I began my oral history journey in February of 2021. I enrolled in an Oral History course at UMKC and was tasked with conducting a brief interview with a person with whom we felt comfortable. I chose to interview my great aunt Isabel or "Bolie" Gonzales. As a child, I was very curious about Bolie's fascinating life and her time as a member of Mariachi Estrella, one of the nation's first all-female mariachi bands. After our conversation, I decided to utilize oral history as my main methodology for my thesis work.  Over the following year, I conducted five interviews with female family members- four of whom are my great aunts from my maternal and paternal sides, and one is my maternal grandmother.

The narrators for this project are all daughters of Mexican immigrants who came of age in rural Williamstown, East Lawrence, and the Argentine neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas. The interviewees include Isabel “Bolie” Gonzales, Loretta Chavez, Carmen Rangel, and two women who wished to be identified only by their initials, L.J. and H.M. L.J., the oldest narrator for this project, is part of the silent generation and was born during the Great Depression in 1931, to parents from the states of Guanajuato and Zacatecas. She grew up in La Yarda, an East Lawrence neighborhood situated along the railroad tracks where her father worked. The youngest narrator Isabel Gonzales is a baby boomer born after the second World War in 1946. She was also born in east Lawrence to the same family.

A lifelong quest for belonging, a connection to my cultural roots, and family history in the region, drove me to undertake this project. The interviews that I conducted were between July of 2021 and September of 2022, and include some follow up interviews.