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Women immigrants share stories
Photo
One of several women who was interviewed and posed for a photo exhibit by Maria Bleahu titled “Women of the World: A Photographic Journey of New Americans in the Mahoning Valley.”
By Denise Dick
Youngstown
About two years ago, Youngstown State University professor Rosemary D’Apolito started to notice a change in the Mahoning Valley’s demographics.
She saw women in grocery stores and other places around town from the Middle East and from parts of Asia and Africa. There were more ethnic grocery stores and churches.
“I would see women in the grocery store and talk to them in line,” said D’Apolito, an associate professor of sociology and anthropology.
Their stories intrigued her, and she contacted the English Center, a language school, and with the help of center co-founder Leslie Kiske, she started going to classes and connecting with the women.
“I just wanted to talk with them about their lives,” D’Apolito said.
From there grew “Women of the World: A Photographic Journey of New Americans in the Mahoning Valley.”
The photographic exhibit opens with a showing from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Youngstown Historical Center of Industry and Labor on Wood Street. The exhibit, which also features a video, will be at the center through late October.
It features stories from 18 women of all ages and from all walks of life.
D’Apolito interviewed each of the women, some her colleagues from YSU, some from the English Center and others she met at restaurants or other places around town. Those interviews will comprise a radio documentary that will air on WYSU.
A grant from the Humanities Council of Ohio provided some of the funding for the project.
Maria Bleahu, a former YSU student, head of the video department at Stark State College in Canton and an immigrant herself, shot the photographs, spending time with each of the women.
“I wanted to capture their essence,” she said.
She shot each woman in color and in black and white and each is represented in a large photo and a smaller one. D’Apolito will write short biographies to post next to the photos.
Launa Buettell, a Canton composer, composed music that accompanies the interviews and photographs in a video.
Bleahu, an award- winning photographer and filmmaker, spent about two hours with each of her subjects learning about their lives. She, her mother and siblings came to the United States from Romania when Bleahu was 3 to join her father, a retired Orthodox priest. Her maternal grandparents also joined them in the U.S.
“I went to their homes, to their places of work,” she said of the woman she photographed.
Both Bleahu and D’Apolito said the women were welcoming and eager to share their stories.
One of the women told the story of how she left her native Vietnam during the war and some of the struggles she faced there. Several of the women are refugees. One, from Liberia, relayed stories of her mother awakening her in the middle of the night because the family had to flee.
Some came seeking an education. Some were escaping war.
All of the women talk about how they love this country but they also try to preserve their culture, she said.
“They want to share their culture and to learn yours,” D’Apolito said.