have any more to add on ideas for people to see themselves in your space.

Cristy Moran: Oh, absolutely. And thank you for mentioning that. I think earlier I mentioned about the umbrella terms and how they're useful, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. You guys have heard me present on this a lot, I mean, but I talk about this all the time. We're not all the same and I mean that like literally every person is not the same as everyone else.

But there are some shared experiences that are unique to certain traditions and cultures. You mentioned, like, do you have a lot of Korean families? Imagine, imagine for a moment that you did, and what you highlighted was a bunch of Japanese calligraphy, amazing historical art and documentation that is not relevant to the community. They're gonna be like, do they even know who we are or do they just see Asian, right? And like how, how that could really create a barrier and how that could really damage an existing relationship. 

So, I think it's really useful-- and I know we just mentioned Korean-- I want to shift now to the Latine communities. I think it's really, really useful to explore the vast diversity within the Spanish-speaking, and Latin American, and South American, and Central American, and Caribbean American expressions. And even the Spanish right, like the European Spanish expressions of art and the richness of it and touching into and tapping into all of that as opposed to just focusing on one. And again say what you mean, right? Colombian art is Colombian. It’s is amazing, but it's not Mexican art. So please, don't call it that. Right? 

I know I think we all really do come from a place of the desire to be as inclusive as possible, and I think it to use the right language, is really just to say what it is that we mean. I would love to see, Oh my God, I would love to-- I'm, you know, I say it all time. I’m Miami Cuban. My family, heritage-wise, is Spanish and Cuban. I would love to see, to walk into a place and see Colombian art one day and then another day the Mexican alebrijes. But also, then on another day would love to see some Cuban American or even like Nuyorican art, right?

When you start recognizing and seeing kind of all the colors in the spectrum, what you actually see is all the colors, man and like the colors are…. There's so many of them. And when you have the ability to share and celebrate the spectrum and the colors within the spectrum, I think the community-- and I could speak for myself. I could speak for my observations, I could speak for what people tell me and what I've experienced through those anecdotes, but also in data, right? Is actually people really love that and not just the people who share those identities, right? Because I love to go to a Diego Rivera mural event that the Museo de las Americas puts on and I'm not Mexican, straight up. I still love it. Why is that? It's because I'm experiencing somebody else's culture and the richness of the world I live in.

I think when we can do that for say, Latinidad, that I don't know it's a-- it enriches all of our experiences of Latinidad and even those of us who don't share that identity, right? So, thank you for mentioning that. And yeah, I mean, I think especially with art being a theme, we have so, so much to pull from and so many expressions and experiences of visual art, of physical dance and movement, the music, I mean, I just think of all of the distinctions and differences and all of this wonderful potential for celebrating the arts and all of our heritages. Even and especially Coloradan as well. We're in Colorado, right? Like your Coloradan expressions of regionality, right? And really, hyper local, but also looking outside of just our ZIP code and how wonderful that is.

Kate Brunner: I think this is such a rich conversation, and also so many rich opportunities for this coming summer in particular as well. I think we could probably talk about this for a really long time, longer than our podcast episode length we're trying to keep these to, to make them more digestible for folks and easier to access. What I would love Cristy, is if you would like to come to our drop-in discussions and the next one that we have after this podcast airs, that would be amazing. Because then I think people would have the opportunity to chat with you and maybe ask some more questions and even learn a little bit more about this topic in a casual format.

Cristy Moran: Absolutely. I would love to do that. I know we talk about this as consultants, but I'm the librarian for librarians. So, I not only dig doing that, it's literally my job. [laughs] So I'd love to drop in. And for anybody who has any questions, whether they're really hyper local questions or they're sensitive topics related to something like this, feel free to bring them to the three of us. But certainly, I could speak for myself, we really try to foster a culture of humility and transparency, and really the eagerness and the opportunity to be in conversation. 

I know some of this stuff can be difficult and I get all sorts of questions about it that people are sometimes embarrassed to ask. And that's OK. And that's-- lean into that because that's how we learn things, right? Is by feeling like we didn't know something and someone gave us the opportunity to learn a little bit about it. And you're teaching me too that also shouldn't go without saying that I am way far imperfect, I have my identities and lived experiences and that no way, shape, or form means that I have all the answers to these questions. But I am eager to learn more and be in conversation.

Kate Brunner: And we'll include Cristy's contact information in our show notes as well. So, anyone who would love to just reach out directly to her, you'll have her information too. Thank you so much, Cristy, for being with us on this episode and coming to share your experience and knowledge around this topic and being willing to be there for the Colorado library community to continue this dialog.

[18:14] 

Kate Brunner: We asked Christy to share book recommendations related to this episode with us, and she sent us several we're going to pass on to you today.

The first one is En comunidad : lessons for centering the voices and experiences of bilingual Latinx students. While aimed at classroom teachers, there's a lot here for folks who want ideas for designing library programs that center a strengths-based approach to celebrating emergent, bilingual Latine children, youth and their families and caregivers.

She also gave us 3 suggestions for your middle grades and young adult collections that illustrate the powerful art of storytelling. So be sure to take a look at ¡Sí! Somos latinos, which is a beautiful collection of free verse, fictional narratives, and non-fiction prose detailing the experiences of 13 different Latine youth. And don't miss A Border Kid’s Poems. This is a series which currently consists of two multi award-winning titles; They call me Güero and They call her Fregona. In the show notes we've linked to the WorldCat records for both the Spanish and English editions of all three of these titles.

For this episode, we're highlighting programs and resources we offer through the Colorado State Library. Cristy maintains a comprehensive list of learning resources, printable materials, guides, training opportunities, and more on her Spanish for Libraries web page, to include more information about Español for Library Folx, which is an 8-week language learning community and conversation circle for library staff in the state of Colorado.

There are also State Library resources available for checkout by professionals working at any Colorado library. Cristy created two “Stories and Storytelling for Adult Emergent Readers” program kits that you can check out from our CSL Kits collection. These kits will walk you through facilitating this program model and provide you with all the materials you need to successfully provide the program through your library.

The State Library's Book Club Resource collection includes a selection of book club kits with Spanish language titles. This Spanish collection currently consists of 71 different adult and YA titles and are also available for checkout. Both the program kits and the book club kits are sent to you via the statewide courier. When you return them please don't forget to fill out the feedback form included in the kits. Suggestions for new titles or program kit ideas to add to these collections are always welcome. We've linked to all of these State Library resources in the episode show notes.

And one last note, the Collaborative Summer Library Program’s 2025 manual, which just recently published, also contains sections focused on programming, outreach and book lists for Spanish-speaking communities. Now that it's live, don't forget to check out that resource too.

[20:52]

Kate Brunner: That's our Kate cast for today, y’all but we hope you'll join the upcoming community drop in discussion. 

Kate Compton: We're hosting these discussions all year long. All Colorado library professionals involved in summer programming are welcome. No need to register, stay for the full hour or just pop in to say hi to colleagues across the state. Details for the next drop-in session can be found in the show notes for this episode and on Libraries Learn.org the Colorado State Library’s continuing education calendar and archive. 

Kate Brunner: We'd like to say thank you to all the Colorado library professionals who shared book recommendations, program successes and other artful ideas with us as we were designing this year's podcast. This project is also made possible by a grant from the US Institute for Museum and Library Services. 

Kate Compton: Thanks for joining us and we'll catch you next time. 

[21:40] [music]