Over the course of the Spring 2019 semester, undergraduate students of Dr. Michelle Bettencourt’s HON373 course “Migration & Community: Tracing the Journey” conducted oral histories with a individuals stemming from a broad range of immigrant communities located in Western North Carolina. Collectively, this research has been compiled into a multimedia digital story, and will be archived through the Immigrant Stories project at the University of Minnesota’s Immigration History Research Center and added to the UNCA Ramsey Library's special collections. Edna Hernandez, a 20 year old immigrant from Hidalgo, Mexico agreed to meet for this interview to address her personal story, and opinions on the current political climate and realities immigrants face in Western North Carolina. She provides a unique perspective as a young woman, mother, participant in the Asheville community, and as an immigrant. Miss Hernandez immigrated to the U.S. at a young age and offers a doubly unique perspective as she is fluently bilingual. Her story is one of many with America's growing immigrant population, in a voice that is uniquely her own as a Mexican American woman.
